A major editorial restructure at regional newspaper publisher Johnston Press continued today with news that The Scotsman editor-in-chief John McLellan is set to leave the company.
Staff were told this morning that as part of Johnston’s plans to create a ‘flatter, more efficient management structure’the role of editor-in-chief for Scotsman Publications Ltd – with overall editorial responsibility for The Scotsman, Edinburgh Evening News and Scotland on Sunday – will cease to exist.
Instead, the editors of each title will report directly to the managing director of the Scottish publishing unit Andrew Richardson.
As a result of the move McLellan has been placed on leave and is now in consultation with the company, with further announcements on the editorship of The Scotsman made expected to be made ‘in due course”.
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The shakeup will also see the managing director role for the Angus County Press Ltd scrapped and its editors and managers instead reporting to Richardson.
Like McLellan, Angus County Press MD Angus Morrison has been placed on leave and is in consultation with Johnston.
The news comes a day after Johnston announced that the editorships of the Yorkshire Post and Yorkshire Evening Post – two of the UK’s biggest regional newspapers – were being combined.
The move means that Post editor Peter Charlton and Evening Post editor Paul Napier have both been placed under risk of redundancy.
The company also announced that the editor of the Lancashire Evening Post, Simon Reynolds, had been placed on leave and that deputy editor positions at the Lancashire Evening Post, the Blackpool Gazette and the Wigan Evening Post were being scrapped.
Since joining Scotsman Publications in 1994 McLellan has had two spells editing the Edinburgh Evening News and also edited Scotland on Sunday.
He became editor of the Scotsman following the departure of Mike Gilson in early 2009 before taking on the role of editor-in-chief.
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