The next issue of the NUJ‘s Journalist magazine is to appear online only as the union seeks to cut its outgoings and review its communications.
The move, taken by the union’s national executive, is an experiment to gauge readers’ reaction to an online issue ahead of this year’s annual delegates’ meeting where the future of the Journalist will be debated
Each year the Journalist costs £200,000 to produce, and some 60 per cent of that cost goes on posting and packaging.
NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear said that although union membership has dropped over the past year as a result of redundancies in the industry, the union is not in debt.
He said: ‘There are about four or five motions at the annual conference saying we should review our whole communications. Now we have a decent website, e-bulletins, and lots of our newsletters are online. We ought to consider the future of the Journalist. I think a mixture of online and print is still what most people support.
‘As an experiment we will try one issue. Like everyone in the whole of the industry we have to look at the level of resources put into printed and online and all our other communications.
‘We are not talking about fewer resources, we are talking about where those resources go. There is a potential cost saving in terms of posting and packaging; there is no prospect of any job losses.”
The next issue can be seen at www.nuj.org.uk from 17 March.
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