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November 25, 2004updated 22 Nov 2022 12:29pm

Brum MD goes week after NUJ calls for his head

By Press Gazette

Replacement: John Bills

A week after the NUJ called for the resignation of Birmingham Post and Mail boss Alistair Nee, he has been replaced by parent company Trinity Mirror.

Sources at the company deny a link between the NUJ’s no confidence vote and Nee’s departure. He was replaced this week as regional managing director Trinity Mirror Midlands by John Bills, who was MD for the company in the North West and North Wales.

The departure of Nee is the latest chapter in a recent troubled period for Trinity Mirror’s Birmingham titles.

This month it was announced that 22 editorial jobs are to be cut from across the Midlands in the latest of a series of cost cutting measures.

In the last regional ABCs (which included the stripping away of many bulk sales) Trinity Mirror’s morning daily, the Birmingham Post, was down 17.7 per cent to 14,360, and sister paper the Evening Mail was down 8.6 per cent to 104,219.

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In a statement the NUJ said it hopes Nee’s departure “will bring to the end the highly damaging redundancies that have plagued the Post and Mail for the last two years.”

Trinity Mirror has not revealed whether Nee has another job to go to.

New MD Bills will report directly to chief executive Sly Bailey until the arrival in February of new MD of Trinity Mirror’s regional newspapers division, Georgina Crace, from IPC.

Bills is replaced as MD of North West and North Wales by Sara Wilde, currently commercial director of Trinity Mirror’s regional titles.

It is understood that Nee reacted to the NUJ chapel’s call for him and editor-in-chief Roger Borrell to resign by informing the union he had no intention of doing so.

By Dominic Ponsford

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