“Pretty much wall-to-wall misery on the Birmingham Post editorial floor this week when I did one of my regular freelance sub-editing stints…”
So begins a column by freelance sub and cultural writer Sid Langley on the Post’s lifestyle blog.
It’s normally very rare to see open criticism of or negativity about a newspaper on its print or digital pages but this is typical of Trinity Midlands’s remarkably open and honest treatment of the radical re-organisation of its Birmingham and Coventry newsrooms.
The news of 65 redundancies has unsurprisingly gone down badly and strike action is being planned by some. But according to Langley journalists see the problems facing bosses:
“But amid all the wailing insecurity and, frankly, hatred of parent company Trinity Mirror, there seems to be a reasonable amount of sympathy for editors Marc Reeves and Steve Dyson, currently Post and Mail supremos respectively…
“Most people think they are doing their best to be fair and straight in a bloody difficult situation. And some of us are heartened by the untypical way it’s all being discussed (like this) online.
Langley is of the opinion that “no sensible person can deny that something needs to be done” to save the business, a popular view in America where public newspaper companies are busy making massive cuts.
Steve Dyson wrote about the difficulties of making the cuts on the Mail website and has received 94, mostly anonymous and mostly very angry comments from staff and readers. So far.
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