The NUJ has called on Trinity Mirror to sell three weekly newspapers in the Midlands instead of closing them with the loss of seven editorial jobs.
On Monday Trinity Mirror Midlands announced 50 editorial jobs were to go following its decision to merge its production teams in Birmingham and Coventry and shut the Chase Post, the Stafford Post and the Sutton News.
NUJ negotiator Lawrence Shaw said: ‘The only beneficiary of these closures is the Northcliffe group, the papers’ rival in this area.
‘It makes no sense to journalists to shut down popular papers that are full of adverts.
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‘That is why we believe the Trinity Mirror management must have an ulterior motive for the closures, which it is not revealing.
‘We will be asking for answers and the chance for these paper to continue to serve their local communities.”
NUJ members at Trinity Mirror Midlands yesterday held an emergency meeting to discuss the cuts.
General secretary Michelle Stainstreet described Trinity as a ‘group in crisis’and claimed chief executive Sly Bailey was a ‘one-trick pony whose only solution is to slash jobs, degrade journalistic quality and cheat readers”.
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