Leicester Mercury’s weekend magazine supplement, More, has published its last standalone edition as the paper’s features team is hit by cuts.
More editor Gemma Peplow penned a farewell comment piece in its final edition on the weekend in which she said some of the supplement’s content, including entertainment, food and shop reviews, would now be published in the paper.
She also listed a number of regular elements that would be dropped.
It comes after Trinity Mirror announced in May that three staff on the Mercury’s features department would be cut, with five editorial staff at risk of redundancy including three-time Regional Press Awards feature writer of the year Lee Marlow.
The company also said it wanted to replace features produced locally with generic, non-local, content produced by the national Shared Content Unit.
Peplow also revealed it would be her last edition as editor and said “goodbye” on behalf of her team, including journalists Sarah Staples, Cheslyn Baker, Gemma Collins and Becky Jones. Only Jones is understood to possibly be remaining at the Mercury.
Peplow said: “It has been a privilege to work on More for the last two years. It’s a lot of fun, talking to people for a living. Sometimes we forget it’s actually work.”
“There is always someone from Leicestershire doing something amazing somewhere in the world, and it’s been an honour to tell their stories,” she said, adding: “It really has been a blast.”
More’s last cover feature is about cancer victim Harley Staples, who died in 2009 aged eight, as his family open a holiday home in his memory for other young patients with cancer.
“He was a little boy who leaves a big legacy,” said Peplow, “and it has been an absolute privilege to tell his story.”
Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog
