Trinity Mirror has continued its nationwide restructuring of regional newsrooms with a further 12 redundancies planned across titles covering Cambridge, Hertfordshire and Essex.
A spokesman for the company, which bought regional publisher Local World in a £220m deal, confirmed seven roles were “at risk” on titles covering Cambridge and five at those covering Herts and Essex.
The titles affected include the Herts & Essex Observer, Herts Mercury Series, Harlow Star Series and Mercury Midweek and the Cambridge News (daily) and Cambridge News & Crier (free weekly).
Trinity Mirror has said new roles will be created through the restructure – although yet to be confirmed they are likely to be on the digital side – and that there are no plans to close any titles in these areas at this stage.
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The company has said the changes are part of a group-wide push to improve the quality of its digital and print content.
A spokesman said: “In line with the strategy and approach across Trinity Mirror, the proposed changes focus on ensuring we have the right editorial structure to best deliver quality digital and print content to local audiences on the topics they are interested in, when they want it, how they want it.”
Last week it was announced that “a handful of roles” would be cut at the Newcastle Chronicle and Journal, including two photographers, and that three websites in Cornwall would be merged to create a single hyperlocal news site for the region.
There are no plans to merge websites in Cambridge and with the Herts and Essex titles, according to Trinity Mirror.
Staff in the South East, including titles in Essex, Kent and Surrey, have already been hit by 13 job losses, including a number of weekly editor roles, after the merger of 12 existing websites into three serving each county and the merger of two newspapers – the Essex Chronicle and Brentwood Gazette, into one title.
The NUJ has described the publisher’s ongoing restructures as a “merry-go-round of misery”.
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