The Leicester Mercury’s award-wining features department is facing a reduction in three staff as part of Trinity Mirror’s programme of cuts across former Local World titles.
Some five editorial staff have been placed at risk of redundancy, including Lee Marlow who was named feature writer of the year for the third year running at this month’s regional press awards.
The company proposes to replaced features produced locally with generic, non-local, content produced by the national Shared Content Unit.
A Trinity Mirror spokesman said: “The Leicester Mercury’s editorial operation has been reviewed in the light of the need to focus local editorial resources on creating and managing content which best serves our multimedia audience and at the same time to manage our costs efficiently in what remains a challenging economic environment.
“As a result it is proposed that the volume of features content published in print and online will be reduced. This would involve a reduction in features pagination. Some locally produced features pages would be replaced by content created for use across titles by the Trinity Mirror Shared Content Unit .
“Should the proposal go ahead, and as a result of the proposed reduction in work activity within this team, there would be a reduction in headcount of three full time employees.
“The process of consultation with those affected by this proposal is now under way.”
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