Northern Echo offices pic courtesy of FreeFoto.com
The National Union of Journalists has seized on a blog post about subbing errors at a controversial ‘production hub’ as further evidence against a move to have work carried out at the same centre by a group of Newsquest’s northern newspapers.
The union is campaigning against imminent job cuts at the American-owned publishing group which produces some of the north’s best-known titles including the historic Northern Echo and the York Press.
Today a former newspaper editor, Steve Dyson, added fuel to the fire when he took a sharp look at the standard of work being produced in a blog post titled ‘Newsquest’s little hub of horrors’
He concludes: “…. for what it’s worth, my opinion is that the Welsh unit is not yet good enough at handling multiple weeklies’ pages – let alone those of prestigious daily titles like the Northern Echo, Bradford Telegraph & Argus and The Press, York.”
This has now prompted the NUJ to step up its campaign. In a statement today, Northern and Midlands organiser Chris Morley, said the findings confirmed the union’s own monitoring of journalistic standards for titles already being produced.
“These widespread flaws are nowhere near being resolved – and may never be. But Newsquest is still relentlessly seeking to axe the jobs of two dozen skilled and experienced journalists in the local centres in Yorkshire and Darlington and to send the work hundreds of miles away to a factory with dubious quality.
“The potential damage to three of Newsquest’s flagship daily titles is incalculable given the quantum leap in the number of pages to be subbed for already badly overstretched staff in Newport. Our chapels are demanding that local knowledge and experience is retained in the centres to prevent a reputational disaster for their titles.”
