WILL POST AND MAIL JOURNALISTS HAVE A BALL?

by Philip Parkin, Operations Director, Birmingham Press Club

It’s the Press Club’s annual ball this evening, and no doubt a hot topic of conversation will be the changes to the ‘Post’ and ‘Mail’ revealed a few days ago by the owner of the titles, Trinity Mirror.

There will certainly be plenty of ‘Post’ and ‘Mail’ employees at the Ball – not least because our chairman, John Lamb, came up with the idea of donating tickets to the event to those at Fort Dunlop (or Funlop, as we hear it is called).

It will be interesting to hear what the ‘Post’ and ‘Mail’ staffers think of this week’s events, but I can’t believe many of them will be overjoyed at what’s happened, least of all the sub-editors, many of whom will be in line for the tap on the shoulder.

That’s because the ‘Post’ and ‘Mail’ are set to adopt a system called ‘smart templating’, where the reporters flow their own copy into a page template, thus eliminating the role of the down table sub.

It’s not clear to me who then puts the headline on – if that is to become the reporter’s job as well, then you don’t really need any subs at all.

One other potential problem with this system – as everyone in the media knows, it is not a good idea to proof your own work, as it is very easy to miss things you have just written and got wrong.

So, for journalists, subs were always a good fall-back, not just for checking the facts were right, but also for making sure spelling and grammar were correct.

My question is: who’s going to do that now? If anyone knows the answer, or has a view, post a comment below.

Now, turning to the major measures announced by Trinity Mirror, namely the ‘Post’ going weekly and the ‘Mail’ going overnight.

I said in my previous post that I would not give the weekly ‘Post’ much hope of a long and happy existence. Frankly, I would have thought the alternative that Trinity Mirror apparently considered, namely reducing the pagination, was a much better idea.

But then of course, the ‘Post’ would still have been a daily morning paper – the slot that Trinity Mirror wants the ‘Mail’ to occupy.

Of course, when you compare the circulations of the two newspapers, it’s pretty obvious that Trinity Mirror is going to focus most of its efforts on the ‘Mail’.

And, with the Coventry ‘Telegraph’ having already established a precedent for this, the writing has probably been on the wall for the ‘Post’ for some time.

As I have said, I don’t believe the ‘Post’ going weekly is good news at all, and I can’t believe any of those working on it can be happy about it being downgraded in this way.

Well, maybe there is one person – I quote you Marc Reeves, the editor: “I’m delighted to be able to leave the ‘Post’ on a high as it takes a really ambitious and brave step and one that puts it in an even better position to meet the challenges of the economy and the changing media environment.”

Do you really, honestly believe that Marc?