08 Informed Comment


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Previously, a ten day strike in July 2015 – in response to huge cuts imposed on the newsroom – led to a minimum


staffing level being agreed. Tis consisted of a group managing editor, a deputy managing editor, two web editors, eight content editors, 22 reporters, three sub-editors and an editorial assistant. However, from March 2016, any


vacancies in the newsroom were no longer filled as part of an unofficial “recruitment freeze” with the remaining staff expected to simply absorb the extra work. By September, the office had lost two content editors, one web editor, five senior reporters and one trainee reporter. In August, the chapel balloted for strike action and industrial action short of a strike. Te ballot was a success. But two days before the end of the ballot period, a round of redundancies was announced. Of the 29 people who leſt in the


Newsquest striker


Local news really is worth fighting for


Te editorial staff at Newsquest South London have been engaged in an industrial dispute with their employers over a drastic level of understaffing in the newsroom since August 2016, leaving staff unable to fulfil the important role of local news reporters to any meaningful standard. Newsquest Media Group Ltd is a UK subsidiary of the Gannet Company, and the second-largest publisher of local newspaper titles in the UK, owning about 200 titles across the country. From the south London office, it produces nine newspapers across 10 London boroughs and parts of north Surrey and north Kent.


Our members walked out for a 10


day strike in October 2016 because we feel so passionately that local news is worth fighting for. From local politics to crime, to the lives of everyday people, there are huge sections of society and communities which rely on our newspapers. Our newspapers are oſten the sole bodies which hold local decision- makers to account, and inform people of events that have a real impact on their lives and their homes. Tere are currently no other newspapers that do this for these areas. Without us, there would be a vacuum of local investigative journalism.


newsroom, 27 were either made redundant or put at risk of redundancy. Structures for the new, slimmed down


newsroom were hastily drawn up and rehashed as more and more members of staff applied for voluntary redundancy or simply handed in their notices in protest. Te chapel was eventually leſt to consult on a structure that included a managing editor, one web editor, three production staff, one content editor and just 12 reporters, who would be expected to write news, sport and leisure. In the collective consultation meetings between the chapel and senior management – meetings which management refused to allow any external union representatives to join - our managing editor, Andy Parkes, openly admited that the new structure was unsustainable, and that the few jobs remaining in it could not be guaranteed from week to week. We were told that reporters should not


expect to cover court cases or politics, or even their own patches any more, but instead be ready to simply turn around press releases and write “generic


Beowulf Mayfield


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