Staff entered a 28-day consultation period on 13 March, as the local newspaper publisher told employees that if the proposal goes ahead, the majority of Suffolk’s editorial production work will move to Archant Anglia’s Norwich base.
This will put 14 production roles in Suffolk at risk of redundancy. An Archant spokesperson said that the roles affected will include sub-editors and page designers producing pages for both print and online, as Archant uses a system which combines the two.
However, around 50 frontline journalists will continue to be based in Ipswich, and none of the seven Suffolk bases are proposed to be shutdown.
Archant said that the proposal to create one central production base will enable more flexibility on the day-to-day management of editorial resources across Archant Anglia’s 19 weeklies and four daily titles.
Similarly, Archant Anglia will share more content between Norfolk’s Eastern Daily Press and Norwich Evening News and Suffolk’s East Anglian Daily Times and Ipswich Star, one of only two regional dailies to report a growth in circulation in the latest ABCs.
This change in publishing strategy puts a further six Suffolk jobs at risk and four in Norfolk.
The consultation was announced two days after Archant revealed that it had knocked over £4m off its operating profit during 2012 and had decided to suspend all shareholder payments in anticipation of a potential £13m HMRC bill.
Archant Anglia managing director Johnny Hustler said: "Archant Anglia, like many media businesses, continues to face extremely challenging trading situations. It is important we do all we can to reduce the cost of producing our newspapers, while retaining as many front-line reporting staff as possible.
"The future of our business depends on creating compelling local content and delivering that to our audiences through our traditional print and emerging digital products, but at a cost we can afford."
"It is hoped that we can continue to operate professionally and sympathetically during the consultation period."
Printing of the newspapers, which is done at Archant Print’s Norwich Print Centre in Thorpe, will not be affected by the changes, an Archant spokesperson said.
