Daily Telegraph: editorial quality vs. mass lay-offs
According to The Independent, job losses at The Daily Telegraph (see former posting) are to be followed by a major review of editorial policy. The article presents two very different points of view. First, "Geoffrey Goodman, the founding editor of the British Journalism Review, said: "The changes have mainly been in design, which seems to me to be moving towards tabloidisation without becoming tabloid. The content of the Telegraph has improved far less than I thought it might. I would have thought the Barclay brothers would have added a touch more liberalism, competed with the Times for good writing and returned to good reporting. Clearly they have left it in the hands of the editor and I'm not sure that there isn't a need for a pretty substantial overhaul."
On the other hand, "Management insists that a review of the editorial offering by editors Martin Newland on the daily paper and Dominic Lawson on the Sunday is the "next project", once the publisher has achieved a firmer financial footing. Areas the Telegraph wants to build on include its already strong sports coverage and business. Until the Times went tabloid, it dominated the business sector, but now the pages are buried away inside the paper leaving the field open.
With the threat of redundancy on the horizon, however, journalists could be justified in feeling sceptical that an improved Telegraph can be brought out with nearly 20 per cent fewer staff."
In an immediate future Telegraph staff plans strike vote to save jobs.
Source: The Independent
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Precisely why Geoffrey Goodman, "would have thought the Barclay brothers would have added a touch more liberalism, competed with the Times for good writing and returned to good reporting" is beyond me. Even the papers staff agree that The Barclay Brothers have moved the traditionally liberal Scotsman to the right. One would add that they have also sacked most of its talented reporters and now, in pieces such as http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=149482005, fuels Scotland's problem with sectarianism while professing to eliminate it. Good writing and reporting? I think not.