Trinity Mirror is to merge the editorial teams of the Manchester Evening News and its 22 weekly sister titles, leading to up to ten job losses, it was reported yesterday. MEN Media was bought from the Guardian Media Group by Trinity Mirror in February this year.

The move is part of a push to boost multimedia and user generated content, and will see the creation of a single editorial team with teams of reporters assigned to cover specific geographic areas producing multimedia content for MEN Media titles, according to the Guardian. There will be a training programme to help reporters make the shift to multimedia, and new equipment will be bought. There will be a single management structure to lead the newsroom and place more emphasis on content creation.

"I want to put original, local content at the heart of everything we do," said MEN Media editor-in-chief Maria McGeoghan in a press release. "This process is about using their skills in a better way, to make the business a success and to secure its long-term future," she continued.

Trinity Mirror said that it hoped the actual number of redundancies would be lower than ten, and that a number of new roles would be created, including two that will focus on cultivating high quality UGC. MEN Media already cut 78 editorial jobs in 2009 when the weekly newspaper offices were closed and staff moved into the offices of the Evening News, although staff continued to work separately.

The changes will be completed in time for a move in September from the MEN's current offices in central Manchester to a new premises in Oldham, noted Press Gazette.

Last month Trinity Mirror announced that the Mirror Group newspapers, the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and People, were to launch new multimedia newsrooms and streamline editorial processes, using outsourcing to help cut around 200 editorial jobs across the three titles. Mirror journalists have voted to strike to protest the cuts.

Source: Guardian, Press Gazette, Trinity Mirror