Confirmation from the National Union of Journalists that it is facing insolvency has prompted journalists to suggest some ideas on how to improve the union’s situation.

NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet said in an email to all members yesterday that “doing nothing is not an option” – and she asked members to encourage colleagues to join the union.

She said: “If no action is taken the union would face insolvency and the consequential prospect of a merger as soon as later this year.

“We have been here before, and the way out is by acting together in the collective interests of the union we are all passionate about.”

Journalist Leah Borromeo said the NUJ’s problems would not be solved through recruitment alone and that a merger with broadcasting union Bectu would reflect convergence in the wider media industry. Back in 2008, the NUJ looked at leaving its Headland House headquarters in London and sharing with Bectu, but nothing came of it.

@donnachadelong thinkin abt it deeper, NUJ BECTU etc shd’ve merged yrs ago 2 form Media Union. this won’t be solved thru recruitment alone.

— Leah Borromeo (@monstris) Mai 28, 2012

Brian Whelan says not enough is being done to recruit graduates:

Main thing that strikes me about the NUJ’s current financial crisis is how many young journalists I can think of who aren’t members.

— Brian Whelan (@brianwhelanhack) Mai 28, 2012

NUI Galway MA student Colette Sexton adds:

@brianwhelanhack The NUJ don’t exactly encourage us young hacks to join. It took the NUJ 4 months to respond to my membership application.

— Colette Sexton (@colette_sexton) Mai 28, 2012

And Sheffield Uni MA student Luke Martin says the NUJ’s antiquated website isn’t helping:

@brianwhelanhack I tried to join, was a most confusing process. The website has a feel of ceefax.

— luke martin (@dentonmartin) Mai 28, 2012

However, Donnacha DeLong says improvements to the site are on the way:

It’s under new management and online joining is coming soon.

— Donnacha DeLong (@donnachadelong) Mai 28, 2012

One option being proposed is a five per cent rise in subscription rates. However, Telegraph journalist Jennifer O’Mahony suggests rethinking the membership fees structure altogether:

@brianwhelanhack It’s ridiculous that the editor of a regional paper pays less for a union subscription than a PA/Telegraph trainee.

— Jennifer O’Mahony (@jaomahony) Mai 28, 2012

@brianwhelanhack I have no idea why they don’t grade by income rather than where in the country you happen to work. Puts many off joining.

— Jennifer O’Mahony (@jaomahony) Mai 28, 2012

Any ideas? What would you do to improve the finances of the NUJ? Similar Posts:

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The Bristol branch of the National Union of Journalists is due to hold a peaceful demonstration later today following news that 20 jobs were at risk with publication of the Evening Post’s Saturday edition to be stopped from next month.

The protest will take place outside an exhibition marking 80 years of the Northcliffe Media’s title from 6.15pm outside the Galleries in Bristol. The union branch says it has received much support from the local community.

Last week NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet said the changes to the Evening Post were a “shock announcement”.

We call on the paper’s management to take steps to avoid job losses and enter into meaningful consultation with staff and their union representatives.

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Last month the Times announced it was to cut around 100 staff from the newspapers’ editorial workforce, with the bulk of those said to be to casual staff. It was also confirmed that 20 compulsory redundancies are due to be made from full-time staff at the Sunday Times, which is cutting 30 per cent of its casual editorial workforce.

Following this announcement the NUJ set up a meeting, which is open to any staff who wish to seek advice. It will be held from 1 to 3pm at the Captain Kidd pub, 108 Wapping High Street, E1W 2NE. The union has also invited representatives of the company’s in-house union NISA to attend if interested in working with the NUJ.Similar Posts:

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Johnston Press journalists picket the offices of the South Yorkshire Times

Johnston Press in South Yorkshire are out on indefinite strike over planned redundancies at five titles in the region. (See more from Journalism.co.uk about the strike action at this link).

Management have come in for a lot of flak from the unions over their handling of the strike, which included asking a 16-year-old schoolboy on work experience to stay on an extra week and help cover the newsdesk.

Further embarrassment for the company comes in the form of Tom Bills and friend Jack Reed. Tom – the son of Johnston Press managing director John Bills – and Jack were drafted in to help out on the newsdesk of the Doncaster Free Press, according to NUJ deputy organiser for the region Lawrence Shaw, despite having no journalistic experience.

But rather than hide their faces away like strike breakers might normally do, ferried through a picket line on a bus with wire mesh on the windows, Tom and Jack publicised their newsroom antics on Facebook, for the world to see.

Shaw spotted the Facebook status updates and reposted them on his blog.

They include such gems from Tom as:

workin in a newsroom in doncaster, av been for a couple of weeks! Its reaaaaalllly goood!:) x

is it bad that I found the word ‘erection’ funny at work in a story about a building being built?!!:)

sooooo bored at work I’ve actually started look at the clock more than my computer screen.

Bored, but managing to get though it:

just thinkin of the dollar atm!

As, I’m sure, are the journalists out on strike with no pay.

And from Tom’s equally eloquent friend Jack:

nothing get a man erect like doncaster editorial. lets toss each other off.

And:

can u listen to ur ipod in a newsroom wen ur sposed to be workin?

Humorous yes, but as Shaw points out, the move raises questions about John Bills’ judgement:

Why did he employ his own son and his friend to work in editorial when neither appear to have any journalistic training or experience, then allow them to sarcastically spout forth on facebook belittling the newspapers he runs? It reinforces the belief held by the NUJ that John Bills cares not a jot about the editorial coverage in the newspaper, or even the reputation of the papers.

Had any ordinary NUJ member been caught mouthing off on facebook in the same way, they would have almost certainly been sacked for bringing the company into disrepute. So seeing as John Bills is ultimately responsible for employing his son to sit in the office and mouth off about how crap it is working at the Doncaster Free Press, surely Johnston Press directors should be seriously questioning his suitability for running a newspaper group.

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BBC journalists in Brighton, hometown of Journalism.co.uk, are taking part in today’s nationwide strikes at the corporation over compulsory redundancies. Staff at BBC Radio Sussex formed a picket outside the station’s offices on Queen’s Road this morning (1 August) from 4am, leaving management to find non-union staff to present the station’s programmes.

The mid-morning show, which airs from 9am-12pm, was produced at the Sussex offices by stand-ins and broadcast simultaneously by BBC Kent Radio.

There are no compulsory redundancies proposed at BBC Sussex, but Paul Siegert, the NUJ rep for the region, told Journalism.co.uk this morning he feared that the implementation of BBC’s Delivering Quality First Strategy could lead to cuts at the station.

“We know that there is a thing that BBC management are looking at at the moment called DQF, which we call Destroying Quality Forever, which is going to mean that there will be 20 per cent cuts across the BBC, and so we are expecting that there will be job cuts in places like this if we don’t take action now.”

Danielle Glavin, Siegert’s deputy at the Sussex chapel and West Sussex reporter for the station, said: “We are just trying to protect the BBC, otherwise it will be desolated”.

John Lees, the station’s sports correspondent, was outside the BBC Sussex building at 4am this morning to begin the picket, about the time he would arrive for work. His part of the show was presented by another member of staff this morning. He said that no union members had crossed the picket line in Sussex, and that the staff were “standing firm” in today’s strike and in the indefinite work to rule beginning tomorrow.

“Either you’re an NUJ member or you’re not, and if you are you’ve got to support to strike. And we do.”

Also among the picketers was Kathy Caton, a World Service employee on a year’s attachment in Sussex. Caton is among those to have already been made compulsorily redundant, and would have been forced out of the BBC last month if she had still been working out of the World Service offices at Bush House, London. Because of her attachment to BBC Sussex, she has a stay of execution until next June.

She told Journalism.co.uk that there is “simply no fat to cut away” at the local station.

“Everything is done on such a tight ship, and to achieve the cuts that the BBC has planned means losing jobs, losing services and losing programmes.

“But there’s no slack here, people aren’t sitting around eating foie gras and swilling it down with champagne. It’s a tight ship.”

Caton will see out her attachment in Sussex until June next year, and then join the other World Service staff forced out by the cutbacks. The BBC intends to make 100 staff compulsorily redundant, out of a total of 387 job cuts across the World Service and BBC Monitoring.

She praised the World Service as “one of the finest things that the BBC is involved in”.

“What it produces versus its annual cost is extraordinary. To kill it off so fundamentally is something future generations will look back on and despair.”

The BBC has defended the need to make compulsory redundancies in order to achieve the savings set out by last year’s comprehensive spending review. Lucy Adams, the corporation’s director of business operations, said in a message to staff today that the corporation could not agree to the union’s demands for no compulsory redundancies.

“Following the cuts in central Government grants to the World Service and BBC Monitoring we have had to close 387 posts, meaning that regrettably there are nearly 100 staff who as a result are facing compulsory redundancy. We have been working with all these affected staff to ensure that they have opportunities for redeployment and retraining but we cannot and will not give preferential treatment to individuals depending on their union status.

“We hope the NUJ will realise that these issues are best solved at a local level, and a national strike that penalises all our audiences is not in the interests of their members, other BBC staff or licence fee payers.”

See more from Journalism.co.uk on industrial action and cuts at the BBC at this link.

Hear Rachel McAthy’s interview with Paul Siegert below:

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The teenager, who has just completed his GCSEs, had come to the group’s Selby Times for work experience but, when the strike to protect jobs and quality journalism began at the Selby Times, Doncaster Free Press and South Yorkshire Times on 15 July, management extended his engagement to get the paper out, the union has said.

He was put to work writing news stories – despite having originally asked the paper to do his work experience on the sports desk, the NUJ said.

Rival title the Selby Post reported the story.

NUJ negotiator Lawrence Shaw told Journalism.co.uk he believes “embarrassed Johnston Press bosses” asked the work experience teenager to leave after the paper went to press on Wednesday.

Around 25 members of staff are striking indefinitely, leaving the editor, sports editor and, at the beginning of the week the 16-year-old on work placement, Journalism.co.uk understands.

“In more than 10 years of being a union representative I have never seen a more determined group,” Shaw said.

Asked to confirm or deny the claims both the editor of the Selby Times and Johnston Press’ head office in Edinburgh declined to comment.

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The job losses are expected due to “restructuring” in the company, following a 5 per cent circulation revenue fall in the past nine months.

In a statement, it said the websites were performing well and the main problems were in America.

In an email to staff, Future Publishing UK CEO, Mark Wood, said restructure would be likely to result in about 10 per cent of the firm’s workforce being made redundant. This however, would mostly be through voluntary redundancies.

The company – which publishes around 80 magazines and has 1,000 staff in Bath – said advertising revenue from its websites has offset a decline in print-related income.

The business is executing its operational review of geography and function, to accelerate the move of the US business to one that is a primarily digital business model, simultaneously reducing volatility associated with print data flows, and to reorganise the UK business, re-calibrating it to ensure faster adaptation to digital and more efficient execution of print.

The benefit of these steps will be to improve efficiency, reduce headcount, reduce property requirements, and help accelerate the most promising areas of digital product development.

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According to the union, under the proposals 10 district office staff, eight production journalists and four members of the sports staff would be made redundant. Media Wales, part of the Trinity Mirror group, publishes titles including the Western Mail, South Wales Echo and the Wales on Sunday.

The NUJ chapel members have unanimously passed a motion which states the chapel “expresses shock at the scale of editorial cuts being proposed”, adding that “it is determined to do everything possible to protect the jobs, wages and conditions of its members, as well as the quality of our products”.

Father of the chapel Martin Shipton said: “We shall be entering an intensive period of negotiation with management to mitigate the damage to our members’ livelihood and the newspapers we produce.

“Members are especially angry that while they are expected to lose their jobs or in some cases take pay cuts, Sly Bailey and her fellow directors continue to be paid obscene amounts of money.”

Within the motion the chapel also authorises its committee “to take whatever action it sees fit in association with the union’s national officers”, which could include organising a strike ballot.

In a statement Media Wales confirmed the proposals, which centre on the introduction of a single production team for news and features across the Western Mail, South Wales Echo, Wales on Sunday and all its weekly titles.

This means cuts to the number of full-time roles in the editorial production department and the introduction of a new part-time system, the company said.Similar Posts:

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Despite rumours that folding the newspaper in favour of a seven day Sun had been on the cards for a while (TheSunOnSunday.co.uk, TheSunOnSunday.com and SunOnSunday.co.uk were all registered on July 5, albeit by a private individual), a source at News International confirmed today that a Sunday edition of the paper wouldn’t be on the cards for several weeks to come.

This morning Times today led with a story that the collapse in advertising was due to online protest and the final nail in the coffin for the paper.

The withdrawal of advertising appeared to be in response to a public backlash that had been led primarily on the internet. Thousands of people had used Twitter and Facebook to express their outrage at allegations of phone hacking at the paper.

This was after a list of the News of the World’s advertising clients had been published online, encouraging people to send Twitter messages to the companies to express concern at the activities of the paper’s journalists.

You can read the full article here (behind the paywall).

Emily Bell, director of the Tow Centre for Digital Journalism and former director of digital content for Guardian News & Media sees the decision as part of a long line of bold and audacious moves from the Murdochs, from the bid to buy the Times, to the launch of Sky News, and recently the proposed takeover of BSkyB.

James’s Wapping moment sees him making a gesture he hopes will be grand enough to soften the focus of any phone-hacking inquiry, bold enough to allow the company to extricate itself from present trouble and, in the process, allow him to reshape News International around the digital television platforms he feels both more comfortable with and which are undoubtedly more profitable.

But what about the wider implications? Many are agreed that the decision is brutal and the loss of 200 journalists terrible, but Andrew Gilligan, London editor for the Sunday Telegraph, argues that it could also give way to a muzzled British press in the future. As talk turns to how press regulation should be managed, Gilligan says:

For be in no doubt: hateful as the behaviour of some journalists has been, we may now face something even worse. For many in power, or previously in power, the News of the World’s crimes are a God-given opening to diminish one of the greatest checks on that power: the media.

Regulation was also on Alan Rusbridger‘s mind yesterday, when he took part in a live Q & A regarding phone hacking (before NI announced the News of the World’s closure). Rusbridger drew attention to alleged weaknesses of the PCC (the code committee of which Rusbridger quit in November 2009) and the quandary of state v self-regulation. Today the Press Complaints Commission sought to defend its work following calls for it to be scrapped by both Labour leader Ed Miliband and prime minister David Cameron.

This hasn’t been a wonderful advertisement for self-regulation. The short answer is that, no, the PCC can’t go on as it is. Its credibility is hanging by a thread.

We did say this back in November 2009 when the PCC came out with its laughable report into phone-hacking. We said in an editorial that this was a dangerous day for press regulation – and so it’s turned out.

The PCC has this week withdrawn that report and has a team looking at the issues and at the mistakes it’s made in the past.

I don’t know how Ofcom could do the job without falling into the category of statutory regulation. Does anyone else?

On her blog former Channel 4 presenter Samira Ahmed also draws some comparisons with the past, saying that the affair is “only my second major moral outcry against the news media” during her twenty years in journalism, the first being the death of Princess Diana. Hugh Grant has won public approval over the last week or so because of his overt opposition to phonehacking, but Ahmed is wary of putting people like Grant on a pedestal.

Many celebrities understand the privacy trade-off with press coverage, or get their lawyers to settle a payoff. Incidentally we should be wary of deifying celebrities, such as Hugh Grant, who have publicly defended the principle of rich people taking out superinjunctions to cover up their bad behaviour, when there might be a legitimate public interest. But I’ve met ordinary people over the years whose suffering has been deeply compounded by salacious press intrusion.

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The NUJ congratulates the editor – whose own job is under threat – for “standing up for quality journalism”.

The article, headlined “Strike looms over Times job cuts”, states: “Journalists at South Yorkshire Newspapers are to ballot on strike action over a proposal by the company to axe half of the Mexborough editorial jobs at the South Yorkshire Times.”

Speaking to the NUJ, Jim Oldfield, South Yorkshire Times editor said: “This is real journalism in action. The Times is currently fighting a brave and protracted battle to keep its core towns from decimation during this recession, I make no apology for acquainting our readers with the changes being proposed for their champion title.

“I am pleased that the company appear to have had an adult reaction to the story.”

NUJ general secretary-elect Michelle Stanistreet said “This is a great example of our members standing up for quality journalism and we hope other editors will follow the example set by the South Yorkshire Times.”

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The announcement that the FCO has pledged an additional £2.2 million in funding to the World Service was titled: “Massive U-turn on BBC World Service funding”.

Obviously not the kind of language government departments normally clothe their massive U-turns in.

A spokesperson for the FCO said: “A web article with an incorrect and inappropriate title was up on the FCO website for 10 minutes this morning. That title absolutely did not represent the views of the FCO. This error has now been corrected and disciplinary procedures have been launched.”

Full Journalism.co.uk story on the World Service funding announcement at this link.

Image courtesy of Tim Montgomerie at Conservative Home.

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The announcement follows a two-day strike last week. Staff are in dispute with the publisher over plans for a reduction in editorial space, redundancies across all sections of editorial, a review of a two per cent pay rise and an office relocation.

NUJ mother of chapel Thais Portillo-Shrimpton said today that staff had not heard from management since last week’s strike.

NUJ negotiator Jenny Lennox said: “We’ve had a very successful two-day strike last week, and it is worth noting that a dozen journalists have joined the union since dispute began. This reflects the deep anger of journalists employed by Newsquest at their bosses’ determination to avoid consulting with staff on the future of their papers.”

At the end of May, union members Newsquest titles in the area, which covers Surrey, Sutton and Twickenham, voted almost unanimously for strike action, with 22 out of 23 returns of a ballot in favour.

Staff have also been working to rule since 15 April.

Earlier in May the company announced 12 job cuts at a series of titles in the area, including the loss of the sports and leisure department at one of the South London offices.

Staff are running a strike blog which can be found at this link.

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The Telegraph reported this morning that a cull could go as high as 175 staff, and both the Independent and Evening Standard reported certain job cuts.

A spokesperson for GMG flatly refuted the number in the Telegraph article and told Journalism.co.uk today that yesterday’s statement “was not a redundancy announcement”. He refused to rule out job cuts, however.

“Yesterday’s briefing was not a redundancy announcement. We shared with staff our current position and a strategy to transform the organisation, and said we would work with staff and unions to achieve it. Of course no media company can rule out redundancies in the current climate, but we will talk to staff about issues like that first.”

Yesterday’s statement from GMG confirmed that the company suffered operating losses of £33 million in the last financial year and announced its newspaper titles the Guardian and the Observer would be switching to a “digital-first” strategy.Similar Posts:

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At the end of May Journalism.co.uk reported that members of the National Union of Journalists at Newsquest South London voted in favour of strike action, with 22 out of 23 returns of a ballot in favour.

Staff at newspapers in the area, which covers Surrey, Sutton and Twickenham, have been working to rule since 15 April.

NUJ head of publishing Barry Fitzpatrick said: “Our members’ overwhelming decision to take strike action in defence of jobs and quality was the inevitable result of a wrong-headed management policy. But it is not too late for the company to show some sense and sit down with us to discuss the future security of the papers which are so important to our members and their communities.”

Earlier last month the division announced 12 job cuts at a series of titles in the area, including the loss of the sports and leisure department at one of the South London offices.Similar Posts:

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They include the delightful:

“Don’t worry about me; I’ll land on my feet. I don’t regret coming here, even though I’ve been laid off now. In fact, my only regret is that you haven’t come to visit the Beacon Journal. I would have loved to piss on your shoes.” — Mark Schleub, in a letter to Knight Ridder CEO Tony Ridder, April 2001.

And the no-nonsense:

“It’s been a rough few years here, mainly because of the jackasses in Chicago who own us. To them I say, with as much gusto as I can muster in an email, fuck you.” —Dan Neil, upon leaving the Los Angeles Times for the Wall Street Journal, February 2010.

Full post on Slate at this link.Similar Posts:

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If these awards are the “magazine industry’s Oscars” (as no one sober and in command of their senses has ever called them) then they deserve their own ‘Golden Raspberries‘ a celebration of world class incompetence within magazine media in the UK, providing a new benchmark by which all consumer and business media brands are judged..

The plan is (subject to the usual proviso of actually being arsed to do any work) to institute the PPPAwards – or “Piss Poor Publishing Awards”, otherwise known as “The Privates“. There will be a limited number of awards given in this first year, but I hope it will soon become as fozie and unwieldy as the genuine ceremony. Sponsorship will be by John Bull Printing Sets, Ceefax and W H Smiths.

Nominations will open shortly so use this “follow this blog” form below to get the official announcement.

I’d also like to recruit some external judges to add a semblance of independence to what will be my purely arbitrary decisions. If you’d like to be part of the exclusive judging panel, email me (anonymity guaranteed, even for you Bazza).

The award ceremony will take place some time in September and be held exclusively on Twitter where guests can sit down to a splendid dinner and drink the finest wines (just so long as they’ve brought their own). It will be black tie.

Follow the blog or email me to be kept informed on any progress.

=================================

It’s hardly surprising. Each of them was a terrible film, a ‘reinvention’ of a ‘brand’ put together by producers desperately hoping the new incarnation could take a name that meant something to a previous generation and find a new market with contemporary audiences. Ludicrously misconceived, they were doomed to fail.

Which brings us neatly to the NME.

At the last ABC the magazine reported fewer than 14,000 print sales – 14,000! I’m hard pressed to think of any titles that sell fewer. These are the sort of numbers you’d expect from those absurd titles they do the quotes from on Have I Got News For You.

But rather than just quietly close it down, or make a big song and dance (geddit?) about going digital only, IPC’s Time Inc UK’s finest minds have decided to reinvent the title for, you’ve guessed it, the current generation.

Circulation will be boosted to 300,000, given away free like Time Out.

The content will be expanded to include film, gaming, fashion, television, politics and technology. You know, like Time Out.

So rather than launch a new product to try to make some money from the free distribution model (a model, let’s note in passing, that IPC Time Inc UK have zero experience of), the NME brand is going to be stretched to fit the new concept.

The question is why? There is no brand loyalty left (14,000 sales!) only nostalgia, and while that makes for a nice selection of tweeted black and white photos, it’s not a sustainable business model for a brand aimed at the young, for whom 2010 is ancient history.

Obviously Private Frazer is never knowingly right about anything, so this may prove to be a storming success (and you can bet IPC’s Time Inc UK’s PR team already have the press release written to acclaim the ‘astonishing reaction’ to the September launch), but I’d bet my entire collection of Andy Stewart 78s that this will be the NME’s final gasp.

Get ready for a new set of press releases in around 18 months time telling us that the brand reinvention has been so successful that the NME will now be a web-only product – “because that’s how millennials consume media”.

Finally, a special sneer of disdain for Mike Williams the NME editor, who came up with this gem for the announcement “The future is an exciting place, and NME just kicked the door down.” Jesus wept.

The parallel is with Elvis: something genuinely new and different, rapidly absorbed by the system it originally seemed to stand outside; bought off, compromised and reduced to irrelevance.

Because the tawdry and constipated magazine that has just closed bears no relation (other than the title) to the original Loaded. Love it or loathe it, the 1994 incarnation was sui generis – gonzo journalism reborn for the ’90s – and not even its creators knew what made it work (as the less than fabulous subsequent career of James Brown shows).

Plenty of people tried of course – FHM, Maxim, Front, then the execrable Nuts and Zoo  – but they lacked the wit of the original, reducing everything to the lowest common denominator. And Loaded went the same way –  because no one knew what made it work, no one knew that they’d broken it – and we ended up with the dismal procession of sub soft porn content and the replacement of genuine humour with ‘banter’.

The surprise with Loaded is that it managed to limp on for so long, passed from company to company like the rolled-up £20 notes so widely used in Loaded’s visits to the PPA Awards in the 90s. These ‘sales’ always came with some flatulent outpourings that the glory days were going to be reclaimed, that the brand was so strong it could be profitably extended and the millions would roll in again. (Oh, and something to do with digital, and websites, and reinventing the brand for today’s men.)

Presumably that’s how they continued to persuade freelances to write for them and printers to produce copies despite many, many others being shafted by previous owners going into administration. (A special reaffirmation of contempt here for the cynical management of IPC. So desperate were they to offload their raft of under-performing magazines without the cost and embarrassment of closing them that they performed the most perfunctory of due diligence, selling a handful of titles to the chancers at Vitality Publishing. )

But apart from the creditors, no one cares about Loaded’s end. The press coverage is nostalgia, a remembrance of things past, when we were all younger, less careworn, more stupid and when we believed the magazine industry would go on for ever. Ah, those far off distant days.

I say ‘team’, but according to Liz Gerard’s SubScribe blog, the editor and both staff writers have now been made redundant, leaving the magazine with no full time journalists.

It’s got everything Private Frazer asks for from a spectator sport – a once-famous brand bought by a multimillionaire owner with no background in publishing, a rapidly falling circulation (down 20% in three years) and crushingly low workforce morale.

No need to refer to the third umpire on this one.

A fair few of the entries about publishing’s wonderful present seem either to be written while under the influence of strong drink, or based on redefining ’magazine’ as anything that’s got content in it. One wee laddie even said that Buzzfeed was a magazine – presumably in the same way that ASOS is a ’catalogue’, or Facebook is an ’address book’.

My effervescent optimism about magazine publishing is for the ink on paper periodical, or its bastard offspring the digital page-turner (was there ever a more pointless hybrid of old and new technologies?). They’re doomed, and the companies clinging to this model can only wring so much cash from their products before the inevitable terminus. Some of what we currently call ’magazines’ will survive as digital ’brands’, but that won’t be based on the auld publishing model of ’issues’ and ’publication dates’ and ’contents pages’ and ’covers’. It won’t be bought in shops or delivered to your home or read in the bath. Some of the current publishing companies will transmute and survive, but lots of them won’t, mainly because new starters don’t have to carry the financial or emotional baggage of a print legacy and they’ll steal oor dinner.

But the main reason why the industry is doomed is that, well, working in magazines is now a bit shit. Not too much – we still attract quite a few fresh-faced wee bairns – but considerably more than it was and on a downward curve. More and more of the bright and talented would rather work for a ’online media business’ than a print one that is fechtin to adapt to the 21st century; the money’s better, the buzz is buzzier, the future holds more promise.

Back in the old, old times, publishing schedules meant that for a quarter of your time you were manically busy, half your time you worked hardish, and a quarter of your time (from press day on), you took it pretty easy and had some fun. That doesn’t happen now, press day being just a small acceleration in a hamster wheel of constant activity. Costs have been cut across the industry, which is a euphemism for chopping staff and getting the remaining ones to do more work.

We have become an industry that doesn’t do ’fun’ any more. That’s fine for a grumpy old miserabilist like you, but not so good for the shiny 20-somethings we’ve always relied on to do the grunt work while we have meetings. They prefer the bright offices with primary-coloured furniture and free vodka Fridays, the wacky business cards and painfully cool websites. We’re a bit dreich, a bit tired, a bit, well, twentieth century.

We’ve had a good run and we’re not dead yet, but like a spree centenarian, we know that things aren’t ever going to get better. It’s not “if”, but “when”, and that “when” is closer than most want to think about.

“In forming our opinion … we have considered the adequacy of the disclosure made … within the consolidated interim financial information concerning the company’s ability to continue as a going concern. The company incurred a net loss of £30.0m during the six months ended 31 March 2014 and … had net current liabilities of £21.6m. These conditions … indicate the existence of a material uncertainty which may cast significant doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.” PricewaterhouseCoopers, Report on the consolidated interim financial statements Futureplc

Even by their own high standards, this has been a rough few months for Future. Profit warnings, redundancies, the departure of a CEO, the sale of their (profitable) cycling and craft titles as they attempt to patch (another) hole in their balance sheet and now yet more redundancies. Once these sales and lay offs have happened, Future will be down to fewer than 500 staff in the UK – as recently as 2011 the company employed more than 1,200.

Future’s shares, which were worth 29p in 2011 are now down to around 9p. They’ve lost 90% of their value since 2005. When the sale to Immediate was announced the shares rose by a penny, an indication perhaps that the banks see more value in the dismemberment of the company than in its long term survival.

Because make no mistake, despite throwing passengers off the sleigh to the pursuing pack, the wolves are still gaining. The rump of the motoring portfolio will be next into the snow, and if the staff on what’s left of the music and entertainment titles aren’t looking for the exits it’s only because they’re clinging on for a sale.

With his strict Calvinist upbringing Private Frazer abhors the use of bad language and profanity, but let’s face facts – Future as we have come to know it, is f*cked.

Remember that the whole ‘digital’ scheme was not some carefully considered strategy but a hurriedly devised smokescreen as revenues tanked in 2011, particularly in the US. It didn’t save the blessed Stevie or John Bowman the finance director, but as the board had bought into the ‘plan’ they were faced with either continuing with the botch job or resigning en masse. I believe our colonial cousins call this “doubling down”, or even “betting the farm”.

Remember too that years of penny-pinching to please shareholders and pay directors’ bonuses left Future with a huge portfolio of poorly-selling magazines. And while starving the products of investment, Future kept raising the cover price; again, class short-termism, boosting this year’s margins while sacrificing longer-term profitability.

And what’s left of the staff are now living with the consequences. Demoralised, underpaid, overstretched – and with a ‘consultation’ hanging over all of them.

Future’s future apparently lies in “the virtuous circle of engagement in two core content areas: reviews (when consumers are looking to make product purchase decisions and where we can derive ecommerce revenues) and ‘how to’ opportunities (when consumers want to learn more and are prepared to pay us to help them do so)”. 

Take your pick as to whether the latest twist is the start of the”virtuous circle” or just another turn in the death spiral, but whatever happens, Future won’t be in the ‘print’ business in five years time. It will either be broken up and sold, or will be a completely different type of company.

Because perhaps Private Frazer is being unfair (hard to believe, I know) as this could well be a completely different strategy to that which was previously being followed. The current CEO was at Autotrader which successfully transitioned from dead tree, and the bits of the portfolio that she has pledged to keep – tech and games – are precisely those that have least future as ink on paper (or even as digital editions). So if Future survives it will be solely as TechRadar, with individual brands subsumed as ‘channels’ and the print products swiftly forgotten.

See you soon.

If you’re after previous frolics from the Bath funsters, follow this link to read previous entries

Now that Nuts is toast, Bauer can presumably declare victory and shut Zoo without loss of face.

Corporate bollocks award of the day goes to Paul Williams, managing director of IPC’s Inspire division. “After 10 years at the top of its market [you know what they say about scum always rising to the top], we have taken the difficult decision to propose the closure of Nuts … IPC will provide impacted staff with all the support they need during the consultation process.”

“Impacted“? You mean “fired” Paul, or “redundant”, surely?

One of the few growth categories over the past few years has been in the “make do and mend”/”weave your own shroud” area, bringing to mind thousands of “crafters” producing tat to sell on to other crafters in a closed loop of economic virtue.

But last year saw Immediate cut Cloth,  MyTimeMedia (got to love that name) recently terminated Homemade with Love, and the latest closure from Practical Publishing is Crafty magazine which lasted just one year.

If rumours are true (which they seldom are, but that’s never stopped me repeating them in the past) we can look forward to a few more instances of unplanned recycling in the next few months.

According to an email from Dominic Lobley, Immediate’s PR Manager (have they already dumped the publisher?): “We have made this decision due to the changing print market for all hair titles which recently has declined at an even greater rate than originally anticipated.” (I know, I know – and he also uses the word “impacted”, thus scoring double points in today’s crapspeak awards.)