Yesterday (3rd December) new Editor-in-Chief of The Herald ,and Times Group of newspapers, Donald Martin, kicked off by threatening to kick out. He made all 250 journalist and pubishing on the group’s newspapers redundant. The papers concerned are The Herald, The Sunday Herald and The Evening Times.

Faced with falling circulation and falling advertising sales, both driven by mass migration of audiences to the internet for the newest news, this is a job cutting exercise described by the national Union of Journalists (NUJ) Scotland as ‘a brutal attempt at forcing changes’.

It is expected that – providing they agree to new terms and conditions, around 210 of the 250 made redundant will be re-hired.

The plan is to cut staffing costs and avoid duplication by merging staff to service the newspapers across the group and to make use of the latest news production technology.

NUJ’s Scottish organiser, Paul Holleran says: ‘No-one in the workforce will be surprised that this is the first action of the new editor-in-chief, Donald Martin. To say he’s getting off on the wrong foot is the understatement of the year’.

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