The publishers of the Shropshire Star today announced a major restructuring programme to help deal with poor trading conditions.
The Midland News Association says that its two main businesses – the Express & Star in Wolverhampton and Shropshire Newspapers in Telford – will be merged into one company.
The move is likely to result in a reduction in staffing levels of around ten per cent.
It is hoped staff savings can be achieved through a voluntary redundancy scheme but some compulsory redundancies may be needed to save £3 million per year across all the newspaper publishing centres.
The new company will have a single board of directors and some parts of the production, finance and classified advertisement departments will be merged.
Mr Douglas Graham, the chairman of the Midland News Association, said the changes would make significant savings at both newspaper centres but warned they would result in lower staffing levels.
But he said the company would become a fully integrated media business and would be well placed to take advantage of new opportunities once conditions allowed.
Mr Alan Harris, current managing director of the Express & Star, will become managing director of the new joint company.
Mr Colin Spicer, the current managing director of Shropshire Newspapers, will retain his responsibility for the Shropshire operation and work with Mr Harris in the merger.
The company stressed both newspapers would retain their separate identities with separate editors and journalists.
The current edition structure at both newspapers will remain in place.
In a letter to staff the company said trading conditions had been very difficult and continued to decline with little prospect of recovery over the next 18 months.
There had been a dramatic decline in key areas of advertising revenue, including employment, motoring and property, whilst the cost of raw materials was increasing.
The company has stressed that many staff would notice little change in their working situation and that it was determined to try to maintain the local editions of the two daily newspapers as well as the weekly titles within the group.
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