Independent staff to take huge pay cuts in online-only move | Media | The Guardian

The Independent is following the tried and tested route other trouble media have trod before it: when you have to cut costs, cut the editorial staff before anything else. This is a tried and tested route – straight to irrelevance and disaster. As this kind of measures are undertaken after careful study, we should be trusting that they were well thought through. Or not. Who conducted the study? A well-paid corporate or management consultant, or a media expert of proven ability and successful track record? Probably the first one. Management consultants may be very knowledgeable and successful, but they understand figures, traditional companies and the need to be profitable, but do they know that media has that hardly quantifiable element of quality, trust and attractiveness to readers or viewers? Something that only good journalists and creative types can provide and which a management consultant or accountant, however well-intentioned and experienced, has no idea about. Most media, after undergoing savage cuts to the editorial staff, fail, simply because their content stops being interesting and attractive, it’s just a humdrum website full of agency wires, material gleaned from the web, company and government handouts, by journalists desk bound because of staff shortages and lack of funds for travel and reporting on the spot. Who is going to pay for rehashed press releases? Not many, I reckon. Another media outlet hits the dust, I am afraid.

More than 100 journalists out of total of 160 expected to lose jobs as NUJ accuses management of making switch ‘on the cheap’

Source: Independent staff to take huge pay cuts in online-only move | Media | The Guardian

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