Birmingham Post to adopt compact format

by Alison Donnelly, Marketing 19-Aug-08, 15:19

LONDON - Trinity Mirror is to relaunch its Birmingham Post broadsheet in a compact format in the autumn with a new-look website as part of extensive plans for its regional titles.

The daily paper, which is dropping its Saturday edition, will have a more focused business news offering, with the refreshed website being designed for a generation of younger business readers. There will also be a new mobile site.

Trinity Mirror has also announced plans to overhaul its newsrooms in the Midlands, introducing a single, integrated newsroom for Birmingham and a centralised production unit serving titles in the Midlands, along with a streamlining of production processes.

The company says the changes will enable the 'production of high quality content across multiple channels'.

A central 'multimedia desk' will oversee the creation of editorial content for the Birmingham Mail, Birmingham Post and Sunday Mercury. A similar desk will be introduced to serve Coventry.

A regional production unit, where pages will be finished and quality-checked, will support the desks. There will also be greater integration between Trinity Mirror Midlands' weekly titles.

The company has admitted that the new editorial structure will require substantially fewer journalists. In a statement , the company said it was entering into consultation with staff and their representatives regarding this. 'The aim is to try to achieve this reduction by purely voluntary means.'

Trinity Mirror has been one of the print industry groups hardest-hit by the economic downturn. Recent results showed that its operating profits fell by £15m to £80m for the six months to 29 June, down from £95.6m in the same period a year ago.