Job losses to go at newspapers after agents back rival Trinity

A dozen jobs are set to go at the Birmingham Press and Birmingham Free Press.

Owner Chris Bullivant has told online site Journalism.co.uk that as well as 12 positions, “many” part-time journalists under contract would also lose out.

Bullivant is withdrawing his titles after not being able to compete with an advertising offer made to estate agents by rival publisher Trinity Mirror.



Bullivant warned: “Many more journalists may disappear if monopolistic publishing is allowed to resurrect itself in the UK.”

He went on: “The offer, as I understand it, was to advertise a full-page advertisement in both the Birmingham Mail and the Mail Extra, a total of 130,000 copies, for the sum of £250. The best price I could offer, and the lowest I believe I could have offered under my interpretation of predatory pricing legislation rules, would have been just under £300 for a 70,000 circulation.



“As our losses would be very substantial over the period, we had no option other than to close the newspapers.”

Chris Morley, northern representative for the National Union of Journalists, said Bullivant would be cutting far fewer jobs than Trinity Mirror had shed this year.