A blast from the future dropped into my inbox this morning.
It was from my union, the NUJ.
NUJ issues formal ballot notices to Reach over mass redundancies
The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) has submitted formal notices to ballot members for industrial action at The Mirror and Reach plc’s Scottish titles in a dispute over job losses, unreasonable workloads, and the use of artificial intelligence.
The ballot comes after Reach, the UK and Ireland’s largest commercial news publisher, placed 600 journalists at risk, threatening 321 jobs, in what the union called a ‘devastating body-blow’ for journalism.
Staff at The Mirror will be particularly affected by the cuts, losing around 40 writers and editors – including five dedicated brand writers, ten news journalists, and seven picture desk workers. At a meeting of the NUJ Mirror chapel, members took a unanimous decision to be balloted for strike action.
In Scotland, 4 in 10 journalists at the company have been placed at risk of redundancy. On Tuesday NUJ members at Reach’s Scottish titles, which include the Daily Record, voted strongly in favour of a ballot.
In addition to the loss of so many skilled journalists, NUJ members at Reach are hugely concerned by the workload burden placed on remaining staff, as well as the lack of clear commitments on the company’s use of artificial intelligence. The NUJ Reach group chapel has urged the company to fully disclose the ways in which AI is being used and to commit to consultation with the union on any new proposed uses of AI technologies. The union has also raised significant concerns over the use of artificial intelligence to centralise and duplicate content, which jeopardises editorial quality and blurs the distinction between the company’s different brands and regional titles.
The NUJ has asked members to vote ‘yes’ to both strike action and action short of strike. As NUJ reps at other NUJ chapels meet in coming weeks, the union has stressed that all options remain on the table, and further ballots seeking members’ views on industrial action may be announced.
Laura Davison, NUJ general secretary, said:
“These proposals, if carried out in full, will mean the dismissal of experienced and highly professional journalists. But it will also place considerable burdens on those who remain and newsrooms will be made weaker and less able to produce quality journalism.
“While the company insists that AI is not behind the cuts, this assertion is clearly not accepted by our members and is not borne out by the evidence. The union believes that left unchecked, these savage cuts will not stop here to the detriment of what we all understand as journalism.
“Senior managers talk of doing away with “duplication” in the reporting and production process, but this is the essence behind the individual brands that have proudly served the reading public for generations. The hollowing out of newsroom staffing in favour of AI chatter overseen by shrinkingly small staffing is the road to nowhere.
“We are therefore asking members to vote in favour of both strike action and action short of a strike.”
In recent years, I have written about the threat posed by AI to journalism.
For example, here in 2020 and in May of this year.
I realise that there will be a few tears shed on Planet Fitba at the thought of job losses at the Daily Radar.
However, I am unable to go there.
Journalism matters, and newspapers are needed for that.
Here in Dún na nGall, we are blessed with excellent local titles-and they’re local in every sense of the word.
None more so than the uniquely irrepressible Tirconaill Tribune.
More than twenty years ago, I was proud to be one of their columnists.
It made sense, then, when a comrade from the old days reached out to me about a rather local difficulty.
His front door was about to become a building site for a year, and it was amazing that the property developer had been given planning permission.
I had only one local title in mind to get on the job.
This front-page scoop rather scuppered the project. My fella was delighted, as were all his neighbours.
Dear reader, there isn’t any algorithm that was capable of delivering that bit of necessary journalistic activism.
Across these islands, local titles are being gutted by bean-counters in large media organisations.
One cost-cutting wheeze is the “subbing hub”, essentially a few overworked sub-editors who process copy from sometimes hundreds of miles away.
The decline in quality is clearly discernible, but it’s cheaper. I suspect that some CEOs now see that AI can replace the few remaining sub-editors and most of the journalists..
Where does this all end?
No idea.
If you’re of a dystopian mindset, then the Daily Radar is about to be handed over to an adolescent version of Skynet.
It’s certainly a race to the bottom, with anything remotely resembling journalism being sacrificed for the bottom line.
Consider this: if an algorithm thingy were in charge of this humble little site, would Hugh Dallas still be employed at the SFA?
Regardless of the platform, it was Mark 1 journalism that did for him.
Just because Planet Fitba is generally poorly served by the current crop of journalists, especially when it comes to matters related to Ibrox, doesn’t mean that the Fourth Estate isn’t worth preserving.
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I’m not sure this situation is really all that much to do with sports journalism at all.
It’s to do with declining circulations.
Even as populations have grown, circulations have fallen.
In 2000, The Sun (just to take the most popular title) had a circulation of 3.5m, by 2020, it was down to 1.2m (and has continued to fall).
Same story for the Times: >700k down to 400k down to 120k.
Same story for every title that was able to gainfully employees journalists and other full time staff (as well as those that couldn’t even really do that in 2000).
Online provisions have never been able to replicate the same revenue streams.
The bean counters are counting fewer and fewer beans, and no one else is counting them at all (while still asking for them).
It is indeed a very great shame.
But, if you bought fewer newspapers this week than you did in the same week ten or twenty years ago, there’s the problem: you’re the problem (and me too).
Sorry – some kind of typo glitch.
The ‘down to 120k’ bit was about the Guardian’s numbers, but I’ve somehow managed to get rid of the rest of the sentence.
But, you get the upshot.
Also – ‘gainfully employ journalists’ (predictive going mad)
It gets even worse when they stick their copy and paste behind a paywall like it’s some rare grammatical gold dust.
The truth is seldom to be found in journalism without a hint of bias or a dash of ego.
The Indy vote in Scotland was a prime example of how journalism can become a very powerful tool if it is required one way or the other.
I think the type of freelance thinking on this and other sites is definitely the way forward.
I agree with you Phil, but also with all the comments.
Mainstream media is not missed. It is
selective editing about what has been said and snide comments before and after what has been reported that has too much journalistic bias built in.
When you did Hugh Dallas were you mainstream or here?
Here is where the new truth is given, not on, or in, the mainstream
Stopped reading papers at the time of the Falklands war. Don’t listen to TV news. All shite. May I suggest a book entitled ‘Is That True Or Did You Hear It On The BBC’ by David Sedgwick.
I fear that what you have described, Phil, is the shape of things to come. Unless there is water-tight legislation news and journalism will become the exclusive province of algorithmic AI. Not just that but the new proprietors will be hedge funds directed by the likes of Bezos. No more Orwells. No more Paul Foots. No more Ingrams.
I’m afraid the people of whom you speak, years ago decided which way they were going, and for reasons of class, politics, religion, sleaze, Brown envelopes, suculent lamb or a myriad of other reasons with very few exceptions they began their journey to the industry’s oblivion.
On the whole they won’t be missed reason being the nonsense they spouted will just be echoed by the future lies we will undoubtedly get from AI …..good riddance to all those Scottish jurnos who are about to reap what they do bitterly sowed.
Journalism and truth should go hand in hand but unfortunately in Scotland the sporting truth was abandoned to its fate over twenty-five years ago.
When sports journalists can’t be bothered, are too lazy, or craven counterfeits then they have no place in the profession. It is they themselves that damage and diminish their own industry by publishing untruths and masquerading nonsense as fact.
Most tabloids in Scotland weren’t sold on the back of their political news content or indeed the local news, they were sold on the back of sports headlines. When those headlines were grotesquely inaccurate or downright lies they sealed their own fate because they immediately alienated half their readership. If any of them had an ounce of foresight then telling the truth of the events of 2012 may have bought them a few more years. The could have upturned rocks under which were buried the revolving door between Ibrox and Hampden, they could have got their teeth into Sandy Bryson and how a player could be “imperfectly regestered, but regestered” nonsense, they could have torn apart the Nimmo Smith enquiry, and they could have dismantled the Five Way Agreement. They decided not to do any of the above. They decided to hide and for that they should have nothing but scorn, and because they decided to lie on the very subject that most copies were sold on, that also destroyed the readership’s trust in every other subject that they reported on leading to an irreversible downward spiral in sales.
I agree with your comment Phil that journalism matters and should be respected and protected.
Sadly however, the mainstream media does not do journalism. They only publish propaganda which is not worthy of the term journalism and, conversely is not worthy of protection. This is not because they are printing things which I personally disagree with, but they are actively promoting division and hatred in order to divide and conquer. This is not without consequence as we have seen in the past events in Ireland and are now a cog in the wheel actually executing a genocide.
Your solution is something I agree with. Independent journalism holding power to account.
I fear there aren’t a lot of Woodwards or Bernsteins among the staff writers at those titles. Paying the price for years of copy n paste PR regurgitation and perpetuating dishonesty and scaremongering propagated by megalomaniac media moguls and their favoured extremist politicians. The mainstream print media is circling the drain and there will be more of this ahead.
I’m an ex b2b editor Phil – been seeing how the States are doing it, and basically, AI is the one thing publishers have been dreaming about for years – something that could produce content without getting pished down the pub because of the stress xxx
Too many of the so called journalists in the MSM embarked years ago on a strategy of lying and delivering untruths to the public for financial reasons and personal political reward so in this house there is a limited amount of sympathy
“Highly professional journalists”……at the Daily Rectum ? lol😂
Hi Phil it is a shame that journalism has reached this stage,when I use the word journalism I am not giving credence to the people that write with an anti Catholic and anti Irish venom especially in the Record Sun Express and Mail
I am talking about crusading and decent journalists Ian Archer, Roy Greenslade etc
In the land of the free it seems the more honest and brave you are in your journalistic profession the more concerned you should be