Marc Reeves of The Birmingham Post spends a couple of hours talking shop, blogging and council newspapers with Michael Grimes on Sunday Local — the weekly local news show on Rhubarb Radio: It’s intelligent, honest and unafraid — something of media at its best — is it only volunteer-led internet media that has the space and motivation for this?
The journalism blogosphere (a place where the word dinosaur is used more than any palaeontology convention) is awash with news of the Birmingham Post’s (and it’s owner Trinity Mirror’s) relaunch plans. In short (apart from changes in the production process, which aren’t unique to any newspaper these days — more cross platform working, job losses unfortunately) there were three big threads: going tabloid (in size rather than attitude) dropping the Saturday edition “focusing on business news” While I might say I would prefer the Post to go Berliner in size (a la the Guardian) that would require a big investment, whereas the tabloid size is well established. Papers and magazines have been reducing in size for a few years, without any noticeable drop in quality, so I’m sure that will pan out okay. Not publishing on Saturdays is really en extension of the decision to focus in on business readers. If the sales (2,000 lower of a Sat – 20% lower according to the Press Gazette) on Saturdays don’t produce enough profit as it is then a business focused paper on a weekend would struggle more. Both of these things are related to people consuming news online a lot...
