The National Union of Journalists has expressed concerns over Reach’s the publisher of the Manchester Evening News,plans to overhaul its English sports coverage.
The company plans to make around 50 roles redundant across national and local publications, print and digital, content and production
Dedicated correspondents covering Liverpool, Manchester United, and London football clubs will be halved, while three writers covering Midland clubs and two on Welsh sport are at risk.
In addition to reducing content editors from 26 to 16 and more than halving the number of sports sub-editors, Reach also plans to cut arts desk staff, and brand writers at both The Mirror and the Express.
Reach has cited “efficiencies” and “optimising performance” created by the sharing of content between titles and the production of common pages as the main reasons for the cuts.
The company has an in-house AI tool, Guten, that rewrites stories to match the style of different titles. The union is concerned that proposed cuts may involve an increase in the use of AI technologies at the publisher at the expense of journalists’ jobs.
