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.
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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