MP worries about job slashing while regions are growing

The latest round of job layoffs in the media come at a time regional economies are recovering strongly, senior Cabinet minister and Progressive Party leader Jim Anderton says.

Fairfax Media, which owns The Dominion Post and The Press among other publications, yesterday flagged lay-offs of about 40 sub-editors.

The company said it had 190 sub-editors across the group and has indicated about 40 redundancies.

At one of its papers, The Southland Times, it is understood that 13 of its 22 sub-editing positions could be slashed.

The Fairfax move follows the announcement this month that seven jobs were being cut at the New Zealand Press Association, in which Fairfax and APN are shareholders. Last year, APN New Zealand, which publishes The New Zealand Herald, cut 70 sub-editors in an out-sourcing move. APN said at the time it wanted to centralise the sub-editing of all its print titles with Pagemasters, which hired up to 50 people.

TVNZ also cut staff last year, with nearly 60 news and current affairs jobs going.

Fairfax Media said yesterday the move was part of its plan to have "national centres of expertise" for world, features and business pages on its nine daily newspapers. More generic pages such as the weather and tv pages could follow.

The sub-editing and layout of local and sports pages would remain under the control of individual papers, it said.

The papers involved are The Dominion Post, The Press, the Taranaki Daily News, Timaru Herald, Southland Times, Waikato Times, Manawatu Standard, Nelson Mail and Marlborough Express.

Mr Anderton, who has held the economic development portfolio, said resources were being cut back at a time regional economies were recovering well.

He noted that in the past decade, former Radio New Zealand community stations were networked, effectively reducing services in most parts of the country.

Television had long abandoned any real presence in most of regional New Zealand, he said.

Under "failed" policies of the 1980s and 1990s hospitals, post offices, banks and other services were moved away from the regions.

"Today, those services are returning. But media companies don't seem to be part of the trend.

"It doesn't make sense that services are being reduced in centres where local GDP is much higher than it was in the past."

In a statement titled "UnFairfax should keep subeditors in local communities", Green MP Sue Bradford today said the Australian-owned Fairfax had a journalistic responsibility to put local jobs ahead of short term cost-cutting.

Ms Bradford said the proposal was bad for workers, who would be asked to reapply for their jobs in a different city, but also hurt local communities who relied on local news for their "strength and wellbeing."