The Express is slashing its workforce and the Sun is slashing its cover price (in the north west of England). These are cutthroat times for the newspaper industry.
There seems to be two strategies about at the moment - cutting costs or cutting cover price. On Friday night the Express joined Trinity Mirror and Telegraph Media in the cost-cutting camp. Richard Desmond is axing a tenth of the Express' journalistic staff, merging news and features and getting rid of its city team, and will instead use PA to supply the business pages.
The Telegraph has dressed up its cost cutting as integration. Clearly it is moving into a new era of print/online co-ordination, and this is something that every news organisation needs to address, but there was no need to reduce the workforce by 133 to achieve that - unless you were thought you would slip in some cost cutting at the same time. Something not unheard of at newspapers owned by the Barclay Brothers (see the Scotsman, Sunday Business etc).
Meanwhile, the Sun has slashed its cover price to 20p in the north west of England. Some say this is to stem the rise of the Mail. More probably it is to halt a fightback from the Mirror, which has had some success under Richard Wallace's editorship with editionalising its coverage.
News International is already waging a relentless campaign against Trinity Mirror north of the border, with its 10p Scottish Sun finally overtaking the Daily Record recently.
This is the same News International that is undermining Associated Newspapers' London stronghold with its new free newspaper thelondonpaper.
Free, 10p, 20p - the effect is the same. News International is undermining its rivals by utilising its very, very deep pockets. Associated is fighting back in London, but it is hurting. Trinity Mirror has been able to do very little in Scotland - it simply cannot afford a price war.
The job cuts at the People show that Trinity Mirror is being forced into the cost cutting rather than the price cutting camp.
The Independent's back room operations are moving to Ireland as a cost cutting move - and its production teams may well follow.
Despite its relentless growth over the last decade, the Mail is being forced to cut costs. Aside from Associated's London Lite giveaway, no-one feels brave - or wealthy - enough to take on News International.
With the online shakedown being forced upon the newspaper industry, does Rupert Murdoch believe that the only way to survive is to make sure that it is somebody else who goes under?
