Feared cuts at Trinity Mirror are materialising with a number of high-profile staff being made redundancy targets, including senior executive Lee Harpin.
Harpin, who is the agenda editor of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People, is among those who have been told they are in line for redundancy as part of the £15m cost savings Trinity Mirror plans to make this year.
Harpin was one of three Mirror journalists told by police in 2012 that their phones may have been hacked by journalists working at the News of the World. He previously worked at the News of the World and was arrested last year for phone hacking but no further action was taken.
Staff at Trinity Mirror have been expecting jobs to go for some time and it is thought that around 15 staff are affected, mostly those on higher salaries.
Around half of them are journalists, who are now in consultation with management.
They include award-nominated Mirror chief reporter Matthew Drake, who has worked on a number of key investigations at the paper, associate features editor Clemmie Moodie and Daily Mirror northern news reporter Stephen White.
Colleagues say that morale is low as more redundancies are expected.
One said: “This is not about journalism, it’s purely financial. It seems as if good journalists have been earmarked for redundancy.”
Another source said some had raised eyebrows due to a number of the redundancy negotiations being carried out by Alison Phillips, the former editor of the short-lived new national paper New Day.
Some staff have questioned the decision to launch the New Day at a time when the group was trying to make savings.
However, a Trinity Mirror spokesman said the cuts were not connected to the cost of the New Day and that as editor-in-chief, Lloyd Embley’s deputy Phillips would be expected to be involved: “Like all media companies, it is essential that we adapt to the changing industry and ensure we continue to operate efficiently and control costs. This has been a key part of our strategy for several years and is unrelated to the New Day or recent share price movements.
“An unfortunate but necessary part of this strategy, as pressure on print revenue continues, is identifying savings in editorial budgets, which include some proposed redundancies at the Mirror. We are now in consultation with those impacted so are unable to confirm further details while that process is ongoing.”
