Saturday, April 16, 2016

Savings Package at Talentum – Today’s Media

UPDATED. Talentum Media, now owned by Alma Media, plans to reduce the number of journalists with 40 percent. “A brutal comprehensive savings,” says Eddie Pröckl, journalist club chairman at Talentum.

Talentum Media was recently acquired by Alma Media. Now the publisher’s titles, as proposed, saving a total of SEK 15 million on an annual basis.

According to the employer’s proposal, the editorial slimmed by 19 services – from the current 47 services. It involves a staff reduction of 40 percent.

The biggest staff reduction proposed for New Technology, 19-10 employees. But staff reductions are expected to be made on all tracks – Business World, Dagens Media, History of Technology, Law & amp; Contracts and Occupational Safety.

After a reorganization carried out in February this year is the individual titles today in individual companies. Now, a new reorganization.

Instead of each company each have a chief editor, they would receive a single publisher. That means in this case that the three chief editor positions will be eliminated.

The cause of the austerity package is to ad bookings declined, primarily in the spot advertising.

Negotiations between the employer and the local unions have started.

Eddie Pröckl, chairman of the journalism club at Talentum, says to Dagens Media that the problem with the new proposal above all is that the employer has not failed to show how the business should work for this type of change.

– What I can say is that I am disappointed, both on line and on the proposal itself.

how will the club to act now?

– We will continue hearing about what looks like a completely unnecessary big saving, which can only be justified if they have a plan for how the company should operate and be able to show a profit. If almost halve the number of journalists at a media without a concrete plan, it risks that the business will not work. It is a betrayal, not least against the shareholders. If you do not believe they have a responsibility for their staff may be possible in all cases can show responsibility towards shareholders.

What is your analysis of the background to this?

– My analysis of it all is that the CEO Aarne Aktan has completely failed in the Swedish company. Without a strategy and plan, this is just a way to simply kill the business. They want to implement a brutal comprehensive savings in the short term to profits – in a few years, the risk is, however, going underneath.

Talentum’s vice president Peter Edhäll want to emphasize that the proposal put forward during the negotiations yesterday, is in a very early stage, and that they do not yet know the exact details of what the changes will mean.

– we are very early in the process, and has just had a meeting with the club where we presented an extremely rough draft . The organizational change proposed is based inter alia on another management level, we have a publicist with clearer journalistic skills, the second part is a staff reduction of 19 posts. In the end, these two parts create a cost reduction.

Why will the organization be better than the present?

– The organization that is now proposed will mainly be cheaper – fewer people leads to a direct cost saving.

How would you describe the mood of the publisher right now?

– It’s very tough when this such negotiations start, although we do not know what happens in the end, all concerned. It sets the course started a concern, because we can not even outline the services affected.

The negotiations with the club continues on Tuesday.

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