Help. Please.

This is a genuine appeal to all news desk, business desk and features journalists who might occasionally wander over to this corner of SubScribe. Has the way you have to work changed, so that you're no longer expected to report on what has actually happened, what people actually say, but instead to display all the prediction skills of Nostradamus?

I ask because that does seem to be what is now required of sports reporters, specifically, or especially, football writers.

Long gone are the days when the only live football on our telly each year was the FA Cup final and maybe a midweek international once in a while, and when watching Match of the Day was "event television" in every household. The demise of the Saturday Pink editions of our regional newspapers are also testament to the fact that, in our modern, wired-up digital age, not a second can pass without a goal alert, score update or video clip burping on to a screen near you. Why would you want to pay for a paper which is dated even before it goes off stone?

And so, the demands on modern football hacks have changed. Rarely, even for Sunday newspaper football reporters, is the old-style match runner required because, the reasoning goes, by the time the report hits the news stands the following day, every reader will already know the result, the scorers, and they will have probably seen replays of the goals from every available angle, too.

So football reporting in 2014, especially away from live match coverage, is as often about what is going to happen as it is about what has happened. 

More crystal balls than footballs.

In an era when Fantasy Football games are used by sports sections to drive circulation and revenues, does anyone else sometimes pause to wonder how much of what their reading on the other sports pages might also be more fiction than fact?

I was reminded of this recently when I read a back page exclusive in The Independent which predicted (oh yes) that Alan Pardew, the manager of Newcastle United, was to be sacked on Tuesday morning if his side failed to win their next league fixture.

The story appeared to be impeccably sourced, from an exclusive interview with Newcastle United's owner, Mike Ashley. 

This was a tabloid-style sports splash of the sort introduced to the paper by its then new head of sport, Mike Dunn. Suffice to say, Pardew has lasted longer in his job that has Dunn.

The paper's report - not written by any of the title's established or regular football writers - was based on a chance encounter outside a Soho pub between Ashley and the reporter, Vivek Chaudhary, the former Guardian sports news correspondent.

Ashley has something of a reputation for being difficult with the media, especially those sports reporters and newspapers he has banned from Newcastle's ground. Yet here, he chatted over his beer for some minutes with the reporter.

According to Chaudhary, and published by The Independent, the journalist recognised Ashley because of his "tradmark white shirt". The reporter also wrote that Ashley told him that he did not want him to record the conversation on his smart phone.

Unusually in football, Pardew has a long-term contract from Ashley, signed in 2012 for eight years. But in this chance encounter in Soho, according to Chaudhary, Ashley "started making throat-cutting gestures in relation to what the future held for Pardew". Of course, given the long-term contract, any dismissal of the manager would likely involve millions of pounds in compensation.

That was the end of September and Newcastle duly lost at Stoke on the Monday night. But Pardew was not sacked, as had been predicted.

Instead - until their defeat by West Ham yesterday -  Newcastle went on to enjoy a fabulous seven-match unbeaten streak,  winning their last six, including away at Tottenham in the league and at Manchester City in the League Cup. 

Pardew appears safe in his job.

Me? Think that next time I'm looking for a prediction, I'll stick to the astrology column.

Let's not quibble about this, it is undoubtedly a strong book on an important subject. Announcing the winner on Thursday, the William Hill Sports Book Award judges described it as a "balanced yet fearless" investigation. It's just that it is a 2013 balanced and fearless investigation.

The Bookie Prize judges have form in this respect. They did they same in 2006, when Geoffrey Ward's Unforgivable Blackness was handed the loot with a book which had been first published in 2005. It is what happens when a book is published in another country -  the United States in Ward's case, Australia with Krien's book - and then is repackaged and republished here. How this year's four overlooked authors (there was another, 2013-first-published title on this year's shortlist) feel about being trumped in this way is not recorded.

But one other thing of interest about the winner also emerged on Thursday. Krien is only the second woman to win the Sports Book of the Year in the 26-year history of the award.

Now, there are some skewed figures for the entries - which tend to come from the larger, better-resourced publishers. So there may be some sports books published in the past year that don't get entered, and just don't get a look in. 

But nevertheless, according to the organisers, fewer than 1 in 10 of all the books entered have been written by women. 

Night Games follows the controversial rape trial of an Aussie Rules player. According to Graham Sharpe, the spokesman for the sponsors, “Quite possibly only a woman could have written it in as personal and perceptive a manner.

“It remains disappointing that on average, under 10 per cent of the books submitted each year are written by females, and we hope that Anna’s success will encourage many more women to write about sport.”

There were more than a hundred gathered together at a Sussex country church in Cuckfield yesterday for the final send-off for John Samuel, the former sports editor of The Daily Herald, Observer and, most notably, The Guardian.

Samuel's journalism career began on VE Day and continued, in that wonderfully relaxed and fulfilling freelance, semi-retired sort of way, well into his 80s, writing motoring, skiing, golf and travel features. Indeed, Samuel was writing right up until his death earlier this month.

It was his time at The Guardian, which spanned three decades, for which Samuel is best remembered, where he cultivated, recruited and developed some of the finest sports journalism talent ever assembled on a single newspaper.

When appointed, he inherited John Arlott in his pomp, soon after the Basil D'Oliveira campaign which helped to change sport, and ultimately society in South Africa, forever more. Also on the staff was John Rodda, undoubtedly the finest sports politics and Olympics correspondent of his age - and since - whose reports from Mexico City of the army shooting protesting students prior to the 1968 Games, and then in 1972, when the reporter got into the athletes' village in Munich after the beginnings of the Black September terrorist attack, defied news desks' snooty perceptions of sports writers' abilities.

In his near 20 years in charge of the sports desk on Farringdon Road, Samuel worked with and recruited some fine talents, including David Lacey, Frank Keating, Dai Davies, Matthew Engel, Paddy Barclay and Ian Ridley... There are many others, too.

Thing was, Samuel's patrician style of sports editing will probably never be seen again. Much of his best work was done in absentia, when Samuel would leave the page drawing and running of the desk to his able deputies, such as Charlie Burgess or Roger Alton. And whatever became of them?

A marvellously affectionate tribute to Samuel has been posted on the interweb by someone who knew him for less than three months - his masseur. It includes a couple of useful links, to Engel's obit in The Grauniad and some of Samuel's own recollections of his career published by the Sports Journalists' Association. It is well worth a read, and can be found by clicking here.

SAVE OUR SUBS (Part 94): A hat-tip to Lee Clayton, the ever-vigilant head of sport at the Mail for flagging up the confusion caused across the nation's sports desks by Sergio Aguero's thrilling and match-winning hat-trick for Manchester City in the Champions' League match against Bayern Munich last night.

"UEFA have City third in the table... The Mail, Times, Mirror, Star, Guardian, Tele has them fourth," Clayton tweeted, followed by the hashtagged exclamation "#huh?"

There's an important rider: Clayton also suggested that the overworked subs on the Express sports desk have City in second place in UEFA's qualifying group, with one crucial game to play to determine who goes into the lucrative knock-out stages in the new year. 

Maybe Clayton was looking at a different edition, because in the copy of the paper I bought in London this morning, the hard-pressed Express sports desk appears to be the only national paper which has reproduced the Group E table to match the European football governing body. Not that that is an guarantee of being correct... 

In truth, in any normal reading of a football table, in which three teams have exactly the same playing record and the same number of points, the usual way to determine the sides' position in the group or league would be goal difference - goals scored, minus goals conceded. 

In this case, that would put City in second place.

City - thanks largely to Aguero - have scored 7 and conceded 8, and so have a goal difference of -1, ahead of the -4s of Roma and Moscow, with the Italian club adjudged to have the advantage of the Russian club by virtue have having scored two goals more.

But this is a competition organised by the Swiss-based gnomes of European football, and so "normal" does not apply. 

UEFA's own website, which has City in third with just one game to play, in Rome next month, has the weasel word cop-out, "Standings are provisional until all group matches have been played", which is all fine and dandy for them, but is no bloody good for a sports desk sub on deadline in London on a Tuesday night.

And according to UEFA's own competition rules, the table on their website (and therefore in the Express) is incorrect.

The reason for the UEFA rider is that in the Champions' League, they have decided to make head-to-head records in the home-and-away round-robin matches the deciding factor.

With a place in the last 16 worth around £20 million to each of the successful clubs, these distinctions matter.

Nick Harris, who covers sports news (bribes 'n drugs) for the Mail on Sunday as well as running the ever-excellent  sportingintelligence.com website is a bit of an anorak in these respects, and he has highlighted how the H2H records take precedence, and therefore ought to see City at the foot of the group table.

Pity the poor sports subs, eh?

For anyone with the time and inclination to try to work out how this all works (not that it will matter by the time of the final whistle in Stadio Olimpico), the Mail has had a bash at explaining it all here.  

And in the meantime, I - probably backed by the Express - am about to start a campaign called "Bring Back Sir Stanley Rous!"

Are we on the verge of the moment when there are no staff left at all on the sports desks at Express Newspapers?

That’s the Doomsday conclusion suggested in a motion passed by NUJ chapel members last week, which described the management’s scheme to cull one-third of the titles’ jobs as demonstrating “that there is no sustainable plan for these titles”.

Attempts to produce quality journalism will be “dead in the water”, NUJ members proclaimed, as they asked owner Richard Desmond to sell to someone else who could operate the business as a profitable, going concern, rather than continue running the once proud titles into the ground.

The union’s complaint was distributed in an email from Father of Chapel Richard Palmer, sent on Thursday evening following a meeting at which executives outlined further details behind their efforts to cut £14 million costs through losing another 200 jobs. It is worthwhile noting that Express newspapers announced an operating profit of £37 million in 2013. 

The NUJ motion stated:

Among the details revealed at the meeting with the union is the penny-wise, pound-foolish decision to scrap the regionalisation of the sports pages. This is a time-honoured part of the nightly production process: there’s nothing more certain to lose sales in Manchester, say, than an Arsenal match report on the back page.

The management had previously promised that regionalised sports editions would be “ring-fenced”, so this development represents a twist of the knife that has already made some very deep cuts. The chapel motion described the decision as short-sighted: “Distinctive areas of the papers that have driven sales, circulation, and online traffic are being jettisoned without real thought or care for the consequences,” it said. 

The NUJ reports a growing number of those few staff remaining at the Daily Express, Daily Star, Sunday Express and Daily Star Sunday suffering “unacceptable stress and ill-health” as a consequence of their increased workloads. 

The NUJ chapel also condemned “the plan revealed by management this week to outsource the content of Daily Express City pages to an external provider, producing arms-length camera-ready pages … What was once a vibrant, respected department, producing content valued by readers, is being reduced to a single person reporting to the news desk”.

Yet this outsourcing of entire sections of the paper has already been tried, on sport. And with such limited success that it has hardly been progressed at all.

The scheme was first aired around five years ago, with sports coverage being outsourced to PA Sport at Broughton in Yorkshire (“If half of our pages were going to be filled with PA copy,” one insider suggested, “then they might as well layout the pages as well.”).

At one point, it was thought the whole Express and Star sports operation may be transferred there, but eventually the practicalities of running a sports desk from offices 150 miles from the news desk and the rest of the editorial operation put paid to the “cost-effective” notion. Plans for a 24-hour operation were also discussed, and quietly dropped, as was the scheme to combine all four London sports desks under the group head of sport, Howard Wheatcroft. 

At the moment, only the Sunday Express sports desk has moved its entire operation to Broughton, plus three or four production staff from the other titles.

The departures from the sports desks thus far in this latest – last? – round of job cuts have all been voluntary, but some significantly experienced sports journalists have worked their last shift or filed their last reports for the Express or Star. 

Desk man William Kings is, as far as I can fathom, the only Star sports journalist to leave. But there may be a reason for that. “It’s difficult to see how the Star could be produced if the staff is cut much more,” a sports desk colleague said. “There is now rarely a second edition after 10pm because there is not enough staff to cope.

“I come in each shift to a volley of emails inviting me to the leaving do of picture editors and news people I don't know.” 

North-west-based football and athletics reporter Kevin Francis left the Star about a month ago, but still contributes regular match reports. Steve Bale, the Express’s rugby correspondent for the last 18 years, has left (though he has quickly snapped up work at the Sunday Times), while Bob McKenzie, the paper’s motor racing writer since 2000, has taken the chequered flag on his time with the paper.

Laurie Mumford, one of that endangered species, the sports sub, has left while Colin Bateman, the paper’s former cricket corr who late in his career enjoyed a niche as an Olympic and winter sports reporter, has retired from journalism altogether. 

And the Express’s deputy sports editor, John Burton, is taking early retirement in the new year.

After which, it would be a surprise if there’s any one left to turn out the office lights, never mind get out the sports pages.

Mike Dunn is no longer the head of sport at the Independent group of newspapers, after less than three months in the job.

Am I allowed the indulgence of saying we told you so?

It was mid-afternoon on Friday when the texts started to buzz life into my on-mute smart phone, with the messages often punctuated with exclamation marks, from senior journalists who would never normally consider using the tabloid headline device in their copy.

"People here are glad that he's gone," was one frank view from the open-plan first floor at Derry Street, where some were suggesting that Dunn, the former sports editor at the News of the World and The Sun, was "escorted from the building", which isn't usually a good thing.

Someone else offered, "The sports desks here probably did need a bit of a shake-up, but the culture clash of his tabloid instincts and everything that the Independent has always stood for caused a lot of tensions."

The website of the Sports Journalists' Association, which broke the story, quoted an unnamed insider as saying, "He’s been here three months and many thought he was a complete disaster. He is clueless about these kind of newspapers. 

"A new MD’s come in and asked, 'Why do we need this bloke, he’s spending money like water?'”

We told you so 1: Dunn deals

The money thing was always going to be a culture clash. Dunn had spent more than a quarter-century working on often free-spending News International titles, while budgets are notoriously tight at the loss-making Independent and its sister titles.

Dunn was originally hired to help to revive the fortunes of the ailing London Live TV station. We suggested at that time that it would not be long before he gravitated over to the sports department, and when that came to pass within barely a month of his arrival, we wrote: "It is fair to say that Dunn probably has never had such skinny budgets at his disposal."

So imagine the stunned surprise on rival sports desks when one of the hottest new properties in punditry, Paul Scholes, was revealed as the new signing for The Independent. And i. And the Evening Standard. A bit of a coup for Dunn, you may have thought.

There's no such thing as exclusivity in the modern world of newspaper groups, and with the cash burden spread over three titles, Dunn must have imagined that signing up the former Manchester United and England midfielder, whose observations had been so keenly followed in his first season as a co-commentator with Sky, would pay dividends.  

But the rumour swirling around what passes for Fleet Street these days was that Scholes's annual media contract was worth £230,000. BT Sport, which snatched Scholes away from Sky, picks up the lion's share of that commitment, while the ex-player's remarks are scribbled down for the newspapers, which pay a portion of that hefty fee. 

The best suggestion of the Indy group's share of the Scholes bill is £50,000. What has become known in Derry Street as "a Dunn deal". 

We told you so 2: Relief columns

Previously, we said, "When at News International, Dunn had a reputation for being especially generous with some columnists – Terry Venables being notable..."..

The problem with old columnists is that they can be like the one in Trafalgar Square: a bit one-eyed.

Venables, who has not been in football management for more than a decade, was indeed one of Dunn's first signings in his new fiefdom. The sage words of the former Barcelona, Spurs and England manager were reputedly rewarded with £600 per column. 

Also signed up for a column was another Dunn regular, boxing promoter Frank Warren. That's possibly an odd signing when boxing is not regarded as a priority for coverage, but it also presented other problems for the sometimes holier-than-though Independent titles. 

When last month, following the death of a woman boxer in South Africa, Warren was frank enough to state, "I make no bones about it, I don’t like women’s boxing. Never have and never will", his column duly appeared in The Independent; but executives from the back bench on the sister paper, the i, ordered that Warren's column be pulled from their sports pages. 

We told you so 3: Friends reunited

"How long it takes for Dunn’s regular camp followers to catch up with him in Derry Street and appear on the sports pages of his latest employers, only time will tell," we said then.

It took hardly any time at all. 

Tim Allan, Dunn's ever-present right-hand man since their days together on Today, duly moved in on the desk, while the bylines of Geoff Sweet, David Harrison and Paul Smith - all reporters best known for their tabloid football work - were soon adding to the papers' meagre budgets' bills, presumably at the expense of other, longer-standing stringers.

Allan is understood to be on a rolling contract, "And they'll be rolling him out of the door next week," said one staffer.

An attempt to make the sports pages of The Independent and IoS more "poppy", will doubtless be looked back upon in a few months' time as no more than a bit of a bump in the road. An expensive failed experiment. 

But Dunn's departure (followed probably by Allan's, too), will leave a couple of senior positions vacant, since Neil Robinson, the widely respected former head of sport, was shunted over to the night editor's role to make way for the tabloid twins. Whoever takes over will have a rebuilding job on their hands, to restore morale among the hard-working sports desks.

And that's far from being done and dusted.

• Shadows of the Screws stalk Derry Street's sports desks
  

If Sports Direct owner Mike Ashley thinks he's being badly treated after his "mauling" (ho, ho) from Labour leader Ed Miliband over his retail company's "Victorian practices" and zero hours contracts, then he must surely know that is as nothing compared with the utter disdain for the multimillionaire shown by tens of thousands of loyal fans of the football club he owns, Newcastle United.

Unwittingly, over the past year, Ashley has handed some local newspapers in north-east England something rarely seen in the media industry in 2014: a circulation boost.

How has he managed to achieve that? By that most Victorian of practices, banning those newspapers whose coverage is either not fawning enough or which dare to criticise him in some manner.

Doling out bans on newspapers is a trusted, but tired, tactic of football moguls who either don't have an argument, or have long ago lost it. It may seem a little old school, but many still believe that if you're a sports hack and you haven't been banned from one ground or another, you're not doing your job properly. 

So last year, when Newcastle's local papers did their jobs and reported on fan protests over Ashley's handling of the club over issues such as having the payday loan company, Wonga, emblazoned on the proud black and white striped shirts, the club's owner issued bans that have not yet been rescinded.

Anecdotally from sources at Trinity Mirror's regional newspaper group, banned titles such as the Chronicle have seen sales soar, as Ashley has driven them on to the moral high ground and the club's fans have rallied to the titles.

The public pressure and bad publicity appears to be working. Only today has it been announced that Wonga is a gonna from the club's replica shirts in kids' sizes (though not immediately... Sports Direct must have a lot of old lines to knock out first).

At a meeting with some national sports editors this month Richard Scudamore, the head of the Premier League, expressed concerns over the continuing bans on local newspapers. But those imposed on the nationals or their staff reporters elicited a mere shrug.

The usually all-powerful Premier League is apparently content to allow its member clubs to ignore the requirements of their side of the media bargain under the licences it issues.

This is not suddenly acquired impotence by Scudamore or the Premier League. For two decades, they behaved like the three wise monkeys when it came to disciplining the almighty Alex Ferguson for refusing to fulfil his required media commitments with those outlets that had displeased him, most notably the BBC.

In Newcastle's case today,  one newspaper appears immune from Ashley's ire. That's The Sun. The Currant Bun has a lucrative multi-media deal with Newcastle to show online clips and highlights.

And therein lies Ashley's vision of a media future, where it is not just broadcasters who pay football for media rights. Ashley - and he is not alone - wants all newspapers to pay for access to the press box and training ground. The Premier League's inaction over the bans on national titles from St James' Park only helps to bring that day a little closer.

There is something admirable about the weekly fusion that is produced by the mix of Scottish football, Scottish newspapers and Scottish sports writers.

Glasgow, the city that has given us Jock Stein, Hugh McIlvanney and the headline "Super Cally go ballistic, Celtic are atrocious", has now delivered another wonderfully whimsical piece of sports writing which, you fear, might never have got past the subs' spike anywhere else. It is just a shame that one significant error did get past the sports desk.

Nonetheless, hats off to reporter Callum Baird, and his sports editor at The Herald, Donald Cowey, for having the sheer balls to publish this pondering on Taoism after a godawful Scottish Cup match at Greenock earlier this month. Baird called it "90 minutes of the most tedious, excruciating football imaginable". He's clearly not been to Millwall lately.

In fairness, Baird did have a day and a half to consider his Sunday for Monday piece after what sounds like a Saturday afternoon bore draw to end all bore draws. But that period for reflection might have given many others white screen fever, a dread inertia where you find you just have nothing to write.

The drop intro is 56 words long, and the report has, inevitably, gone viral on the interweb. The report quickly became the best-read article on the Herald's website, and it even drew a "huffy" response from the Airdrie chairman, Jim Ballantyne.

In its originally published and printed version, Baird's report read:

There was another rare moment of excitement when Joe McKee was shown a straight red card after he slid in, studs up, on Morton's Luca Gasparotto - on loan from Rangers - and left him writhing on the turf in agony. It perked up the crowd for a moment - something had happened!

That one word "Morton's" meant Ballantyne was able to point out: "It would indeed have been a rare moment if Morton's McKee had been sent off for a shocking challenge on Morton's Gasparotto!! It would clearly have been an epic moment but for the fact that Luca is actually the Airdrieonians player. But why let the facts get in the way of a Chinese history lesson?" 

Oh.

Oh well. Someone went into the online version and cleaned it up. The Herald might want to offer Ballantyne a job as a proof-reader. Remember the days when newspapers had proof-readers?

Thing is, too much of what sports reporting has become is to talk-up what is laid out before us, rather than giving a fair and honest assessment of what is, very often, a pile of poo.

The over-arching influence of televised sport has a lot to answer for. Too rarely will sports commentators ever 'fess up to the paucity of talent, skill or simple excitement in the event being contested before them. They can't: they've paid a small fortune in rights fees.

Baird had no such restraints. His final paragraph of the report (which you can read in its online entirety, including post-subbing correction, here) was possibly even more telling than his first:

"The poor crowd, shellshocked as they wandered out, were left to contemplate these five chilling words: there will be a replay."

Baird, though, was not worried for the crowd, or what passes for a crowd in the lower reaches of Scottish fitba: fewer than 1,500 had squandered their cash to see the match.

No, Baird's real concern was for himself. He told HoldTheFrontPage: “I’m just worried now that I’ll be sent to cover the replay.”


POSTSCRIPT: Morton won the replay this week, 2-0 at Airdrie (that'll pish on Ballantyne's chips), and they now have a Scottish Cup fourth round tie against Spartans, an Edinburgh side who play in the Lowland League, which is sponsored by... the Scottish Sun.

And Baird need not have worried. Someone bylined as Jack Robertson was assigned to cover the replay.

It is fair to say that when the Torygraph issued a press release to announce four appointments on the sports desk a couple of weeks ago, there was nothing that could be described as unbridled celebration around the newsroom at Victoria.

The four thrusting young Turks - Daniel Schofield, Tom Peacock, Tom Edwards and Charlie Eccleshare - must be wondering what they have let themselves in for. 

The day after the quartet's appointments were made public, an email from editor-in-chief Jason Seiken - or "Psycho" as he is permanently ridiculed in Private Eye - announced that he was about to decimate his staff. That's "decimate" used accurately, for once, with 55 jobs cut, or 10 per cent of the current staff.

Word is, these compulsory redundancies will include some of the newspaper's biggest names from the sports desk. Yet again. The word "bloodshed" has been used. 

In typical managementspeak, Seiken described it as  “ongoing editorial transformation”. Transformed into what, he failed to say. Consultations are understood to begin on Monday.

It was as recently as June this year when the Telegraph sports desk lost six top writers, demonstrating that no one is safe when Seiken wields the scythe. Four months ago, the casualties included cricket writer Simon Hughes and racing correspondent Jim McGrath.

It is barely two years since sport was at the heart of the Telegraph's offering, with front-page Olympic coverage and special supplements. But since those heady days, the papers have shed their Olympic Editor, the excellent but under-utilised Jacqui Magnay, plus industrious chief sports writer Ian Chadband and athletics corr Simon Hart. And to think that they used to have a Sebastian Coe column to expound the benefits of the "Olympic legacy". Ha bloody ha: there's been no Olympic legacy in British sports journalism, that's for sure.

The Telegraph titles continue, though, with some expensively acquired columnists, such as London Mayor Boris Johnson and the "chickenfeed" £250,000 per year he gets for a weekly column, and on sport, where former England batsman Kevin Pietersen is rumoured to be on a six-figure sum for his weekly promotion of his (auto)biography.

It is looking like some on the sports staff will lose their jobs to help pay for these star names. But they won't be the first, as the Telegraph continues to hire a handful of "click-bait tossers" to feed their website with often derivative content, while showing the door to established, experienced and proven reporters and subs.

The Telegraph job cuts in June this year followed 80 editorial redundancies in 2013 and 30 editorial redundancies in 2012. In all, more than 400 jobs have been lost at the Telegraph titles since 2005, in which time the titles moved from Canary Wharf to Victoria, and the Sunday and daily titles were merged. 

The ramifications of that merger to a "seven-day operation" are believed still to have an impact in this latest redundancy round. It's a Sophie's Choice of a process: do they let go the staff correspondent who has a decade-or-more seniority after working for the daily paper, or someone who was originally on the Sunday staff, with a less expensive contract which reflected their original, "lighter" workload?

The quality of the journalism will never be a factor in the final decision. 

Editor's blog Why is "inevitable" that change equals job cuts?