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?
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?
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