Newsquest

I saw this interesting little piece on the way home the other day on Roy Greenslade's Guardian blog. It is basically Gracia Martore who is Newsquest Media's chief financial officer claiming that Newsquest has "constantly made money throughout the years." Mortore claims that even in 2008 when things where going down to the wire in terms of advertising revenue, Newsquest was never as bad as people believed.

During the tough times of 2008, Newsquest imposed a company wide pay freeze for all employees that was supposed to be 12 month only, however as we sit here and hear Mr Mortore gloat about the fine state of the Newsquest books the pay freeze is still in place... Not surprising then that today Press Gazette reports as follows, Newsquest Hampshire Journalist Vote for Strike. ( http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=46172&c=1 )

Obviously this subject goes a touch off my blog content but I just thought it was interesting to see how little the company was reinvesting in personnel who have worked extremely hard over a very difficult few years. In a wider context it begs the question as to weather the private sector can adequately fill the gap left by the massive cuts to the public sector when the emphasis on people is, in this case anyway, clearly so low.