A few days ago the media was buzzing with news that staff at Sheffield’s two main newspapers, the Star and the Telegraph, had voted to strike.
The proposed industrial action is about new computer systems that parent company Johnson Press wants and the company’s decision to relocate staff in Sunderland to Sheffield must be causing tensions too.
There are often rumours about a “management buyout” on these local titles but those have so far come to nought. News that newspapers are struggling badly right across the world probably means such an option, if at all possible, will be on the back-burner anyway. The two newspapers, in one form or another, have provided local news coverage for over 155 years and signals of strife within their ranks are not welcome.
North West Sheffield News Online hopes the Star and Telegraph newspapers do survive and thrive. We never lift stories from either publication to recycle as our own, and so in no way are we “competition” for either title (not least as we don’t have the resources required). Indeed, the purpose of our site is mainly to gather and report news not readily covered elsewhere in mainstream media.
But it is true that we hear complaints that the online versions of both the Star and the Telegraph are not updated as efficiently as once they were and that news content generally seems to be suffering. For this reason, it may be that NWS News Online will stop highlighting their story headlines in our side-bar. Here’s hoping that won’t be necessary.
North West Sheffield News Online 