'The sub-editing function is obsolete'

Comforting isn't it?

In deleting subs, CityAM is in good company: a 'paper in Peterborough or somewhere'

Is London's financial freesheet undermining journalism with crude cost cutting, or just becoming more efficient? Simon Evans meets its owners

'Managers need to take care of stressed staff, especially now," proclaimed an article in CityAM, the London freesheet, last week. Just days earlier, the company's management had served notice on all of its sub-editing workforce, its web editor, a reporter and two members of the sales team.

Hardly the stuff to boost morale but a necessary move in the current climate, Jens Torpe, the paper's co-founder, said on Wednesday. "I don't understand why people are so surprised," he says in a rather exasperated way. "A number of newspapers in the UK have been doing without subs for a long while."

Unfortunately, he scratches around to name any, save for a "paper in Peterborough or somewhere".

He rebuts the suggestion that the move, coming after nearly three years of a subbed and generally well-regarded CityAM, has been forced on the company because of a lack of cash in the credit crunch.

"I don't know how many hundreds of people have been made redundant at the Telegraph, but nobody says they are going under. It's absolutely ridiculous. When we launched, we gave the editor the authority to build his editorial staff. He did it, and within budget, in a very short space of time.

"In the last couple of months, we've looked at potential ways to make the company more efficient, and feedback from editorial was that we should put more resources into front-line writing journalists," he adds. "There is a limit to the resources we have. That was how the new model came about. We have done three days under the new regime now, so it can be done. I have every confidence and trust in our journalists."

Co-founder Lawson Mun-caster is rather brusquer: "The sub-editing function is obsolete. I believe writers can take responsibility for filing copy that is readable and correct with a headline." MORE