Trinity is set to close four titles

Trinity Mirror is set to close four of its free weekly regional titles and redeploy staff to other publications in the area.

The Black Country Mail Extra, Wolverhampton Adnews, Daventry Post and Ashby Herald will all be axed, however, Trinity has confirmed that it will concentrate on other titles in the Midlands region.

Trinity will keep running the Walsall Observer, the Warwickshire and Leamington Times and the Ashby Trader and Echo to cover the regions that are affected by the closures.

However, a spokesperson said that the distribution models of its remaining titles would not change as a result of the closures.

The publishing group has also managed to avoid making redundancies, due to “redeployment” of staff to “other titles and projects” in the area.

Trinity Mirror has closed a total of 32 weekly titles since the beginning of 2008.

Last month, the group also confirmed that it has been forced to make more than 1,200 job cuts since the start of last year due to the economic downturn (see Trinity Mirror cuts 1,200 jobs in 14 months).

At the time, Trinity’s finance director, Vijay Vaghela, confirmed that the company had shed between 900 and 950 full-time positions in the past 14 months, bringing staffing levels down to around 7,000 people.

Trinity is currently under-going a company-wide drive to reduce costs across the whole business, which saw cuts of around £30 million last year and hopes to see a further £25 million in savings this year.

However, after the last round of job cuts and closures, Trinity’s chief executive Sly Bailey, said: “We will do everything we can to continue the publication of our titles.”