Germans fight back against Montgomery
NEWSPAPER BOSS David Montgomery is facing a newsroom revolt at his titles in Germany. Staff on papers owned by his European group Mecom have demanded changes in the way they are run in the face of massive spending cuts.
David Montgomery earned a reputation for ruthless cost-cutting when he was chief executive of the Mirror Group in London in the 1990s. He sacked more than 100 journalists, including most of the leading members of the NUJ at the group, and at the Independent, which was under Mirror group management for a time.
He is now building a Europe-wide empire, taking over papers and cutting costs to achieve profit margins of up to 20 per cent.
He bought the Berliner Zeitung in 2005 and the Hamburg Morgenpost in 2006, and is now seeking cuts of €5 million — 20 per cent of spending — at a time when investment is needed for the papers to establish decent websites.
Representatives of the two German journalists unions, the DJV and Ver.di, visited the NUJ in London in March to seek the union’s support.
In February the journalists wrote to David Montgomery and the manager he has installed, Josef Depenbrock, demanding that they “rethink the current business policy” and urging him to invest in the titles. “If Mecom is unable to come up with such a strategy, a new, appropriate proprietor should be sought,” said the letter.
Josef Depenbrock holds the positions of editor-in-chief and chief executive, in defiance of the papers’ editorial statutes, which stipulate they must be kept separate. The unions are mounting a legal case for a court order that the posts be separated.
Staff told Josef Depenbrock: “After almost two years of your administration, all of our fears have been realised. You are either unwilling, or unable, to adequately control the editorial department. We have lost faith in you. Stand down.”
Nineteen top journalists have left the titles and not been replaced. Working conditions are deteriorating and there are fears for editorial quality. Journalists say morale is very low.
Journalists are struggling to produce the websites on an 11-year-old computer system. To work on the sites they have to use the superior terminals in the secretarial department, which they have dubbed the “internet café”.
The German daily paper market is highly competitive, with 12 in Berlin alone.
Mecom owns more than 300 titles in Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Poland and Ukraine and employs 12,000 people.