Press watchers will want to know that Jonathan Petre has been fired as religion reporter for The Telegraph, an odd move so close to the Lambeth Conference. The Church Times blog has the story here.
UPDATE: April 15, 10:30 a.m. ET
The Guardian reports:
Staff at the Telegraph titles have been summoned to a crisis meeting amid rising tensions over a spate of sackings, including the dismissal of the entire reader relations department.
Insiders at the paper believe some staff could even call a vote for industrial action at a mandatory National Union of Journalists meeting tomorrow.
Last week, all eight members of the reader relations department, who deal with readers’ inquiries about items in the newspaper, were made redundant, a move that staff fear will increase their workload.
Journalists have been told the paper will hire just one replacement to handle editorial inquiries, although the company said it was setting up a new unit based at its subscriptions centre in Chatham, Kent.
The atmosphere at the Telegraph’s Victoria headquarters had already soured last week, after the paper dismissed specialist reporters Sarah Womack and Jonathan Petre, a couple with a young child, and told science correspondent Nic Fleming he was likely to go too.
In an email circulated to staff, John Carey, the father of the Telegraph NUJ chapel, told the Telegraph Media Group executive director, editorial, Richard Ellis that Womack and Petre had been treated in a “disgraceful” manner.
Read the rest here.
HT to epiScope.