Mark Hollinshead - what will he do with Trinity Mirror's red tops?

Trinity Mirror have put Mark Hollinshead in charge of its five UK nationals.

It means he is now solely responsible for the Daily Record, Sunday Mail, Sunday Mirror, Sunday People and the Daily Mirror.

Millions of people will read the newspapers now under his control, and it gives him unprecedented influence over them.

It is the first time Trinity Mirror has entrusted its crown jewels to just one person.

The question is, why?

Why one person, and more specifically, why Mark Hollinshead?

Quietly spoken, with a thick, friendly accent, dad of three Hollinshead is well groomed and impeccably mannered.

He also comes across as both assured and confident in his own abilities, if finding it hard to hide an irritation of time-wasters.

A keen runner often to be seen in the staff gymnasium at Central Quay, he has been non-executive director with scottishatheltics since 2003, specialising in marketing, and its Chair since 2005.

He is also an active member of Giffnock North AAC and former junior member of Tipton Harriers, showing his determination to stay the course by completing five World Marathon Majors.

He racked up appearances in London, Berlin, Boston, Chicago and New York within a period of just four years.

Educated for three years at University of East Anglia, he began his early career working for a number of advertising agencies.

By the mid-80’s, he had moved into the world of papers, taking up a position with the ad sales department at Midland News Association Ltd.

He held positions as Research Manager at Wolverhampton Express and Star, was marketing director with MIN plc and business development director at Thomson Regional Newspapers Ltd.

This allowed him to build the wide-ranging experience that would eventually see him named Managing Director of Midland Weekly Media Ltd, before joining Scottish Daily Record and Sunday Mail Ltd in 1998.

In the decade since his appointment he has had to manage a relentless decline in the circulation of both newspapers, and faced renewed challenges by ‘tartan’ editions of the major London editions eating into the once unassailable readership.

Plus the ignominy of seeing the Scottish Sun become the best selling daily paper in Scotland thanks to a long-term strategy of cover price cost-cutting.

Against this backdrop, however, he has held his nerve and maintained the full-cover price of the Scottish titles on his watch and, until recently, seen advertising revenues hold steady.

His argument being that potential advertisers would value and trust more a product that customers are prepared to pay full-price for.

Not only that, launching the PM stable of titles, while attacking the corporate market with the Friday freesheet BusinessAM and Insider magazine, has given advertisers a wide range of titles to buy into.

A fully revamped web-operation and the introduction of page-turn technology, has spread the platforms that can be utilised.

He was invited to join the Trinity Mirror Executive Committee in March last year, two-months after rolling out the Record PM stable of newspapers in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen.

At the time Chief Executive Sly Bailey heaped praise on him, hinting that bigger things would follow if he lived up to his star billing.

She said: “In view of his performance and potential, I have decided to invite Mark to join the Group’s Executive Committee where he can make a wider contribution to strategic and policy related matters at Group level.”

Part of that strategy will clearly include the introduction of its new ‘one-stop-shop’ editorial production system under development in Glasgow, shortly expected to go live after more than a year of investigation and preparation.

Advanced trials are currently underway at Central Quay involving senior staff now drawn in from across departments.

While it is likely to be tried out on the Scottish titles, allegedly 'harmonising' the news, production and web operations, it is a secret project that was first born in London, and one that could have wider reaching implications for all the titles.

Which makes the elevation of Hollinshead at this stage – the first person ever to be in charge of all five of Trinity Mirror’s national papers – all the more intriguing.

Not only will Record editor Bruce Waddell and Allan Rennie from the Sunday Mail continue to be answerable to him, but also the strong, vociferous big guns running the show in London - Daily Mirror editor Richard Wallace, smarting no doubt from the most recent redundancies foisted upon him, Sunday counterpart Tina Weaver and the Sunday People’s recently installed boss Lloyd Embley.

Yet the focus now shouldn’t only be on who has been given the power over all the titles and the collective resources they command.

But why?

Sly Bailey’s comment after Hollinshead’s appointment yesterday stands out: “The new role will enable our National newspapers’ to fully embrace the changing media landscape.”

Having one person in charge of all the nationals will, at her end at least, make it far easier to implement said change.

Which is why speculation from staff across the group, on both sides of the Border, is understandably going into overdrive.

In the past 24-hrs, rumours have included:

• some or the entire National division is being put up for sale;
• page production is being outsourced to PA or India;
• closure of Scottish based Mirror and Sunday Mirror offices;
• subs will be made redundant because the new system doesn’t need them;
• all editorial copy will be shared by all five titles;
• merging of desks for seven day operations north and south;
• all editorial staff will have to re-train as multi-media journalists;

None of these claims are particularly new.

But in the context of Hollinshead’s wider remit, concern is predictably mounting among staff and the company doesn’t have the greatest track record in trying to allay fears by sharing.

For his part, Hollinshead has forged a quite formidable reputation for innovation and adaptability in a difficult market, which would make him perhaps an obvious choice to lead a revolution in strategy.

Not everyone, though, is convinced he has got it right at SDR & SM, some staff think he hasn’t been tough enough in taking on News International. But he has so far refused to rise to direct criticism.

Instead he has managed the company as he sees fit, refusing to stray from his course, while embarking on a policy of leaving vacancies unfilled, rather than pursuing further redundancy campaigns.

At least thus far.

It has been only very recently that he has fully lost support from the editorial floor to industrial action in the shape of an ongoing ‘work to rule’ campaign being observed by staff in Scotland, but even that remains only a shot across the bows of the company rather than an all out strike.

His riposte was to accuse the union members of ‘undermining’ work he claimed has protected the company, to axe bonus productivity payments due to be paid and ban staff from carrying out ‘casual’ work on sister titles.

The latter action resulted in the time-sensitive Sunday Mail struggling against tough editorial deadlines at the weekend, missing at least two, possibly three, off-stone times, according to insiders at the paper.

And it has fuelled a culture of fear and mistrust between staff and management that had been building, but never quite flared.

Given that a further £20million of savings are being sought by the Board, such a show of defiance in the face of union pressure by Hollinshead, won’t have gone unnoticed by the Board.

It also makes some union members wonder if they have only made it easier for him to introduce future changes.

The end result of Hollinshead’s decade at the helm in Scotland sees him arrive today as a far more powerful influence on the company than ever before.

Indeed, overnight he has become one of the biggest players in the UK.

Now all that remains to be seen is exactly what he intends to do with that power.