More journalists within Trinity Mirror Southern than those at the Croydon and Reigate titles have been told they will be asked to sell their newspapers.
Press Gazette reported last week that NUJ journalists at the Croydon Advertiser had asked their union to take up the issue after being told they would be expected to spend one half day a year in supermarkets chatting to customers and persuading them to buy the newspaper.
Staff at TMS’s Surrey and South London centres at Chertsey, Houns-low, Woking and Teddington have also been informed of the plan by their publisher Richard Codd. Paid-for titles published from these centres include the Surrey Herald, Hounslow Chronicle and Staines and Ashford News.
But a Trinity Mirror spokesman emphasised that staff would be encouraged, not forced, to take part in the scheme which applies to executives as much as to the shop floor.
And he said that Codd had received a very good reaction and already had a lot of volunteers. He also denied a suggestion in our story last week that TMS was cutting back on merchandisers.
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