The press release issued last week by the owning triumvirate of the forthcoming Metro Herald newspaper offered little by way of information on what is now a confirmed merger. It was amazingly hollow, in fact. (The text of it is below the fold). Hiding behind the merger’s ratification by the Competition Authority, the release merely confirmed what had been already suggested, the release ‘announced’ that Metro Newspaper, co-owned by DGMT and the Irish Times and its rival freesheet Herald AM, owned by Independent New and Media, will both disappear as previously indicated, leaving a single freesheet, Metro Herald. This was padded out with a few gushing quotes from notable names, or the pens of their comm-hawks.

Metro currently has its offices in Embassy House, Ballsbridge, where it shares a floor with the Irish Daily Mail, however it is understood that the Metro/Herald hybrid will be located in the city centre, most likely in the Irish Times building on Tara St, closer to the hub of Dublin’s activity.

But none of the nuts and bolts were mentioned in the fluffy release which only alluded to the synergies, the benefits to advertisers and readers, etc. Benefits will only accrue to readers as long as the content is of a certain quality, so it would be hoped that writing staff would be retained, rather than merely having a team of subs patching a paper together from press releases and wire copy. But like the location, nothing is mentioned of staffing – who goes where and who, (apart from a grand swathe of distributors) goes home with an empty brown envelope.

The Metro staff has undergone a gradual but comprehensive whittling down of its editorial staff in the last few months and it’s a nervy crew who remain. And on the street, the distribution crews employed by the two papers will, assumedly, be downsized considerably too.

I wrote about this before (my thoughts here) and apparently, the Metro MD Paul Crosbie (disclosure: a good friend of my father’s) quoted a good portion of that post in the subsequent meeting with the editorial staff (made up of some good friends of mine, too), citing it as ‘on the pessimistic side‘. Which is probably how you’d feel if your company was preparing for a move -  potentially a cull – and wasn’t telling you much about it.

As you read the text below, note the tone of the two soundbites: one from the IT/Metro side, versus that from the Indo side, each claiming the merger will build on the momentum their paper has created.

So, which one do you reach for at the train/bus/Luas stop in the morning?