Journalists at the Sunday Tribune are to seek an urgent meeting with management following the resignation of the newspaper's managing director and editor-in-chief, Mr Jim Farrelly.
They want the company to restore editorial resources following a series of cutbacks which has seen a number of senior journalists leave the newspaper without being replaced.
Mr Michael Roche, a senior executive with Independent News and Media, which holds a 29 per cent stake in the Tribune, is to take over as managing director today.
Unlike Mr Farrelly, however, he will have no role in editorial matters, which are to be the sole responsibility of the newspaper's editor, Mr Paddy Murray.
Mr Roche last night met the newspaper's chairman, Mr Gordon Colleary, to finalise the details of his appointment.
Mr Colleary acknowledged to staff at a meeting on Saturday that some of the editorial cutbacks implemented by management had gone too far. Last night he defended the overall direction of the paper in recent years.
Mr Farrelly had undertaken an extremely difficult job, implementing savings while overseeing the launch of the newspaper's magazine, which had been "a great success".
"But this is an ongoing process and I gave my opinion that, with hindsight, some of the cuts had had a different outcome than we had foreseen."
Mr Farrelly's association with the cutbacks made him an unpopular figure at the paper. "There isn't a wet eye in the house," one member of staff said yesterday in relation to his departure. Journalists also welcomed Mr Colleary's assurance that in future there would be a clear division between the paper's editorial and commercial operations.
However, Mr Séamus Dooley, Irish secretary of the National Union of Journalists, said staff felt very strongly about editorial cutbacks and wanted them reversed. There was also deep unhappiness at the company's failure to date to pay increases due under Sustaining Progress.
