London Evening Standard to outsource some subbing to PA

The London Evening Standard is to outsource the subbing of some of its pages to the Press Association, a month after cutting back its subediting staff. The work involves subbing and layout for supplements and recruitment pages of the Standard, and subbing for features pages including motoring, travel and horoscope sections. Press Association is also to provide a range of news and features subbing services for the Scottish Herald & Times Group. The subbing work will be done from its editorial pages service in Howden, East Yorkshire. In December, MediaGuardian.co.uk reported that subeditors would bear the brunt of the latest redundancies at the Standard, with about eight production staff from across the paper expected to go. The paper cut about 20 jobs as it dropped its midday News Extra edition. From yesterday the paper's first edition was its West End Final, hitting the streets about 2pm. PA subs 9,000 pages a week for 220 newspapers and magazines at its bases in East Yorkshire and India. The Glasgow Herald's business pages and the Evening Times's national and international news stories are already subbed by PA. Tony Watson, the Press Association managing director, said: "We are delighted to have these prominent titles as customers of an increasingly important service for the industry. We offer the reassurance of pages produced with customers' values, style and standards and, particularly important in the current economic climate, cost benefits made possible through economies of scale." • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email [email protected] or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. • If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".