The Birmingham Post's big relaunch takes place on Monday, when the first edition of the new compact paper comes out. There's also a spanking new website to go with it, although I'm not certain whether that is launched on the same day.

What isn't quite in place yet is the new editorial structure to go alongside the more visible changes. Rather than having three newsdesks, with three sets of reporters, there will be one, to cover the Birmingham Post, Birmingham Mail and Sunday Mercury.

So instead of a Post reporter writing a Post story, you have a BPM Media reporter - the business' new name - writing a story which could end up in any of the papers. They send it to newsdesk, and the news editors decide where to put it.

The aim is to make better use of economies of scale, so that staff are able to get more done by avoiding duplication. To put it another way, each paper now has more staff than it used to - albeit shared with the rest of the business - and should be able to do a better job of reporting the news.

I'd been under the impression that Birmingham was the first Trinity Mirror operation to go down this road, but I'm told by a friend on the Western Mail that they've already done something similar in Wales.

In any case, this is the way of the future for the company - not something we've been told, just my prediction - so colleagues in Liverpool and Newcastle might want to pay attention!

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Journalism