As the UK officially falls into recession, it’s not a question of how many jobs will go in the regional newspaper industry, it’s more a case of how many will survive. Today, staff at DMGT-owned Northcliffe Media’s Western Daily Press and Bristol Evening Post were told the company is considering cutting 45 of its 154 editorial jobs from the two titles as part of plans to create single content and production desks for the papers, according to the NUJ. Sharing resources is a popular way to maximise resources for newspapers right now and is at the heart of proposed cuts at Newsquest’s Glasgow titles and Trinity Mirror’s Birmingham and South Wales centres.

And HTFP reports that westerndailypress.co.uk will be scrapped after managers decided the domain had “no digital future”—the site will now point Northcliffe’s more successful thisissomerset.co.uk and thisisgloucestershire.co.uk. In print, WDP will retain it’s paid-for status, and will become more like DMGT’s free Metro paper and employ fewer dedicated reporters, syndicating stories from other Northcliffe titles in the South West. It’s the first Northcliffe centre to be turned into a local “hub.”