Results tagged “move; clutter;” from Birmingham Mail - Editors Chair Blog

The Birmingham Mail is moving premises en masse later this year, the first full-scale office move since the late 1960s.

Not just the Mail. The Post, Mercury, advertising, finance... the entire company.

Goodbye Weaman Street, Printing House Street and Colmore Circus. Hello The Fort Dunlop building, that iconic tyre factory from the past that you can see from the motorway next to Jaguar.

The entire top floor will be ours, refitted as the largest single floor space outside London.

Huge changes are taking place in readiness for the move... and one of the most important is rubbish.

Lodged for so long in premises that are so old-fashioned, you can currently find sandwiches from 1974 at the back of filing cabinets. Some reporters' desks look like my old Grandad's attic. All this must and will change for the move.

We're told that on average all 500+ people on the move from our premises can expect to take a third of what they have with them. In some reporters' cases (Graham Young, our fanatical Film and TV editor being a great example) I've told them it's going to be one tenth, such in the mass of archives, papers, books and strange clutter on their desks.

Out will go press releases from the 1980s, favourite videos of Porridge from the same decade, and books that have not been opened in 20 years.

In will come neatness, shine and efficiency for our brave new world of gleaming multi-media waiting for us at The Fort.

Some staff (they will remain nameless) will get a real shock. So smart are the offices that my colleagues who wear trainers, jeans and T-shirts will look, and feel, out of place.

Let's hope they smarten up.