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THE Great Train Robbery is surely no longer the biggest daylight robbery ever committed in this country. The National Union of Journalists called last Friday “Black Friday”. Not, as you might believe, after the day the former Daily Telegraph owner Conrad Black – or Lord Black as was – sought a pardon from his well-deserved prison sentence, but because it was the single worst day on record for decades for jobs in the media industry.

While newspapers and 24-hour news stations are full of the doom and gloom affecting the rest of the economy, the newsrooms are becoming increasingly like ghost ships.

There was a classic picture last week of one newsroom wall adorned with lots of hooks for reporters coats but just two hanging there rather forlornly as the toll of media job losses went through the ceiling.

We have even had the bizarre situation recently of a paper having to turn down additional advertising because there were no more journalists left to write stories to fill the rest of the additional pages it would have required, and the papers who ordered a halt to any photographic jobs after five o’clock in the evening – as if news only happens between 9am and 5pm.

The media are usually considered a bit of a bellwether in turbulent economic times as advertising grows or declines across the whole economy. If so, we’re doomed.

Trinity Mirror, for example, hasn’t just axed 1200 jobs, but has also closed 15 offices and shut down 44 titles. The Independent hasn’t just cut more jobs than ever seemed possible, given its skeleton staffing, but has upped sticks and moved in with the Daily Mail. Yes, really. Independent? It isn’t.

But these are tough times – we know because newspapers, radio and television tell us on a daily basis. If media companies are no longer making a profit, can we really expect to continue to indulge in such luxuries as jobs and pay rises?

If these companies were no longer making a profit, that might be true – but here the media stand exposed. Not one of the companies currently axing jobs made a loss last year. None expect to do so this year – and none expect to do so next year, either. Admittedly, they are not making the 30 per cent-plus profit margins they’ve been enjoying. Some of them may have to get by on just 10 per cent or even single figures.

In one of the major groups every single member of staff made an average of £11,000 profit last year. Tim Bowdler, chief executive of Johnston Press, received more than £1 million in his pay packet and a £516,000 performance bonus after successfully guiding the share price from 470p to just 7p. Trinity Mirror dished out almost £4 million in executive compensation.

Gannett UK made £478 million or £1.3 million every single day. Since 2000, the company has filled shareholders wallets to the tune of more than £4 billion.

So where have the millions – or billions – made year on year for the past decade or more gone? Shareholder dividends have been healthy. Executive pension pots are full. Directors have been receiving an ever-greater share of the pie. It is nothing short of grand larceny. The Great Train Robbers would have been embarrassed to have got away with so much.

However, after “Black Friday” came “Red Saturday”. The doom and gloom is turning to anger. NUJ reps from the three largest local newspaper groups met at an emergency jobs summit and decided the robber barons shouldn’t get away with it any longer. The pay freezes have been rejected. The compulsory redundancies are to be resisted.

Local media have a vital role to play in enabling citizens to participate in scrutinising the exercise of power at a local level – that should be their guiding principle, not as Craig Dubow, the chairman of Gannett reminds us: “Shareholders are our top priority”.

And the anger is breeding new ideas. The current failed model of local newspaper ownership by faceless, remote corporations is dead. Now we must seize the time to reshape the industry – encouraging genuine local ownership, new models, community involvement and greater accountability.

Jeremy Dear is general secretary of the National Union of Journalists