Cole hole

It feels like a construction from the days of Jane Austen ("My, Mr Darcy, let us to the parsonage to gather the news"), but the bucolic pastime of "newsgathering" was actually an invention of the 1980s.  Before that, the BBC was divided into "Intake" - reporters, correspondents, the management and deployment thereof - and "Output".   The rebranding of the 80s was actually a cover for the sacking of those deemed too old, too ugly and too slow by the dynamos of Television Centre.

Newsgathering is now the commonplace term, and Sky has had Simon Cole running that operation for as long as most people can remember. Now he's moving back closer to the coal-face, as a Duty Home News Editor. "Look out BBC" tweets ColeySky, soi-disant "old journo bore".   In more ways than one - Sky will be expecting a reasonable raft of applicants from Television Centre for the Cole vacancy.