Alignment

It's apparently called "aligning median pay". The gap between what BBC News pays journalists working in 'network news' and colleagues in World Service/Monitoring has been put at 8%. The application of some £4m a year (around 0.5% of the annual News budget, to be saved elsewhere) to the salaries of around 700 out of 4,000 staff working for World Service/Monitoring will, James Harding hopes, salve and solve this injustice.

It doesn't include presenter "alignment", and fair-pay-by-gender, still to come down the PWC pipeline. It does nothing for those 'gone before'. World Service and Monitoring have been 'part of' News since 1998, when John Birt sent his protege Mark Byford down to Bush House to take control. Much was made of the "journalism division" which built a huge and expensive management superstructure across News, World Service and news services around the UK from 2004 onwards. The candle of journalism was reverentially nurtured, but never shone into pay packets. It took persistent union nagging to get HR even to agree there might be a World Service issue. Down the line, PWC will find further inequalities in news pay across the UK, not dealt with by London weighting or lack of it.

News is already charged with finding £80m savings over the next five years, following the licence-fee settlement. James Harding won't have much fun money around as he drives forward his candidacy for DG.