Still hiring

Here's a conundrum. The licence-fee-funded Local Democracy Reporter Scheme is short of 60 reporters. Matt Barraclough, Head of Local News Partnerships for the BBC, has told The Drum that the planned recruitment of 150 has stalled at just 90.

He puts this down to the lack of a large pool of available journalists with the required skills. “Who recently went shopping for 150 senior journalists in one hit? Even when 5 Live turned on [in 1994; we recruited just over 100] and the BBC created a news-driven radio network, there was never that huge hiring exercise.” [There was - I was in it. It was biblical]

Barraclough believes that many hacks laid off by local and regional papers have quit the industry altogether. “They have gone into PR and corporate comms, they haven’t sat around wringing their hands, they have got bills to pay. They are not sitting there waiting for us to call. In very short order we hired 90 and then we hit a plateau and we are having to work harder to find those journalists.”