Tangled up

When managers attempt hastily to reframe one half-decent new strategy with another untested emerging imperative, half-cock is the likely outcome. 

The BBC News money-saving idea of the past two years has been a painfully slow drive to create "Story Teams", bringing together expertise from a range of programmes and departments to focus on both the planning and output of news items. It's designed to reduce overlaps, cutting the number of journalists working on very similar packages, and further cutting journalists because content can be quickly and cheaply repurposed for different audiences. 

Along comes Tim Davie. Like many DGs before him, he determines that his strategy will apply to all of his divisions, whether it makes sense or not. He's got half-filled buildings all around the UK, and BBC News will provide its share of bodies to fill them up, whether they like it or not. 

So News has resolved to disperse its newest way of working, not tried before by any broadcast newsroom that I know of, with five teams heading out of London, and likely to recruit brand new members, led by brand new Senior News Editors.  

The Climate and Science Story Team will be based in Cardiff. According to Guardian rankings, Cardiff Met is ranked 20th in the UK for biosciences; Cardiff University stands at 29th for Chemistry, 18th for Earth and Marine Sciences, and 18th for Physics. Swansea is at 20 for Physics, and 26 for Geography and Environmental Studies. 

In a classic case of do what I say rather than do what I do, the only role from the BBC News Board heading out of London is non-editorial; the next Managing Editor, responsible for management issues, culture and on-air talent, is to be based in Salford. 

Meanwhile, it's taken a programme team, Today, not a story team, to start work on the car-crash exam story. BBC Scotland have also done good work, but it hasn't made it to network.  Alice Thomson led the way in The Times on Wednesday.  This morning's news story from the News Content pipeline was a diary story, from the Education Policy Institute.