Moving on

Former BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston is among the latest lists of journalists taking redundancy rather than indicate preferences for new ways and places of working. 

Johnston, 59, was born in Lindi, Tanzania and went to Dollar Academy in Clackmannanshire. He has an MA in English and Politics from Dundee University and a diploma in Journalism Studies from the University of Wales in Cardiff. 

He joined the BBC in 1991 as a sub-editor in the World Service Newsroom, becoming Correspondent in Tashkent from 1993 to 1995, and Kabul Correspondent from 1997 to 1998. He was posted to Gaza in 2004, and, just two weeks before his contract was due to end, was kidnapped and held for nearly four months by a Jihadi organisation called the Army of Islam. He was the only Western broadcast journalist living and work in the Gaza Strip at the time. The BBC mounted a major international campaign to try to secure his release, and he was eventually freed unharmed on 4 July 2007.