They used to be just 'reporters and correspondents'; then they became Newsgathering, supplying news coverage requested by bulletins and programmes; currently they are News Content, deciding what to cover and how, with programmes and bulletins informed of their choices.
This Soviet style of news production at the BBC, where everything is brilliant and a huge success, makes cuts difficult to make, and impossible to understand. It also requires back-tracking on previous commitments.
So there will be no Royal Editor in the future; the role of the Rural Affairs Correspondent becomes part of the duties of the South West of England Correspondent; the News Content investigations team, in theory filling behind Newsnight's cuts, is itself cut from 4 posts to 1; the role of LGBT correspondent ends; the Young Reporter scheme, as promoted by Huw Edwards, stops; specialisms are re-clustered, with 'Society' (UK, Legal, Religion, Housing) joining 'Culture' (a right old rag-bag).
And on the ordering news sausages front, the Content Production Hub becomes Planning & Impact, and On The Day becomes one operation, subsuming "Live", "Content", "Home" and "Foreign". I hope you're paying attention. Most people currently working have to apply for what look like small variations to their existing jobs. No fun, in the run-up to Christmas.
I just wish they'd gone full Soviet. I'd have welcomed the chance to be a Stakhanovite before being disappeared to a Gulag.
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