inbrief... news


BBC HIRES ISLAM AS ECONOMICS EDITOR Faisal Islam, Sky News’ political editor, has been appointed economics editor for BBC News. He replaces Kamal Ahmed who is becoming the corporation’s editorial director, a new management role. Islam starts at the BBC in the new year. He was previously economics editor for Channel 4 News and economics correspondent at The Observer.


SITWELL’S VEGAN JOKE BACKFIRES William Sitwell, a food critic who appears on Masterchef, left his role as editor of Waitrose’s food magazine after he made a joke about vegans. In response to a pitch from a freelance writer about a series on vegan food, he suggested a series about killing vegans.


MORE GOOD TASTE FOR THE NORTH WEST Jade Wright, a former Liverpool Echo journalist, has set up a food and drink newspaper in the north west to complement the quarterly magazine Good Taste. The free newspaper has a distribution of 25,000 in Merseyside, Chester, Lancashire and North Wales.


RASPBERRY PI STARTS MAGAZINE Computer manufacturer Raspberry Pi has started a fortnightly magazine dedicated to video game development and video gaming. Wireframe magazine said it looks at how games are made, who makes them and how readers can make their own games.


FILM STORIES STARTS OUT WITH PRINT Simon Brew, Den of Geek founder and former editor-in-chief, has launched Film Stories, a monthly print magazine focused on the British film industry. Brew, who raised £10,000 funding for Film Stories, said that he chose print as the format because he was a big fan of both magazines and long-form writing.


06 | theJournalist


British journalist workforce expands 12% to 73,000


The number of journalists working in Britain has risen from 65,000 in 2012 to 73,000 now, according to a major report on the media industry by the National Council for the Training of Journalists. The Journalists at Work report found that


the practice of journalism has become much more varied, with fewer journalists working in traditional areas such as newspapers and magazines and more engaged in broadcasting and digital roles. Journalists are also


more confident about their trade than six years ago, according to Ian Hargreaves, professor of digital economy at Cardiff University and chair of the research project. Professor Hargreaves, a former editor of The Independent and head of news at the BBC, said: “Journalists appear to be more confident in general, as indicated in answers to my all-time favourite question in these surveys which asks whether journalists would recommend their trade to a young person. This year, 62 per cent of journalists say yes to that, against 51 per cent in 2012.”


More respondents hold a journalism


qualification than in 2012, and the majority of journalists feel they have had sufficient training in ethical issues, the report found. It also demonstrated a lack of diversity, showing that 90 per cent of journalists are white. Similarly, it identified concerns over social class, with 72 per cent of journalists having parents who worked in a higher-level occupation, compared with 41 per cent of the overall workforce. Joanne Butcher, chief


executive of the NCTJ, said: “Although journalists are now more positive about journalism being an open and receptive profession, diversity remains a big issue. We are therefore increasing our commitment and allocating more resources to tackling the problem. “We’re working with leading employers to


forge a new strategy for equality, diversity and inclusion, which also features ambitions to scale up the Journalism Diversity Fund and to attract and train more journalists in our local communities.”


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Shetland News, a hyperlocal news publisher that serves 23,000 people on the island, has launched a website paid for entirely by its readers. Hans J Marter, managing editor and NUJ member, said: “A major


upgrade of our website was essential to keep up with what is expected of a modern website design. Yet investing around £20,000 is a major challenge for a small company such as ours. There was no public funding available to help, so we decided to ask our readers.” The Shetland News supporters’ scheme (https://supporters.


shetnews.co.uk), launched in August 2016, was a success with more than 300 people supporting it with a small monthly subscription or by one-off donations. The www.shetnews.co.uk site, which attracts 80,000 unique users per month, is financed by local advertising and publishes between five and eight original news stories a day.


Support for Johnston Press employees


The union has been working with staff and former staff of Johnston Press following the sale of the newspaper group to a consortium of lenders to


which the newspaper group owed money, led by American hedge fund, GoldenTree. The bond holders agreed to cut the £220 million debt to £85


million, put in £35 million in new cash and ditched Johnston Press’s defined pension benefit scheme, which will now go into the Pension Protection Fund.


A virtual group for ex-staff affected by the hiving off of the pension scheme has been created. It can be contacted by emailing publishing@nuj.org.uk


“Journalists appear to be more confident in general … 62 per cent would recommend their trade to a young person against 51 per cent in 2012


Ian Hargreaves, Cardiff University


Shetland News readers rally for website


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