Editors around the country are about to begin an exercise which could give an insight into recruitment, training and retention of staff.

The move has come about after the issues were identified by the Society of Editors as coming under discussion more frequently – and being of increasing concern.

The Society has launched a questionnaire both for editors and for people running college and other training courses.

Training committee chairman Peter Cole, Professor of Journalism at Sheffield University said: “As is so often the case, there is more anecdote than hard information, so the training committee has decided to gather some facts, from editors, from broadcast managers, from those running pre-entry courses in print and broadcast.

“We want to do this in time to present our findings to the Belfast conference as an introduction to a discussion of training, recruitment and retention.”

He said the information in the colleges’ version of the questionnaire would be vital to deal with first jobs, the post-entry training for former students, and their starting salary.

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