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Mail's boomerang effect

Ever felt the boomerang effect at your ‘paper?
It’s that strange ‘problem’ of staff who just keep coming back.
Hartlepool Mail editor Harry Blackwood tries to explain the phenomenon in his column this week.
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Harry writes: “I was at a meeting recently when the problem of staff recruitment was being discussed.

“Although journalism is a great career, there are many newspapers in the country who struggle to recruit staff.

“Here at the Mail, we have the opposite problem – we can’t get rid of them with many of our journalists experiencing the Mail boomerang effect.

“Deputy editor Neil Hunter left the paper to work for the Shields Gazette before returning several months later to become news editor.

“And our deputy chief sub-editor Dave Blakelock also headed north to work for the Newcastle Journal before making a fairly swift return.

“And two more of the Mail’s senior journalists – chief sub-editor Paul Gray and assistant news editor Alison Jesney – headed off to the Northern Echo before coming back to the Mail.

“The old saying about the grass being greener obviously springs to mind.

“Recruiting staff may be a problem but once we get them here we can’t get rid of them.”

Read Harry’s latest column: click here.

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