A former deputy editor turned editorial trainer at a regional publisher is set to leave the company to take up a full-time lecturing role.

Paul Wiltshire, pictured left, is taking up the position of journalism lecturer at the University of Gloucestershire, after spending the past two years training journalists at former Local World titles in the South-West of England.

Paul, a former deputy editor of the Bath Chronicle, has been teaching law and politics at the university at the university in recent months.

In a farewell blog, he admitted there was a challenge for the regional press to stop talent from leaving the industry against a “tough financial background”.

He wrote: “The pressures on the reporters and newsdesks of today are greater than they have ever been, with the extraordinary sources of information and the new publishing platforms that are now available being very much a double-edged sword.

“One of the enduring themes to the two years I have spent as an industry trainer has been the difficulty – even against a tough financial background – of filling vacancies with the right people.

“That background is not going to go away, certainly not for the mainstream media and particularly for any company which has either shareholders, debts to pay off or venture capitalists on board.

“The challenge for all of us is to ensure that those harsh realities of life aren’t driving away the greatest talents – whether that be those already under the roofs that I currently work, or under the slightly more elegant ones beneath which I will be labouring from next month.”

Paul added: “This industry and the people it serves will be so much the poorer if eccentricity, instinct, guts and sheer bloody-mindedness – as well as a sense of fun – are lost along the way. If we keep people with those qualities, then journalism can always be the best job in the world.”

Paul began his career in 1985 at the Western Times and Gazette, in Exeter, before moving to the Torquay Herald Express two years later, where he rose to the role of assistant news editor.

In 1989 he moved to the Swindon Advertiser, where he stayed for six years, finishing in the position of head of content.

Between 1995 and 2007 he worked at the Chronicle as news editor and then also assistant editor, before taking on its deputy editorship.

Paul told HTFP: “I will really miss my many friends in the newsrooms of Bath, Bristol, Dorset, Gloucestershire and Somerset, but I won’t be a stranger as I am very keen to keep up my industry links.

“And I am hugely looking forward to the delightful challenge of helping to inspire and train a new generation of journalists in the company of some great colleagues.”