Should football pundits be axed to save journalists' jobs?
I don't know whether Press Gazette editor Dominic Ponsford is a football fan, but this blog post calling for star presenters such as Gary Lineker and Alan Hansen to be sacked in order to save the jobs of BBC journalists strikes me as brave and thereby worthy of a wider audience.
The feeling that highly-paid ex-sportsmen and women are being taken on to do jobs that might once have been done by trained journalists has been around a long while, although it should not be forgotten that some of our most revered former sports commentators - Dan Maskell for instance - were themselves former players.
But the question assumes a new urgency in these straitened economic times when journalists are facing the loss of their jobs. As Dominic says: "There must be dozens of talented sports journalists who could do what Lineker and Hansen do for a fraction of the cost."
What do you think?
Comments
Ok, so I can't spell three.
I did the Degree that Patrick talks about.
I was one of the first Sports Journalism graduates in the UK - at one point there were threee people with first class degrees in Sports Journalism and I was one.
My experiences on the course were positive, I loved the three years I spent there as a Mature Student and it helped me change careers.
However it is wrong to say the footballers (unless they have changed it in the four years since I left) undergo the same degree. They do not.
They do not do NCTJ Law. They dont do the academic stuff and they concentrate mostly on the "glamour" modules.
The footballers that were there when I was were all very decent guys - Scott Minto is on Sky now thanks to his training, but it is wrong to say they do "the degree."
Gareth Owen writes in the Sentinel and as a Stoke supporter I wish him well, his columns are good to read.
As for sacking pundits. If it means Gary Lineker losing his "job" then frankly they could get the cleaner in for all I care!
I love that "wider audience" dig!