Mark Skipford-journalists have two bosses now

We had the pleasure of the Telegraph's executive editor Mark Skipford at UCLAN earlier today.

In what turned into a lively debate at the end with questions that could have gone on for several hours,Mark maintained that despite the climate he considered the prospects for journalists to be good.

"Opportunities are so much greater in the global market,especially for places that are not fully served by a western style media.

Perhaps his most interesting comments though were reserved for the digital/print divide.For Telegraph journalists were subjected to having two bosses,one for online content and one for printed content.

This brought much anguish from the audience who saw this as putting further pressure on the journalist profession.

Mark reiterated what many others have said.Newspapers had behaved arrogantly in the past,believing that they knew what was best for their audience.

Interestingly he thought that newsprint still had an audience citing the weekend editions as the basis for exclusives and background stories.

He concern though, as with most of the industry, is that vexed question of who pays for content? Advertising departments, he believed ,were unable to break the shackles of selling for the print model.The skills of selling for the net should be easily transferable,but for some unknown reason they were not.