Paul Bradshaw, one of Europe's leading digital media academics and practitioners, is taking voluntary redundancy from his senior role at Birmingham City University.
Budget cuts at the university's acclaimed School of Media meant the faculty had to invite applications for voluntary redundancy, one of which was taken by Bradshaw, course leader for the online journalism MA.
Bradshaw, who has taught at the university since 2001, hopes he will still be involved in the online journalism MA course, which he set up last year.
"I felt it was a good opportunity to do more of the work I have been doing outside of the university," he told the Guardian. "I'll be concentrating on consultancy work, speaking, training and writing. I will be staying in Birmingham but a lot of my work will be in London, as well as speaking in Europe and Asia."
Bradshaw's collaborative journalism effort Help Me Investigate – which was runner-up in the multimedia publisher of the year category at this year's NUJ Regional Press Awards – will continue as normal.
Plans in the pipeline include delivering data journalism training to some of the UK's biggest news publishers.
"Right now I'm writing a book on magazine editing which should be done just before the end of the year," Bradshaw said. "The online journalism book which I'm contributing to with Liisa Rohumaa [formerly news editor of FT.com] should be out in spring time next year.
The university would shed no light on the scale of cutbacks at the school of media, saying only that it "is currently reviewing the structure of its faculty of performance, media and English. Discussions are currently ongoing and at this point no definite decisions have been made."
An inspired campaign has been launched against the proposed cuts, thought to be in the region of £230,000. Professor Philip Thickett, head of the school of media, allayed fears last week, saying the university would not be imposing compulsory redundancies.
Prior to joining the university, Bradshaw edited the magazine Internet Monthly for two years and has since gone on to establish the Online Journalism Blog as a well-respected source of comment and analysis. Later this year, Bradshaw will speak at digital journalism events in Kuala Lumpur in August and Amsterdam in September, before attending conferences in France, Spain and Belgium.
