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Start with what closed
Any guide to journalism careers in Nottingham that still lists Notts TV is wrong, and wrong in a way that wastes an applicant's time. The station's own website states that "Notts TV stopped broadcasting on Freeview 7 on August 29 2025 after 11 years of Championing Notts", and that "This website is no longer being updated but will remain here as an archive for now". The newest article on the site is dated 30 August 2025.
That is a closure recorded by the outlet itself, not an inference from a quiet feed, and it is the single most important fact about this market. It removed the city's local television newsroom, and — as the next section explains — it also moved a set of publicly funded reporting posts.
Where the local-democracy posts went
The Local Democracy Reporting Service is a BBC-funded scheme that pays for journalists employed by local news outlets to improve coverage of local democracy. In Nottinghamshire those posts have moved twice, and the second move is tied directly to the closure above.
Behind Local News reported that Reach "has also successfully regained the contracts for Nottinghamshire and Devon, which it had lost to NottsTV and Radio Exe respectively in the last re-tendering". In other words, between roughly 2021 and 2025 the Nottinghamshire contract sat not with the incumbent newspaper group but with the local television station — which then stopped broadcasting — and Reach took it back in the 2025–27 round. For a reporter, that is a working example of how unstable the funded civic beat can be.
For background, in the original 2017/18 round the patch went to the Nottingham Post, then owned by Trinity Mirror, with four reporters covering Nottinghamshire County Council, Nottingham City Council, Leicestershire County Council, Leicester City, Rutland and Northamptonshire. Every publisher name in that 2017 allocation table has since been superseded, so use it for the shape of the patch rather than for who holds it.
One limit worth stating: the BBC publishes the definitive partner list itself, and bbc.co.uk's robots.txt refuses automated retrieval, so it was not consulted for this page. No current council-by-council allocation table was available from any usable source. Check the position directly before you build an application around it.
What this page could and could not check
The publisher of the Nottingham Post and NottinghamshireLive serves a robots.txt instructing named automated agents not to fetch the site. That is an express refusal by the site owner and it was respected: no article content was read. Where that title appears below, this page reports the publisher relationship and nothing about this week's output.
A crawler block is evidence of a crawling policy and of nothing else. It is not a sign that a title has stopped, and this page does not treat it as one. Conversely, where an outlet hasclosed — Notts TV — that is stated plainly, with the outlet's own words behind it.
Nottingham outlets and employers
Nottingham Post / NottinghamshireLive
Published by Reach plc as one newsroom in print and online. The publisher's robots.txt refuses automated fetching, so no article content was read and current output was not independently checked — which says nothing either way about the title's health.
West Bridgford Wire
An independent hyperlocal covering West Bridgford, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Lincolnshire. Confirmed publishing at the time of research, with a dated city-centre news story running the previous day.
LeftLion
Published by LeftLion Ltd (company number 8661252) as a monthly magazine and website, with print issue 198 referenced on the site. Confirmed publishing at the time of research. Culture and lifestyle rather than hard news — pitch it accordingly.
Notts TV — CLOSED
Stopped broadcasting on Freeview channel 7 on 29 August 2025 after 11 years, per its own site, which now describes itself as an archive that is no longer being updated. Do not list it as a current employer.
Local broadcast newsrooms — unconfirmed
Beyond the Notts TV closure, no Nottingham broadcast newsroom was confirmed by the sources behind this page. Treat that as an absence of confirmation rather than an absence of employers, and check station sites directly.
Nottingham Trent University
Not an employer, but the local pipeline: NCTJ-accredited undergraduate and postgraduate journalism courses plus BJTC-accredited broadcast courses at its Centre of Broadcasting and Journalism.
What the published pay data actually says
There is no official role-by-region salary series for UK journalism, and no city-level figure for Nottingham was found on any source this guide could use — so this page prints none. What follows are the NCTJ's published national figures, from its Journalists at Workresearch. None of them is a Nottingham figure, and because the NCTJ's salary page carries no regional breakdown below its single London number, no Nottingham-versus-London gap can honestly be quoted either.
How to read these figures
These are indicative bands compiled from advertised roles and from union and industry pay reporting (NUJ, Press Gazette). They are a guide to what you are likely to see, not an official statistical dataset, and individual offers vary widely by employer, experience, and negotiation. Treat them as a starting point and always check live listings for current figures.
For the official national picture, the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE), Table 14 publishes median and percentile gross pay for the journalist occupation (SOC 2492); for negotiated minimums see the NUJ rate guidance.
The council beat: section 114 and intervention
Nottingham City Council issued a section 114 notice on 29 November 2023 — in effect a declaration that it could not balance its books. The council's own report states that its purpose was "to formally notify the Council that in my opinion the Council is unable to meet its statutory requirement to deliver a balanced budget for 2023/24". The same document records that "A Prohibition Period starts immediately from the date of this report"and forecasts a gross General Fund pressure of £56.899m, with over 80% of the forecast pressures in People's services.
That sits on top of a longer intervention. Government correspondence to the council's chief executive records that the Secretary of State was "satisfied that your Authority is failing to comply with the requirements of Part I of the Local Government Act 1999 ... namely failing to comply with the best value duty", and that "Nottingham City Council has been under intervention since the Improvement and Assurance Board was first appointed in January 2021". For a reporter, this is the defining civic story on the patch and the reason public-finance literacy is worth more here than in most comparable cities.
Two currency warnings, because this beat moves. First, the shape of the intervention has been under active review: government has published a "minded to" position on narrowing it and replacing commissioners with ministerial envoys, so do not write, pitch or interview on the assumption that commissioners are currently in post — establish the position on the day. Second, the responsible department is now the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG); copy that still says DLUHC is out of date.
What a Nottingham move actually asks of you
- 1Public-finance literacy: know what a section 114 notice does, what a prohibition period means in practice, and how the best value duty under Part I of the Local Government Act 1999 triggers intervention. This is the beat.
- 2Currency discipline on the intervention itself: the mechanism has been changing, and the difference between a commissioner and a ministerial envoy is a factual difference, not a synonym. Confirm the current arrangement before you write.
- 3Two-tier patch geography: Nottingham City Council and Nottinghamshire County Council are separate authorities with separate powers, and the surrounding hyperlocal coverage reaches into Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Lincolnshire.
- 4Knowing which outlet takes which story: LeftLion is a culture and lifestyle title, the West Bridgford Wire is a hyperlocal news operation, and pitching either as though it were the other is an avoidable rejection.
- 5Checking the funded-post landscape before you apply: the Nottinghamshire local-democracy contract has changed hands twice since 2018, and one holder closed entirely. Never assume the arrangement you read about last year still stands.
NCTJ and BJTC routes in Nottingham
Nottingham Trent University — BA (Hons) Journalism (NCTJ)
An NCTJ-accredited undergraduate route. The NCTJ course listing describes it as a vocational course combining practical training in news journalism across newspaper, magazine, mobile and tablet platforms.
Nottingham Trent University — MA Journalism (NCTJ)
An NCTJ-accredited postgraduate route. The NCTJ listing describes a long-running news journalism master's that has been feeding the industry for close to two decades.
Nottingham Trent University — MA Sports Journalism (NCTJ)
A second NCTJ-accredited postgraduate route, specialising in sports reporting across media platforms. A genuine specialism rather than a general course with a sports module.
Nottingham Trent University — broadcast courses (BJTC)
The BJTC lists Nottingham Trent under the East Midlands for both MA Broadcast Journalism and BA (Hons) Broadcast Journalism, based at the university's Centre of Broadcasting and Journalism. Worth weighing against the fact that the city no longer has a local television newsroom of its own.
Check the directories before applying
Accreditation is reviewed and can change year to year. Confirm the current position on the NCTJ course finder and the BJTC accredited-course list rather than relying on any secondary summary, including this one.
Where to look for Nottingham journalism work
With one local television newsroom gone, the practical routes are the Reach newsroom, the independents, and funded civic posts when they are advertised. Pair the national job boards with speculative approaches to named editors, and verify who currently holds the Nottinghamshire local-democracy contract before referring to it in an application.
Common mistakes when applying to Nottingham newsrooms
- Listing Notts TV as a current employer, or citing it as a broadcast route into the city. It stopped broadcasting on 29 August 2025 and its site is now an archive.
- Assuming the Nottinghamshire local-democracy posts sit where they did when you last read about them. The contract has changed hands twice, and one holder closed.
- Writing about Nottingham City Council as though commissioners are certainly still in post. Government has published a "minded to" position on replacing them with ministerial envoys — establish the current arrangement first.
- Referring to DLUHC. The responsible department is now the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).
- Pitching hard news to LeftLion. It is a culture and lifestyle magazine, and the pitch will be judged on that basis.
- Reading a publisher’s crawler restrictions, or a sparse directory entry, as evidence that a title has stopped publishing. It is evidence only of the publisher’s crawling policy.