The creative and technical employment consultancy Recruitmedia is expanding to keep pace with 'unprecedented' demand for new media placements.

A further sign that the new media skills gap is widening, Recruitmedia has employed eight new consultants and plans a further recruitment drive in the next few moths.

'This push is illustrative of the massive growth in the new media industry,' Recruitmedia said.

Meanwhile the rapid growth in new media ventures has lead to the 'dot-com brain drain' in the US where key staff are lured away from traditional media.

Newspapers are developing new strategies to maintain staff loyalty by giving them more freedom and less deadline pressure.

Quoted in the American Journalism Review, Seattle Times managing editor Alex MacLeod said journalists can be disappointed with new posts in new media ventures.

"Most of the work you do when you go to an internet company is not journalism. It's the information business, or the e-commerce business, or working for glorified tip sheets. Some of our people have gone to MSNBC and turned around two or three months later because they found themselves in an environment where there was no discussion of journalism."

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