Going down

Further to Media Monkey's revelation that BBC News boss James Harding is moving his office to the ground floor of Broadcasting House, there is consternation amongst the troops, architects and middle management.

First the troops - no news yet on where the displaced will be resettled; indeed Media Monkey's item came out of the blue for some involved in the dogged, relentless process known as Home Newsgathering Planning.

Newsroom before people
made it untidy

The architects are confronted with the problems of building office space in a double-height open plan area. Will it be an open glass box ? A box with a lid on ?  A pretend lift shaft (see red box, left) ? I'll let you know - or you can take a look yourself with a stroll along Hallam Street.

This wish to be in the middle of things was last expressed by Mark Byford, until wiser heads prevailed. Tony Hall, when he was Director of News at Television Centre, was quite happy with a suite of offices constructed out of pre-fabricated metal panels stuck on a third floor roof. It looked like a punishment block from Bridge on the River Kwai from the outside, but inside, the space for Tone and his management team was generous, with sylvan views of Hammersmith Park. Its formal internal postal address was The Periphery.

So why, on a day when Tony tells the world there are more difficult cuts to come, should middle management be uncomfortable about Harding the Hack's move ?  Well, it puts him closer to the journalists than a whole layer of people whose principal daily function is to communicate the Great Man's thinking to the workers and then return to upper floors.  And, inside the BBC, it can often go wrong when the workers talk straight to the bosses. I offer you Caroline Hawley tipping Mark Thompson off about events at Newsnight.

• It is possible for a big boss to live on a newsroom floor without people bothering too much. In the Telegraph's vast Victoria hangar of multiplatform, Jason "Chauncey Gardiner" Seiken operates from a glass box at the edge, and has apparently yet to pick up the courage to take the direct route through the serried ranks of toilers on his way in and out.