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Forgive me if today’s column is a bit too much inside baseball.

It’s about press secretaries and how Alberta’s NDP government has gone on something of a hiring spree for spin doctors since winning the 2015 election.

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My colleague Stuart Thomson wrote an interesting featureon the topic last Saturday, pointing out that a whack of the new press secretaries hired by the government are former journalists. There are almost a dozen.

You might not care. But you should.

Journalists are jumping to the government not because they suddenly have an urge to spin the news rather than report it, but because they need a job.

The number of journalists covering news has dropped alarmingly the past few years, not just at the Alberta legislature, but everywhere.

Because of declining revenue, news organizations are laying off workers or enticing them to retire early. That means fewer reporters covering stories, fewer cameras at news conferences, fewer journalists investigating issues.