The chairman of the National Council for the Training of Journalists has defended plans to make shorthand optional for students on some of the courses it accredits.

Chairman of the training body Kim Fletcher told Radio 4’s Today programme: “We are not going to drop shorthand, we are going to give people a choice.”

He added: “We’ve fought for years against quite a lot of opposition to keep shorthand.” But he said that the “whole world of journalism is changing so quickly” and “lots of journalists are going to need to do different things working for new media organisations”.