A job at the Daily Telegraph used to be a job for life, even under the volatile ownership of disgraced owner Conrad Black. Not any more though, under the hardly benign rule of the Barclay brothers, property tycoons who live on their very own Channel Island.
The latest victim is editor Tony Gallagher (left), signed from the Daily Mail in 2009 and widely credited with keeping the Telegraph ahead of the broadsheet newspaper pack, albeit with a paper that sounds ever more like his alma mater.
Gallagher has been dumped after failing to see eye to eye with the rather mysterious Jason Seiken, an American who was brought in last September as ‘chief content officer’, which, presumably, placed him above Gallagher as newspapers are supposed to be about content – or were, last time I looked.
In recent years the Telegraph has introduced an online paywall and experimented with initiatives like podcasts and all the other digital bells and whistles.. But, unlike its rivals The Times and the Guardian, still makes money from being a newspaper.
Which makes it all the more baffling that CEO Murdoch MacLennan, another old Mail hand, has axed Gallagher.
New boy Seiken (left) worked at PBS, America’s rather pale imitation of the BBC (although one which produces some excellent, serious-minded programmes and was also editor of the Washington Post’s website.
There will be plenty of people – The Times and Mail among them – interested in securing Gallagher’s services.
