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Tonight, the top management of the Telegraph gathers for the annual party at the elegant Doughty Street offices of the Spectator. Also present will be those Telegraph stalwarts who define the titles: Bill Deedes, Charles Moore, Boris Johnson, Craig Brown and Matt, the cartoonist.
It's the last such party to be held at the Speccy’s Georgian townhouse. The magazine, along with the Daily and the Sunday Telegraph, is moving to Victoria. There, one feels - and fears - the Barclay brothers, who made their money in property, will be able to treat the Telegraph group as they've treated their other purchases: as "a turnaround".
Their problem is that they need to milk the gravitas, grandeur and wit of their stalwart contributors while entirely rationalising and
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| The Barclays need to milk the gravitas, grandeur and wit of their stalwart contributors like Bill Deedes |
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modernising everything else. They certainly needed to do something; Conrad Black left behind an almighty mess.
The Barclays paid way over the odds - £665m - to get their hands on the Telegraph brand and the culture that underpins it, so it is no wonder they want to use its big-name bylines to get a return on their cash. The trouble is that the grands fromages of the new regime, mainly executives imported from the Daily Mail, do not seem really to trust those big-name contributors, and those big-name contributors are beginning to resent it.
The Mail men have effectively seen off four "old" Telegraph editors from three titles within two years. Martin Newland quit after having an editor-in-chief foisted on him and has yet to be seen in public. After leaving the editorship of the Spectator, Johnson continues to combine his job on the Conservative front bench with writing a column in the Daily Telegraph. But Dominic Lawson, editor of the Sunday Telegraph, was dumped completely to make way for Sarah Sands.
Her subsequent dismissal after only  |
