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Just as no good regiment should feel the need to have a rapid turnover in colonels, or schools and hospitals to have a rapid turnover of head-teachers or matrons, neither should a good newspaper feel the need to be constantly changing its editor. Morale always suffers. Constant change at the top is not so much a sign of renewal as of accelerating decline.
Sadly, however, the new proprietors of the Sunday Telegraph - where many years ago I was the editor - do now seem to feel that need. Only a year and a half after one change of editor - which came quite swiftly after its predecessor - comes another. A change of guard at the Sunday Telegraph has now become an almost biannual event.
The reason, I fear, is pretty obvious. Into the vacuum created by Conrad Black's enforced sale, rushed the Barclay brothers, international financiers, whose knowledge of |
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| The Barclay brothers’ knowledge of newspapers extends no further than the bottom line |
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newspapers extends no further than the bottom line.
So editors unwilling to dance to the money-men's tunes do not last long. In this most recent case the bone of contention seems to be a plan to merge the Daily and Sunday Telegraphs into a seven-day publication which happens to be the very issue, which, years ago, caused my own demotion from the editor's chair. The fall guy who succeeded me was soon out and the same fate, I suspect, awaits the new incumbent.
Meanwhile, the Daily Mail goes from strength to strength, both financially and journalistically, very largely because it has the good fortune to have remained in the hands of the original owners, the Harmsworth family, who really do have printer's ink in their veins. So, to a lesser extent, does Rupert Murdoch, who, coming from a distinguished Australian news family has something of the same quality - in such a marked contrast to the Barclay brothers.
Heredity seems to work, as much in newspaper magnates as in kings and queens. 
FIRST POSTED SEPTEMBER 5, 2007
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Will Telegraph readers pay the price?
