Daily Telegraph editor Garry Linnell leaves
Garry Linnell, editor of the Daily Telegraph, is leaving the paper. He is to be replaced by Paul Whittaker, currently editor of The Australian.
News Limited would not comment on the reasons for Linnell’s departure, saying he was leaving “to pursue other interests.”
News Limited chairman and chief executive John Hartigan said that he regretted Linnell’s exit. “Garry is one of the finest journalists in Australia, certainly one of the finest writers. He has distinguished himself in newspaper, magazine and television journalism with his noted prose style earning him the respect of colleagues and the admiration of many readers as well as a Walkley Award in 1998 for feature writing.”
Linnell joined the paper in 2008 from Nine Network’s news and current affairs division, which he headed up. Before Nine, he was editor in chief of The Bulletin for a four-year stint.
Replacing Whittaker, who has been editor of The Australian since 2007, is Clive Mathieson, who is promoted from deputy editor.
In another move at News, a new role has been created for Alan Oakley, currently group executive editor of digital platforms. Oakley has been handed the role of editorial strategy director of The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph.
Hartigan commented: “These appointments signal further significant changes in the way we produce journalism for a bigger audience, on more platforms. The way we organise and run our newsrooms, how we connect with readers and the tone and content of what we create are all changing and these appointments will give us the impetus we need to make that happen.”
Pushed. How’s the circ?
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Please, Dear God, let him come back to Melbourne and lead the Age. Please!
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Lotsa talk he has decamped for Fairfax, possibly The Age.
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What you said, Sleepless. I don’t know if anyone can lift the Age out of its mess, but Gaz would be my pick to try.
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This bloke has presided over a right wing sensationalist tabloid that has its Apologies writer as its most overworked. A steaming turd of a rag that the thinking man would not wipe his arse with. Good riddance to someone who should crawl into a hole and stay there. 100% grub.
I see him popping up somewhere in the Liberal Party or conducting “The Benefits of Tyranny” seminars to the unwashed cretins that read his paper.
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Why do people keep beating up on The Age? Melbourne has the two best newspapers in the country by a mile. They are completely different types of papers, but they are both the best at what they do. Having lived in Sydney and Brisbane in recent years I can tell you the papers there are crap. Linnell is a class act, but the Tele is still the Tele. He didn’t change it in any real way.
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Settle down Marto
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Word from inside News is that he was definitely punted from the editor’s chair. He was offered another spot inside the organisation, as they did with Bruce Guthrie, who successfully sued them instead. But Linnell declined their offer which was probably to count paper clips as many News editors deemed to have reached their use by date have done over the years. He obviously has something better to do and is happy to go without fuss. He was seen having a furtive “in the corner meeting” with another media string puller in a Sydney restaurant frequented by the media a week ago. That may mean something, or nothing. Paul Whittaker, his replacement from the Australian, has a reputation as a hard-nosed company man who is said to have the job of chopping out the Tele’s dead wood, of which there is plenty – something that Linnell was supposed to have gotten started on. Meanwhile, the troops on the editorial floor are getting twitchy.
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Well said Marto – thinking Australians could not have said it any better.
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had to be said, onya Marto
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I cannot remember the last time I purchased a printed newspaper?
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