Sunday Tele editor Neil Breen leaves News Limited after 20 years and mulls TV career
Neil Breen, the editor of Australia’s biggest selling newspaper, is to depart after nearly seven years at the helm. Breen told Mumbrella he is considering a move to television.
Breen told Mumbrella: “I’ve been the editor of the Sunday Telegraph for seven years. There comes a witching hour for everyone. I’ve been thinking about this all year. I know people will interpret this as me throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but it’s not the case. I asked myself was I prepared to reload and go again? I’ve been asking myself why would I give up the best job on the planet, but covering the Olympics got me out of the office and time to think.
“The person in this role needs to have vision for the next go – it needs someone like me in 2006. I owe it to myself and the paper to go. I’m proud of making the paper more cohesive between news, gossip and sport, I launched Insider, we’ve broken some big news stories, some big federal political stories like the Costello Howard deal, and some of my deputies and staff have gone on to to great things.”
When asked if he’d taken a redundancy package, Breen said that he and News had “reached an arrangement.” In the formal statement released today, Breen was at pains to point out that the split with News was an amicable one:
Breen is a class act, and News will be poorer without him.
Good luck for the next phase Neil.
those Pauline Hanson pics can and should be the defining point of his career – it was an appalling decision
Really? Isn’t this more a case of the two papers (Sunday and Daily Telegraph) merging in everything but name? Breen’s job was clearly spilled. He lost and Whittaker won. All subs, photographers and reporters have been merged. Now its time for management to follow suit. Breen’s story is noble but a story nonetheless.