Monday, December 08, 2008

First they came for the obituarists, and I said nothing. Then they came for the literary editor...

Bloody hell.

The Media Guardian tells me that

Columnists Craig Brown and AN Wilson have become the latest and most high profile departures from Telegraph Media Group.

Satirist Brown, who was on contract to write two pieces a week for the Daily Telegraph – which were published on Saturday and Tuesday – was informed last week that his services would no longer be required.

They must have some kind of really clever plan that's just too clever for anyone in the outside world to see, mustn't they. Mustn't they? Because the alternative is that when Chang and Eng Barclay took over they wrote out two lists, one of everything that was distinctive and had value to the Telegraph brand, and the other of the stuff no one was that bothered about, and then put the wrong one in the internal post...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's all very simple. Whatever goes on the Daily Mail website is re-appropriated on the Telegraph website and then, depending on initial readings on the fume-o-meter, into the papers. The Barclays just want it to be a broadsheet Mail, without the need for editorial investment; if Randall gets the boot, then we know it's screwed.

Lazy Student said...

Never one to blow his own trumpet, Brown said:

"It seems almost perverse that they have chosen to cull most of their best writers rather than their worst"

True enough but, for Christ's sake, let someone else say it.