Why was Tony Gallagher sacked?

Tony Gallagher did an excellent job as editor of The Daily Telegraph, had a leading role in the scoop of the decade and worked for a very profitable newspaper group, says Raymond Snoddy. So why was he sacked?

Paul Ince, manager of Championship side Blackpool, has just been sacked and you wouldn’t bet against another abrupt managerial departure by the weekend.

The managers of 25 clubs out of a total of 82 have now got the heave-ho – an attrition rate of over 30 per cent – with the football season little more than half over. In the 20-club Premiership there have been seven casualties so far.

It’s not quite as risky being a newspaper editor or senior media executive as a football manager, but if the results, in this case circulation figures or policy issues, don’t go in the preferred direction the response can be sudden and brutal.

And all the journalistic awards and accolades in the world won’t be enough to save you.

In the past 12 months or so James Harding, widely acknowledged as doing a more than decent job as editor of The Times, was unceremoniously removed from his chair.

Next it was Dominic Mohan’s turn at The Sun, although sometimes when you have done a reasonable job for a number of years the execution is postponed and sentence is commuted to an often vacuous advisory role which gradually fades away over time.

The emergence of director of content titles, as at The Independent, has further muddied the waters on what exactly an editor is, and who is ultimately in charge of content. How much are editors actually in control of editing these days?

There is no doubt that the abrupt departure of the editor of The Daily Telegraph, Tony Gallagher with – as they say in the business – no new job to go to, was the biggest surprise of the lot.

He is a quiet, thoughtful man who was perhaps dangerously wedded to the job at the expense of his personal life, who also rarely made public appearances. But it was even acknowledged by those presumably responsible for his defenestration that Gallagher had done “an excellent job” in maintaining the Telegraph’s position as “Britain’s leading quality newspaper.”

It was also equally acknowledged that he had played “a pivotal role in the investigation into MPs’ expenses.”

So he did an excellent job as Telegraph editor and had a leading role in the newspaper scoop of the decade, while at the same time working for a very profitable newspaper group.

There has been no official confirmation yet by the Telegraph Media Group but no one is denying that it made a record profit last year of more than £60 million.

Strange then that there should have been such a pressing need to suddenly get rid of such an apparently successful editor.

The precise reasons may not emerge for ages because of the universal corporate tactic of making compensation packages dependent on taking Trappist vows.

The obvious supposition is that he may not have been sufficiently enthusiastic about the committed digital strategies of the group’s editor-in-chief and director of content the former broadcaster and PBS boss Jason Seiken.

It sounds as if it might have been a bit like North Korea where it is extremely dangerous to be seen clapping less than ecstatically at the Great Leader’s every word.

It could also be possible that Gallagher was what is called in the trade “a blocker” – someone so steeped in a previous print culture that he found it difficult to come to terms with the new world that has already roared down the track.

There was a hint of something like that in a tweet from Telegraph digital journalist Laura Silverman which said: “Changes at last, but this is a shock.”

Ironically, just as Gallagher was preparing to spend more time with his family, his predecessor, Will Lewis, who left TMG in different – though equally abrupt – circumstances, was moving up at News Corporation.

Lex Fenwick, the chief executive of Dow Jones, parent group of the Wall Street Journal, resigned with immediate effect and would be replaced by Lewis.

Apparently DJX, a service launched last August to try to increase competition with Bloomberg in the terminals market, had not worked as well as expected and it was goodbye Fenwick.

Is there anywhere safe these days?

The Lewis departure from the Telegraph was even stranger than that of Gallaher.

Despite winning “journalist of the year” for overseeing the MPs’ expenses scandal he was “promoted” – if that is the right word – to the Telegraph Media Group’s digital division. He then moved into more dangerous territory, by heading an entrepreneurial TMG venture, Euston Partners, where apparently he made the classic error of asking for a slice of the equity.

He should have known that newspaper proprietors never want to share control with anyone and if you want to join the boss class you must do it in some other way.

As for The Independent, it is not clear whom the paper’s editor, Amol Rajan, will be reporting to in future.

The news that the paper’s founder, Andreas Whittam Smith, has officially been mandated to try to find a new owner will have done nothing to settle nerves.

The official line for some time has been that the Lebedevs had been seeking to bring in new investors to share the burden, but obviously without success.

It is not clear who would want to become a minority shareholder in such a venture. If it really is for sale then the best chance must rest with a very rich internet entrepreneur who wants to dabble in politics and public life.

That is not so far-fetched as it might seem because the paper is not quite the terminal case that has been portrayed. The newsstand sale may have fallen to an apparently pitiful 43,000 but the ‘i’, essentially an edited down version of The Independent and essentially part of the same business, has been selling more than 300,000 a week.

That relationship alone would complicate any sale, even though neither the London Evening Standard nor London Live would be part of any deal.

As for football managers, big Sam Allardyce of West Ham is next in line and will be lucky to make it past the next big defeat.