Last June I offered some unasked for advice to incoming Avusa CEO Colin Cary on what he needed to do to perform a Lazarus like revival of the highly troubled newspaper group (see here). Either Cary failed to fully understand my clear instructions or he thought he knew better. Whatever the reason he departed suddenly a few weeks ago from what has now been nostalgically renamed Times Media Group, according to some insiders after a troubled relationship with dealmaker Andrew Bonamour.
Mr Bonamour is now the captain of the Titanically ill-fated vessel and is obviously hoping to make the best of things, despite a lack of knowledge of the intricacies and intrigues of the newspaper industry. Mr Cary, I understand, is wealthy enough in his own right not to need all the stress of running an ailing newspaper business although he must have enjoyed an interesting few months.
This past week it was all change at the group's flagship newspaper, the once mighty Sunday Times. Poor Ray Hartley, the puppet editor who took over from Mondli Makhanya when he was sacked and kicked upstairs (surely promoted? Ed), is to depart after only two years at the helm. Ray is a delightful chap socially and a fine political journalist and I had high hopes for him when he took the reins and expressed my support in print.
Sadly Ray isn't the brightest bulb in the chandelier and spent rather too much time on Talk Radio 702 of a Monday morning explaining why his newspaper had managed to get a story arse about face the previous day. A paper like the Sunday Times needs an editor with what is known as "gravitas" and Ray wasn't that editor. So he has been booted but it is a booting wrapped in cotton wool and he will spend two months on a paid sabbatical (presumably writing a fond memoir) and return to swell the ranks of an already bloated management to do....who knows what?
The new editor of the Sunday Times is Phylicia Oppelt, the orthodontically challenged former editor of The Times and a good buddy of the company's "eminence grease" Mike (Mr Teflon) Robertson. I once referred to Phylicia as "the Tracy Chapman of prose" in the days when we both wrote columns for the Sunday Times because of the gloomy, struggle cred subject matter of her columns.
So I doubt she'll be phoning me inviting me to return to the fold to boost the readership among the LSM 10's. Oh, I forgot to mention that Ms Oppelt is the first woman to edit the Sunday Times and is, in addition, a previously disadvantaged person so tick two boxes on the PC approval sheet.