The new combined Daily and Sunday Telegraph diary editor Tim Walker has said that working across the two titles will allow the Sunday newspaper staff to break their own stories.
Walker, who before the dailies was previously just editor of Sunday Telegraph’s Mandrake diary and was Nigel Dempster’s deputy on the Daily Mail, said that the internet would also play a greater part in breaking diary stories.
He said: ‘Often on a Sunday we get amazingly good stories and then some cheeky rascal on one of the daily diaries comes along and uses it.
‘What I like about this new operation is that when we have a story that simply will not keep we can get it out immediately on the internet or in the newspaper the next day.
‘We fully intend to use this rapid-response facility.
‘The great frustration of doing a diary on a Sunday newspaper was that for every one of the big stories we had, we lost at least half a dozen others to rivals on the dailies because they could get them out before us.
‘The proliferation of gossip-based internet sites has made the situation even more challenging.
‘As with so many things that we do at the Telegraph, I have no doubt that what we are doing today other papers will have no alternative but to follow tomorrow. We will have more influence and more firepower now than any other diary in the whole of Fleet Street.”
Asked about staffing levels Walker said it was ‘still being worked out”.
The existing editor of the Daily Telegraph Spy column, Celia Walden, has been promoted to senior features writer and will now contribute major interviews and special features to the paper.
The Telegraph also launched a new political gossip column Three Line Whip to be edited by deputy Spy editor Jonathan Isaby.
Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog
