Former Daily Telegraph editor Martin Newland is targeting former colleagues for his new Abu Dhabi newspaper launch – who like him have left the Barclay brothers regime.
Newland, who is busy hiring staff for his as-yet unnamed newspaper, has already appointed former Telegraph Paris correspondent Colin Randall as executive news editor. He was one of 144 journalists to be made redundant at Telegraph Group in the past two years.
Newland said: ‘Colin’s not the first of those people who were turfed out who we’ve been talking to. Colin actually taught me the basics of reporting, as a new reporter at the Telegraph in ’89.
‘Every newspaper has to look at convergence. In many cases, you judge convergence by its casualties of the process, and that’s why I was slightly worried by the Telegraph. If you are rejecting reporters of the standard of Colin Randall – who I have seen write splashes in 10 minutes and understand the basic building blocks of broadsheet quality journalism, and who has brought on so many young reporters… if that’s the quality of people you’re losing then you have to look again at convergence, or at least your model of it.
‘I’m delighted to have him – he will be giving the same support to my people as he did at the Daily Telegraph.”
Newland, who set up Canada’s National Post in 1998, said he had ‘nearly all’the paper’s section editors in place, apart from the business pages. ‘Business is the only one that’s giving me a headache, and it’s very important out here. Put that in your paper,’he said.
Newland said that several well-known British journalists were in talks to join the project ‘but have not yet signed on the dotted line”. ‘It doesn’t take a genius to work out where I am looking,’he added.
‘I’ve said it before, but this is a recapturing of the traditional broadsheet quality journalism. A lot of journalists have been kicked out of the system in a mass panic over the move to digital, so they’re the people I’m looking for.”
Newland plans to launch the paper in the first quarter of next year.
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