Tristan Davies, the longest ever serving editor of the Independent on Sunday, has left the newspaper six months after its radical two-section redesign.
In an email sent to staff last night, Independent News and Media said Davies had left to pursue ‘other interests’though he has reportedly been working on revamps of The Independent’s daily supplements for the past few weeks. Deputy editor John Mullin is now acting editor of the paper.
Davies has held senior posts on both Independent titles since joining shortly after the Independent’s launch in 1986.
In the email, Davies thanked his staff ‘for their tireless dedication and support’and said he was ‘immensely proud of our achievements together”. He singled out the paper’s campaigns for better treatment of the mentally ill and for better conditions for British troops in Afghanistan and Iraq as ones he was most proud of.
Ivan Fallon, chief executive of Independent News and Media’s UK division, said: ‘We shall miss Tristan, who has been the longest serving editor of the Independent on Sunday. He has established the title as an innovative, pioneering and campaigning paper, with a record of breaking stories and setting the Sunday agenda. We wish him well.”
Simon Kelner, editor-in-chief of the Independent and Independent on Sunday, said Davies was a ‘particularly distinguished editor of our Sunday paper’and said he ‘fully supported his decision to move on.”
In June the paper ditched the traditional multi-section Sunday newspaper format in a radical redesign which saw it slimmed down to one newspaper and one magazine.
Davies became editor of the Independent on Sunday in May 2001, taking over from Janet Street-Porter. Then the title had an ABC circulation figure of 252,672, in November last year it was selling 203,369.
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