I cannot imagine that my blogpost in September, in which I called on Paul Vickers, Trinity Mirror's legal director, to consider his position, is the reason for his sudden departure.
But that does not mean that my criticisms of his performance were invalid and they must have been taken into account by the Trinity Mirror board.
Vickers, as I first said in July 2011, oversaw an inadequate response by the company to the rumours that staff on its newspapers had been responsible for phone-hacking.
In fairness, Vickers did not himself decide on the narrow parameters of its 2011 "investigation". That would have been a decision by the board and its then chief executive, Sly Bailey.
By refusing to look back into history, when hacking actually took place, Trinity Mirror failed into its corporate responsibilities. It simply ignored the widespread suspicions that reporters at the Sunday Mirror had intercepted mobile phone messages.
The inquiry was therefore a laughable charade. As I wrote in September: why did Vickers not insist that the board treat the original claims seriously?
If he did indeed press for a proper investigation, why did he lend his name and reputation to a futile "review" into current editorial controls and procedures, in which the outcome - a clean bill of health - was a foregone conclusion?
Nor should we forget the part played by Vickers in the City Slickers' affair, when the Daily Mirror editor, Piers Morgan, was found to have bought shares in a company just before they were tipped as good buys by his paper's columnists.
In evidence given by Trinity Mirror to the Press Complaints Commission during its inquiry into the affair, it told the PCC that Morgan had bought shares valued at £20,000. It later emerged that he had been responsible for acquiring three tranches of shares worth £67,000.
Minimising the amount spent by Morgan helped the board to retain him as editor. Vickers was party to the board's decision at the time and I detected his embarrassment when we later spoke about it.
Vickers, I must stress, is a decent man. He was tremendously helpful earlier this year ago when I approached him about overcoming a copyright problem on behalf of a friend (Felicity Green) who was writing a book about her Mirror past.
On the occasions we have met he has always been courteous. He is quite emotional. I remember a seminar at City University London when he appeared to break into tears and had to leave the room. He later emailed me to apologise when no apology was necessary.
He has also done his publishing friends a service by acting as the organiser behind the setting up the new press regulator, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso).
But does his departure suggest he might be yet another of the many victims of the Fleet Street phone-hacking scandal?
