And so, after a mere 18 months as editor-in-chief and chief content officer (the last six of them sitting in an office far from the editorial floor), we and the Daily Telegraph say goodbye to Jason Seiken. “I’m proud of how the Telegraph has become a digital leader and gratified that the paper has seen such a large growth in its digital audience,” Seiken declares as he departs, pavilioned in tributes from the CEO who hired him, Murdoch MacLennan.
Fact check: in the autumn of 2013, when Jason was hired from PBS in the States, the Telegraph had 3.2 million daily browsers as recorded by ABC. Now that’s 4.02 million. Over the same period, the Guardian has moved from 4.6 million to 7.3 million and the Mail from 9.5 million to 14.7 million. Telegraph print sales, meanwhile, are down from 551,000 a day to 480,000. If this, as claimed, is “job done”, then the nature of “the job” and of its accomplishment remain obscure.
But really, there’s no point in dumping further on Seiken, an amiable talker of digital talk. Nor any further point in being too critical of MacLennan – or Chris Evans, the hardened newsman who’s taken over as editor. The Barclay brothers demand their annual profit stream. It still flows. The paper is chopped and chopped again to order. Its political warp, this election time, seems almost out of control. You can put some useful sting operations over MPs’ expenses on the plus side. You can also reckon that many insiders, at last, see that advertiser power and editorial integrity don’t mix. You can hope for an improving future – perhaps when the Barclays sell and move on.
And, perhaps, you can also register one abiding lesson. Hard news people can often run a buoyant online operation. Think Martin Clarke and the Mail. But can self-confessed digital geeks run a wheeling, dealing, churning newspaper? The jury isn’t just out: it’s not coming back.
