After two years in one of the trickiest jobs at News International/News UK, Times media editor Ben Webster is moving on to pastures newish. He is returning to the environment beat which occupied him for two years before he obliged the former editor James Harding and took the media job. As media editor Webster found himself in the unenviable position of having to cover his own company which was engulfed by the News of the World phone-hacking scandal, the resignation of its former chief executive Rebekah Brooks, the Leveson inquiry and the arrests of two dozen staff at the flagship sister paper, the Sun. He will be replaced in September by Alex Spence from the Times business desk. Spence joined the paper in 2004 and has covered the professional services sector, legal business and financial crime and was previously editor of the Times's law website.
