So the most absurd editorial appointment in the Daily Telegraph’s history ended with a whimper when Jason Seiken was quietly relieved of his responsibilities last week.
The man appointed as chief content officer and editor-in-chief in September 2013 stepped down – to use the management euphemism for an enforced exit – after a long period of playing no role in the running of the Telegraph titles.
It is sobering to reflect that Seiken’s appointment resulted in the firing three months after his arrival of the widely respected editor, Tony Gallagher.
Seiken was hired for his digital skills, which he had in abundance. But his lack of knowledge of British newspapers and his clumsy interventions into Gallagher’s domain proved counter-productive.
It was ironic that not too long after Gallagher’s departure Seiken was removed altogether from his daily editorial role, which then passed to Chris Evans.
Seiken spent months inhabiting an office on the management floor and was supposedly tasked with dreaming up ways of transforming Telegraph Media Group into a digital business.
His departure comes at an acutely difficult period for TMG and its chief executive, Murdoch MacLennan. The group was already in a state of turmoil following the high-profile resignation in February of Peter Oborne, the former chief political commentator.
He wrote a lengthy and detailed article accusing TMG of censoring articles on HSBC to avoid losing the bank’s advertising. It was widely reported and put the Telegraph on the back foot.
Many readers decided that they could no longer put their trust in the paper and turned away, adding to the problem of the Telegraph’s fast-falling circulation.
Then, to add to the misery, the Telegraph also lost its star sports writer, Henry Winter, last week. Hugely popular with the paper’s readers, he decided to leave after 20 years to accept a lucrative offer from the Times.
It is not all gloom. Evans’s news sense and his pugnacious general election support for the Conservative party has got the Telegraph talked about for the right reasons in recent weeks. But the long-term prospects for the paper look anything but bright and the reverses must put a question mark over MacLennan’s own future after 11 years in the job.
He was hired by TMG’s ultimate owners, the Barclay brothers, Sir David and Sir Frederick, who acquired the group for £665m following the Conrad Black debacle.
MacLennan, who is steeped in the world of ink and newsprint, has shown no real understanding of how to take the papers forward into a digital future. He had hoped that Seiken would be the man to do that job for him, but it was not to be.
The key to the necessary technological transformation of traditional newspapers demands an intimate knowledge of both print and online. It has to be organic and it requires subtlety. Journalists and technologists have to work hand in hand.
Seiken proved unable to communicate his vision to the staff. His so-called “town hall” addresses tended to leave them puzzled even though some journalists, especially the younger ones, did grasp that he might just have a point about the need for structural change in both news-gathering and news transmission.
The majority were not, however, impressed with the parachuting in of someone billed as a “digital guru” with only the slightest of newspaper experience and no knowledge of the nature of British journalism. His appointment was bound to be a risky undertaking, and MacLennan must take the heat for that.
He had, after all, made similar mistakes before. He employed one chief information officer who outsourced tech development only for the replacement to bring it back in house. In truth, TMG, once in the digital vanguard, has been floundering for years without a coherent online strategy.
MacLennan has concentrated instead on running an ever tighter ship. There have been regular staff culls, with older, higher-paid members of staff sacrificed in favour of young digital natives.
Although that has helped to keep TMG commercially successful, returning £50m-plus profits for three successive years, it has not solved the main problem of a paper that has lost its mojo and just doesn’t know how to get it back.