What is the point of an editor? To set policy, steer the ship, provide leadership, go out to lunch. 
Who should an editor serve? The proprietor, the staff, the reader.
All of those. But the key concern in all of this is the reader. Start there and everything else will flow naturally. Understand what concerns the reader - and that means telling them what they need to know as well as what they want to hear - and you shouldn't go far wrong.


This week we have seen a prime example of what can be achieved by an effective editor. And a prime example of what can happen without an effective editor.
The Home Office minister Karen Bradley has told MPs that interim measures will be put before Parliament in the next couple of months to stop police and HMRC looking into journalists' phone and email records to try to identify whistleblowers unless they convince a judge that it right to do so.

This important move to protect journalistic sources is a direct result of the campaign started by Press Gazette when it learnt that police had gone through Tom Newton Dunn's phone bills to find out who had leaked the Plebgate story to the Sun. 
That story was written on September 2 last year.

Press Gazette soon learnt that this was not an isolated incident and that some forces were using the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to "spy" or "snoop" on journalists. The choice of verb may have been melodramatic, but this behaviour was clearly counter to the freedom of expression provisions enshrined in Article 10 of the Human Rights Convention.

Press Gazette wrote to police forces asking about their practices and was rebuffed by many, who said it was too costly to answer such questions. A petition was started asking the Interception of Communications Commissioner to act, attracting more than 1,600 signatures.
The acting commissioner did, indeed, act even before the petition was presented to him. He, too, wrote to every force in the country and they answered. It later turned out that the Act had been used to obtain information about the phone records of 82 journalists.  
The Mail on Sunday reported that its journalists' phone records had been trawled to reveal sources of the Chris Huhne speeding ticket story - sources that a judge had specifically ordered should remain anonymous. Liberal Democrats made the overhaul of RIPA party policy, the Home Office promised to review the guidelines for its use. 
All of that happened within six weeks of that first Tom Newton Dunn story. 
But when the guidelines were reviewed the draft changes suggested only that a special note should be made where the records to be examined involved people in sensitive professions involving confidentiality - journalists, lawyers, doctors, for example. 
Press Gazette attacked the issue with renewed vigour, encouraging people to respond to the draft before the consultation period ran out. 
The Metropolitan Police were meanwhile refusing to engage with PG, rejecting a Freedom of Information request as "annoying and vexatious" because the website had had the temerity to ask six questions on the subject.
This month the interceptions commissioner submitted his report  to the Prime Minister. He found that  police were not paying attention to Article 10, that they should be told to do so and, as belt and braces, judges should have to approve warrants to look at data in the hope of finding journalists' sources. David Cameron and Theresa May accepted the recommendations, but it was still not clear that action would be taken before the election.
Until today.

Karen Bradley's promise comes just 24 weeks after that first story - an astonishingly speedy and successful outcome for Press Gazette under the leadership of Dominic Ponsford.
Ponsford and his news editor Will Turvill have been nominated for two big campaigning awards for their efforts. They are up against stiff opposition and may not emerge triumphant. But their industry should make some special effort to acknowledge their work - some recognition at the Press Awards would be appropriate - on behalf of their readers: the journalists in this country.
Ponsford is, you see, an editor who understands his readership. He set up the British Journalism Awards to recognise public interest journalism, ethical journalism that makes a difference. He has never condoned bad practice, but he has defended those he feels are being ill-used or made scapegoats by the machines of the state or their employers. 
This is what an editor should be doing.

We can also see what an editor should be doing when we look at the Daily Telegraph. 
The paper's response to Peter Oborne's explosive account of life on the paper since the sacking of Tony Gallagher was at first limp, then pathetic and has now scraped the bottom of the barrel. To use the deaths of two people to smear a rival shows such an extraordinary lack of compassion, sense of proportion and basic news judgment as to beggar belief. Did whoever put today's paper together really believe that this was an issue of such importance that it should appear on the front page? Did they really believe that this was a matter of interest to the readers? Why should the Telegraph's audience be remotely concerned with the working environment of another newspaper group? Or that the Guardian may or may not have changed one headline last July? 
The Telegraph may genuinely have believed that the HSBC story was old, but once a story has traction you can't just ignore it. If the Telegraph thought that the BBC and the Guardian (it's unclear how the Times became included in its triumvirate of 'leftwing Labour soulmates') were rehashing old news for political reasons, it could have written a piece pointing out its own previous coverage of this story. If there were indeed a story to refer back to. Instead it just ignored it for two days and then presented it as one where the villains were HMRC, Miliband, the man in the moon - anyone but HSBC.

Private Eye had written much about the absent coverage before the Telegraph's former chief political commentator and writer of editorials called the paper to account.
Oborne's blog led to appearances on television and radio and was well covered by the Guardian, Independent and Times. The Telegraph wrote nothing. Readers who didn't listen to the Today programme or watch Channel 4 News must, therefore, have been bemused when they encountered a lamentable full-length leader scattering accusations at all and sundry and bleating about the lack of attention everyone had paid to its MPs' expenses scoop. 
Funny that. I didn't notice rival papers scoffing at that story. I do remember everyone scrambling for the Telegraph the moment the first editions came up to see the next instalment and rushing to catch up. I do remember the then deputy editor of the Times, which of course turned down this gem, describing it as "the gift that keeps on giving". I do remember everyone crediting the Telegraph in their coverage. I do remember the industry recognising its work with a shower of awards.
The Telegraph is so confident in its defence of itself that the "news" stories today about the Guardian and Times carry no bylines. Buzzfeed reports that the author of the front-page suicide story was seen arguing with the newsdesk about it. The comment buttons on the website are absent from the stories and from the leader - although readers were able to comment on previous editorials this week on such subjects as Brian the horse and Putin in Ukraine. Does this mean the Telegraph doesn't think readers would have anything to say on the matter (in which case why publish the stories?) or is it afraid that they may not approve of what has been written and how it has behaved?
Peter Oborne accused the Telegraph of a fraud against its readers. Its response this week reinforces the perception that the readers are the last people it is concerned about.  
A strong editor would never have found himself in such troubled waters. But instead of steering this once-great ship to safety, whoever was at the helm ploughed on through the ice floes and straight into the iceberg.  
The Telegraph under Murdoch MacLennan and Jason Seiken has done away with traditional titles in favour of directors of content. Chris Evans is the weekday editor, Ian MacGregor in charge of weekends. We have heard from none of these four men this week.
So the question remains: who is editing the Telegraph?

Also on this subject:
Peter Oborne quits
The Telegraph strikes back
A layman's guide to the relationship between editorial and advertising
Blurred lines in the native advertising newsroom

Newspapers have never been lacking in invention when it comes to titles. Creativity knows no bounds when seeking to soothe the ego of someone being leapfrogged or formalise the advance of the leaper (preferably without any increase in salary).
The clearcut days of a news editor on one side of the desk and a chief sub on the other, each with ranks of reporters and subs doing their bidding, have long passed. We now have heads of this, editors of that plus armies of associate, assistant and executive editors (often with something in parentheses). Who is in charge of the money pages, the head of business, business editor or City editor? Who is the higher ranking, the health editor who writes the stuff or the assistant news editor who commissions him?
Matters have been further complicated by digitally minded folk such as David Montgomery in the regions and Jason Seiken at the Telegraph, who have introduced a hierarchy of heads, directors and publishers of content.
Apart from irritating those of us at a loss to understand what was wrong with calling a story a story there didn't seem much harm in it. It wasn't too hard to grasp the idea of "content" as an umbrella for stories, photographs, videos, graphics and whatever.
This past week, however, has offered new reasons to be fearful. 
Peter Oborne's suggestion that commercial concerns were behind the Telegraph's minimal coverage of the HSBC scandal have been rejected by the paper, first in a company statement and today in a less-than-convincing leader. (The Telegraph is not even sufficiently confident  of its argument to allow online readers to comment, whereas it was happy to accommodate their thoughts on Brian the horse yesterday - 32 comments - and on Putin the day before - 2,462.)
But giving the men in charge double titles - Seiken is chief content officer and editor-in-chief, Chris Evans is editor of the weekday Telegraph and director of content  - does little to cement confidence in the separation of editorial and commercial duties.Other senior staff labour under the labels "director of transformation and talent" and "director of audience development". There are also a couple of deputy directors of content.
There is nothing in these titles to secure the perception that these people's concerns are purely editorial. Evans has "responsibility for output across all platforms digital and print"; that word "output" is worrying not only because of its redolence of factories and conveyor belts, but also because it is not qualified by any journalistic adjective.

This nomenclature has been in place at the Telegraph since last year, so what is its relevance now?
Well last week the Telegraph introduced its new Spark "branded content and design division". This data and analysis-driven "creative commercial department" is "where Mad Men meet Math Men," says Spark managing director Matt Cory.
This department will use new tools to analyse data collected from two and a half million readers who have ventured over its metered paywall in the past couple of years "to ensure that TMG are serving the right customer the right content, so that more than one million users a month are driven to engaging branded content across telegraph.co.uk".
We're talking advertising here, of course, and the principles are much the same as those employed by stores offering loyalty cards. The presentation is full of jargon, but Cory is relatively clear in the use of the phrase "branded content".
But then along comes Dave King, executive director of TMG, to proclaim: “The content and product development teams at TMG have fully endorsed everything we are doing at Spark. This will enable us to ensure that Spark delivers content, insight and audience.”
But aren't our editorial wallahs "content teams"? Are there different "content teams" for editorial and advertising? Now the new naming conventions feel more uncomfortable and the boundaries of advertising, native advertising and editorial seem even more blurred.

What about other newspaper groups? The Digiday website is helpful here because yesterday its Chris Smith took a look at Spark alongside the News UK, Guardian and Trinity Mirror native advertising operations. What News UK's Tiffanie Darke, pictured, had to say was particularly interesting. 
Darke used to run the Sunday Times Style magazine and is now News UK's creative content director and in charge of a design studio called the Newsroom. Before it was set up, she says, the team was swamped because it had to create and sell without much help from the rest of the business "especially editorial". 
“One of the things we wanted to offer was the ability to be nimble around the news agenda. That’s why we called it the Newsroom. As a news publisher, we’ve got the ability to move quick," she says - and that includes having her team sitting in on editorial conferences.

Darke tells Smith that this is one-way traffic and that while editorial staff help the studio, the studio has no influence over journalists producing copy for the paper.
Hmmmm. Is that enough separation? For a start, is it wise to call an advertising enclave the Newsroom when there are three real newsrooms operating in the same building? Doesn't that invite confusion?
More importantly, it's one thing to have Caitlin Moran and Peter Brookes describing their work in a promotional video for the Times, it's quite another to have them produce material to sell an outside product. It's doubtful, of course, that such superstars would be enticed to turn their hands at copywriting, it's easy to see how that task will fall to the lowest-paid most overworked staff.
Commercial interests may not influence editorial decisions and the way stories are written (Former Times editor James Harding once ribbed me for producing a business front page showing Tesco in a bad light, saying: "That's right, Liz. Stick it to our biggest advertiser!" but the page was published unchanged), but surely having journalists producing "branded content" diminishes their standing as impartial observers?
The Telegraph may or may not allow its commercial interests to influence its editorial judgments. If it does, as several people have told Press Gazette and the BBC, it is unlikely to be alone. 
Even if it were, there are other elements in Peter Oborne's tale of woe that will resonate across newsrooms - staffing cuts, slipping standards - and to expect the surviving journalists who are already serving print, web, mobiles and social media, to pitch in with advertising copy as well is to ask too much.

Oborne quits: the killer quotes and reaction
SubScribe: a layman's guide to advertising and editorial