MAIL’S EDITOR TO TAKE UP NEW ROLE
PAUL Dacre yesterday announced that he is to step aside as Editor of the Daily Mail after 26 years.
The newspaper’s proprietor, Lord Rothermere, described him as ‘quite simply the greatest Fleet Street Editor of his generation’ and praised him for holding power to account through many campaigns and investigations.
Mr Dacre said he will step back from day-to-day editing of the Mail by his 70th birthday in November.
He will take on broader challenges within the company as Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and Metro newspapers and the MailOnline and Metro.co.uk websites.
Mr Dacre said he was ‘announcing this now in order to facilitate the handover to a new team’.
He has been a Fleet Street Editor for 28 years, 26 of them at the Mail and prior to that at the Evening Standard.
Lord Rothermere, the Chairman of parent company DMGT, praised Mr Dacre’s ‘brilliant stewardship… not only for his huge circulation successes on both the Mail and Standard but also for the sheer power of his many campaigns, investigations and crusades that have held power to account, given a voice to the voiceless and often set the political agenda, through six prime ministerships’.
He added: ‘He has done this while working tirelessly to defend Press freedom to the benefit of our whole industry.’
In his statement, Mr Dacre said: ‘ It is a joy to work for Lord Rothermere. He has given me two things that to an editor are worth more than all the riches of Araby – the freedom to edit without interference and the backing to assemble Fleet Street’s greatest team of journalists.’
He said the ‘extraordinary team’s tireless efforts’ had increased the Mail’s circulation by almost a million copies in a declining market, and made the Mail’s Saturday edition Britain’s biggest selling paper.
The team had launched the Scottish and Irish Daily Mails, Metro – the UK’s top circulation week- day paper – and MailOnline which, under its Publisher Martin Clarke, has become behind our countless successful
campaigns. Whether it has been the world’s No 1 English-language justice for Stephen Lawrence and newspaper website. He said: ‘During the Omagh bomb victims, these years thousands of jobs plastic in supermarkets and in the in our industry were created.’ seas, Dignity for the Elderly,
Describing the Mail’s campaigning thwarting Labour’s plans for super journalism, Mr Dacre added: casinos, or putting sepsis and ‘It’s this team who have been prostate cancer on the map, we have shown that newspapers make a difference.
‘Without the Mail, Gary McKinnon, Shaker Aamer and Marine A would probably be in jail and Afghan British Army translators, whose lives are now at risk, would not have the chance to live here.’
Alleged computer hacker Mr McKinnon, who has Asperger’s syndrome, was saved from extradition to the US in 2013, and the Mail’s work to free Mr Aamer, the last Briton held at Guantanamo Bay, saw him come home in 2015. Royal Marine Alexander Blackman, jailed for killing a Taliban fighter in the war in Afghanistan, was freed last year.
Mr Dacre also paid tribute to his team for spearheading the battle for freedom of expression against those seeking to impose statutory regulation of the Press.
He said: ‘This battle is on-going and I plan to continue playing as great a part in it as ever.’
Paying tribute to the Daily Mail’s staff, Mr Dacre expressed his ‘heartfelt gratitude to everyone – journalists, management, circulation reps and printers – who have made Associated one of the most successful newspaper groups in the world’.
He said it has been a privilege to work with them all, and ‘I look forward to continuing to do so in my new role in which I will endeavour to ensure that our company remains at the absolute forefront of a rapidly changing industry.’
Under Mr Dacre’s stewardship, the Daily Mail has won Newspaper of the Year on seven occasions at the industry’s ‘Oscars’, the British Press Awards – more than any other title.
‘Has worked tirelessly to defend Press freedom’