Informed 11


and Mark Hollinshead and Tindle Newspaper’s, Danny Cammiade . National World’s narrative of benign


ownership faces industry scepticism. “Mr Montgomery’s definition of ‘exclusive local content’ needs to be challenged to make sure he’s not simply carrying out the same process that he followed when fatening up Local World for sale,” says local media analyst Steve Dyson, former editor of the Birmingham Mail and Teesside Gazete. “I’m personally not at all sure his investment vehicle approach is anything more than see-through flannel.” Te business magazine Management


Today once described Montgomery as a hot contender for the title of Britain’s “most vilified boss”. Tat was in 1997, when it noted that he was “still striving to prove that he is more than a sack-and- slash manager.” Plus ça change! Montgomery, raised in Bangor, a coastal


resort outside Belfast he was given a fierce work ethic by his father, an electricity company clerk. He edited the student newspaper at Queen’s University, Belfast, (oſten wearing a suit and tie), and then headed to the Mirror Group (MGN) as a graduate trainee. Ironically, he distinguished himself as a sub-editor, a role he has come to dismiss as dispensable in digital journalism. He moved to Te Sun as chief sub and, aſter being fired by Kelvin MacKenzie, joined up with Nick Lloyd who made him his assistant at the Sunday People, then his deputy at the News of the World. Lloyd remembers a “very clever and determined” journalist who “would stay in the office until midnight”. When Lloyd relocated to America and Rupert Murdoch asked him who should become editor, he replied: “Te best person would be David Montgomery.” In 1987 Monty took the helm of


Murdoch’s Today where he was known as a hard taskmaster and relentlessly hands-on. “He was a bastard but he was a fair bastard,” acknowledged Te Sun columnist Jane Moore, a former Today colleague. Here are the roots of the newspaper


management style of a workaholic who believed he could do it all. It’s telling that the most famous story about Montgomery – that colleagues changed his nickname to Rommel “because Monty was on our side” – has been separately atributed to the newsrooms of the News of the World, Today and the Daily Mirror. Montgomery has shown himself to be “not entirely sentimental about the workforce”, says Lloyd. It was the drowning of Robert Maxwell, off the Canary Islands 30 years ago this November, that gave Montgomery the chance he craved to be a newspaper boss. He put together a business plan that convinced Te Mirror board he could rescue a business riddled with debt. As CEO, Monty quickly fired the editors of Te Mirror and Te People and set about driving down costs.


“Nothing in Montgomery’s history suggests that he worries a great deal about the public service aspect of journalism.”


MGN had a stake in the struggling Independent and its editor Andrew Marr recalled that Monty was determined that the liberal broadsheet should become “a tabloid-style scandal sheet for yuppies”. Marr told MPs that he was told to not put “too many dead black babies” in the paper. Te Murdoch influence on Montgomery


was evident. He has reflected on how “Rupert comes from the same background as I do: Scots Irish”, and praised Murdoch as “an inspirational leader” and “great decision-maker”. At Labour-leaning MGN he brought in a string of News Corp figures, including Sun icon MacKenzie, the former Times editor Charles Wilson and Piers Morgan, who aſter being put in charge of the Daily Mirror, caused a scandal by running a headline “Achtung! Surrender” before the


England-Germany game in the 1996 Euro Championship, Germany won. Aſter initial success in stabilising the business, Montgomery was forced out of MGN when it moved firmly into the local paper market by merging with regional publisher Trinity in 1999. But his cost-cuting reputation helped


atract City backers and his ambition led him into a pan-European publishing empire, Mecom, which acquired titles from the Netherlands to Lithuania. As he sought tech-driven efficiencies to push up profit margins, staff at the Berliner Zeitung branded him the “Anglo- Saxon Locust”. He promises to be more nurturing with Te Scotsman and has brought in former BBC Online chief Neil McIntosh as editor. Tim Luckhurst, a previous Scotsman editor, remains concerned. “Holyrood and the Scotish National Party executive need and deserve scrutiny and I worry that Te Scotsman’s role in that important task will be undermined by further diminution in its staff,” he says. “Nothing in Montgomery’s history suggests that he worries a great deal about the public service aspect of journalism.” Montgomery’s vision for local news


involves television – he runs the Local TV network, based in eight regions from Bristol to Tyne & Wear. His interest in the medium goes back 30 years to his involvement with Live TV, notorious for topless darts and weather reports delivered in Norwegian. Yet he always claims to be embracing


new tech trends. “Tere is an old- fashioned way to operate and a modern way,” he likes to say. Like his mentor Rupert, now 93, he


remains restless. “Some people think me and retirement don’t go”, is another of his phrases. He has a sardonic humour – a photomontage of a tank with his head popping out the turret used to hang outside his office at Mirror Group. Te thin Ulsterman is not yet about to emulate Wagner’s buxom Valkyrie and bring down the final curtain – quite yet.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12