The latest intelligence is that Rob Broadfield, the magazine editor, has apparently put his hand up and insiders believe the Chief of Staff, Mark Mallabone, might also fancy his chances.

Meanwhile a couple of good sources have assured me that Robert Taylor is very unlikely to get the gig.

Apart from that I have no firm leads, but with this many names apparently in the hat, when the announcement is eventually made I am almost certain to have mentioned the right person, and therefore will claim to have been right.

Quinn, formerly editor of the Newcastle Herald, talked about his love for Newcastle, but said he wanted to be part of the Canberra community, and was looking forward to moving with his two kids, dog and rabbit (and a wife too, apparently).

He told staff he wouldn’t be in a rush to change things for change’s sake, but wanted to get to know both the staff and the city.

He plans to get his feet under the desk in late February, but in the meantime gave out his email address and encouraged staff to contact him.

One long-time staffer said the performance was “solid and sharp”.

The younger reporters recruited in more recent times were slightly more critical. Some will miss former editor Peter Fray’s more flamboyant style.

The older hands, though, want a steadying of the ship and an understanding that Canberra is not just any town, but one in which inside knowledge and contacts really count.

Everyone is simply glad to have an editor, after the chopping and changing of recent times. Whether circulation will recover is another matter entirely.

He also gave some information on what he is going to do next.

Jaspan said that he was staying in Melbourne and was going to join the Global Cities Institute – an initiative of the United Nations based at RMIT University.

When I rang the Institute at RMIT this afternoon, none of the staff on deck had heard anything about Jaspan’s appointment. It later emerged that he is a member of the advisory committee for the Institute – which is an honorary position. The Director of the Institute, Paul James, said Jaspan had joined late last year and had been “terrific” and “most enthusiastic” in engaging cities in the region, and advising on research priorities.

Talking to Faine, though, Jaspan was less than articulate. What was he going to do at the Global Cities Institute ? Faine didn’t ask, and Jaspan didn’t help, although he said a lot:

“Here in Melbourne, RMIT, they have won the secretariat to serve the Asia-Pacific region for all the – all the cities that are signed up to the program. And the idea is to act as a bit of a clearing exchange to look at everything from social issues, economic issues, environmental issues, around housing, transport, government, governance, waste management, energy usage…Yeah. Now, the reason, I think, I was invited to there is I was really very committed to The Age playing a role and being at the heart of the debate in Melbourne as to what kind of city Melbourne was going to evolve into, given that, you know, population projections say we’ll overtake Sydney and all that. Now, you can’t just pour people in when there’s no water. I mean, there is no water in this city, in sufficient water. Or, in fact, if you push further, you say there is water but we’re not using it terribly well.

There was more along these lines.

Yeah. And the thing we never – we always forget about power is when you switch on your air conditioning, I don’t have any, but if you do switch it on or you switch on the lights, you’re actually consuming water. Another key area we’ve got to really look at is why are we exporting water. Cause right now when we send dairy products, milk, cheese, whatever, we’re actually exporting virtual(*) water.
The same thing goes, you could argue, for – for particularly things like, there’s wine, there’s a whole bunch of other products which consume huge amounts of water, rice and cotton being two of them…
JON FAINE: And meat. Meat production is massive user of water.
ANDREW JASPAN: And meat. Meat production. So, you know, I can’t remember the exact numbers, but for every litre of milk you’re actually chewing up something like 60 litres of water.
JON FAINE: So we need to rethink how we do things. So…
ANDREW JASPAN: So, all of that is, I think, why this, to me, is going to be one of the most stimulating periods to be looking at what’s going on. And in many ways I’m just frustrated I’m not there to play a part.

Here is RMIT’s Global Cities Research Institute website . The United Nations involvement is through the UNGC Cities Programme , and there are about 150 researchers involved.

Faine’s summing up of the discussion was little on the generous side, given that Jaspan’s position with the Institute is honorary:

So the rumour that you were going to go back to England or Scotland is wrong, the rumour that you don’t have any work is wrong. There’s another rumour that you were sacked for refusing to sack journalists, the way Sydney wanted you to. Is that right or wrong?
ANDREW JASPAN:I’m not going to go into that.

Jaspan, of course, was famously shunted from his job as Age editor late last year. His time at the broadsheet was not a happy one. He was faced with a staff revolt, including what amounted to a vote of no confidence in his leadership. He also managed to make enemies of senior management. All this despite comparitively buoyant circulation.

So what did he have to say about all this? Quite a bit – after stating that he was constrained from talking by an agreement he had signed with  Fairfax.

Why was he sacked? Jaspan blamed Rural Press and their reverse take-over of Fairfax.

I was praised for what I’d done editorially, but they told me that there’s going to be a change of direction in management, as – I don’t know if all your listeners know this, but there’s been, in effect, a reverse takeover. Rural Press has taken over Fairfax. The CEO of Fairfax, David Kirk, has gone, Brian McCarthy’s now in charge.

Faine: So, the country paper network’s taken over the capital city paper network?

Correct, yeah. The boys from the bush as they call themselves. [Laughter] And I think they want to go in a different direction and good luck to them. I mean, let’s see how they do. I mean, I think the jury’s out, in terms of what they do, and they’ve only just taken over and Brian, I think, is formulating a complete restructure of the company. Some of which I think is good, by the way.

The bit of the restructure Jaspan thinks is good is changing the arrangement by which the Fairfax newspapers’ online presence is managed entirely separately from the print iterations

I always argued to David Kirk I thought it was wrong that the online division, so The Age online, did not report to me. I had no control over it. That was a separate entity called Fairfax Digital. So, The Age had the newspaper, I was responsible for that. I wasn’t responsible for the magazines, for the books, for online, for a whole range of other areas. And I think it is good that it’s being looked at.

So, in effect, change of direction. And I think they felt that I was not the guy to take it down what they call the low cost environment.

Here Jaspan encouraged the view that he was sacked because he was not willing to cut costs. There is truth to this – but Jaspan’s newsroom critics would add that part of the problem with his management was that he was not sufficiently across his budgets to be able to argue his corner with the high-ups.

Jaspan went on to point out that when he left, so did about 550 other people from across the company. then he made the somewhat staggering claim that he really didn’t mind being sacked.

I don’t actually mind. In fact, I very much welcome a radical rethink of the way Fairfax is run, the way The Age is run, and I was always very much an advocate of that, because it allows you to really challenge. You know, are you spending your money in the right areas.

He made the somewhat conventional point that what matters is journalism, rather than mode of delivery. “I always argue that newspaper is dead”.And when it came to the online presence, Jaspan seemed to suggest that Crikey (yes, us) might be an appropriate model – which is generous of him, given that we were hardly his biggest fans when he was in office.

As I said to you a moment ago, it pains me to say this, but I didn’t have responsibility for The Age online. The people who do run it tell me that they were looking for a different audience, which I think is fine. Or the sort of phrase that they use is stretching the brand. In other words, getting other people who don’t currently read The Age. My argument always is, well, you can do that, but don’t call yourself The Age. You know, The Age is The Age and it needs to communicate through all the channels I said before. Now, I think Brian McCarthy and the new people at Fairfax may look again at that. But the key thing is, you know, who are – who are the people who are going to make editorial decisions about the quality of The Age online, the quality of The Age print and so on and so forth, those are the key questions you do need to look at.

And later:

What I would say, however, is that we here in Melbourne had a lot of thoughts about how we wanted to develop the online service, and I’m not going to rehearse them all here. But I think if we’d allowed local initiative to take hold and we could have developed The Age online as we wanted to do it here in Melbourne, we would have been offering, you know, very much the kind of things that Crikey and others can do out there.

I understand that Jaspan is right about McCarthy wanting to restructure the Fairfax Digital division. Running online separately from the print products is indeed a very strange arrangement at a time of the integrated newsroom.  I understand there may be an announcement within the month on restructuring. In fact, the mystery is why McCarthy hasn’t already moved on this.

Jaspan again floated the idea he offered as editor – of a narrower format for the papers, saying he had always thought The Age was too big. He said former CEO David Kirk had backed the idea, but it hadn’t gone ahead because it would cost money to implement the change – money Fairfax didn’t want to spend. He thought the idea was now dead. Once again, he revealed figures not before in the public domain. The cost of going to a narrower format would have been “about $20 to $40 million” to do both The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. “I think they just felt they didn’t want to spend that right now.”

Jaspan nicely mixed a metaphor to make a contentional point about the way newspapers have been managed.

Newspapers, particularly, have been cash cows. They’ve been milked by the institutional investors and private investors, and they’ve been returning huge profits. And in many ways I think they’ve been killing the golden goose.

So that was it from Jaspan. Doubtless we will be hearing more from him.

Here is the announcement to staff:

MEMO TO:        ALL STAFF

FROM:            GENERAL MANAGER

DATE:            2 FEBRUARY 2009

SUBJECT:        APPOINTMENT OF NEW EDITOR

____________________________________________________________________________

I am pleased to advise that Rod Quinn, currently editor of the Newcastle Herald, has been appointed editor of The Canberra Times.

Rod’s newspaper career started with the Newcastle Herald in 1987.  In 1991 he joined the US media company Knight-Ridder as a Sydney correspondent for its financial wire service.

Rod later returned to The Herald as a sub-editor.   In 1993 he won a Prodi award for his coverage of the Australian peacekeeping operations in Somalia.

Rod was appointed editor of The Post Group of Newspapers in 1996.

From 1998 he spent four years in senior positions on the Herald’s night desk, including production editor and deputy night editor, before being appointed deputy editor in 2002. He was appointed editor of the Newcastle Herald in July 2003.

Rod will be joined in Canberra by his wife and two children.

I will advise Rod’s starting date as soon as possible.

Ken Nichols

This prevented me from reporting that the editor of the Newcastle Herald, Rod Quinn, was not at his desk in Newcastle yesterday or the day before, and he has reportedly been sighted in the Canberra Times building.

I imagine an announcement is not far away, but best not to count chickens, after what happened with Mick MIllett.

Today I write from the cellar.

This morning the newsroom was abuzz with a rumour that betrays how nervous they are feeling. It was along the lines that both Amanda Wilson of the Sydney Morning Herald and Rod Quinn of the Newcastle Herald had been offered the job, and had rejected it.

It’s not true, guys. Or not for Amanda, in any case. I rang her this morning. She has just got back from holiday, and says that nobody has sounded her out about anything, let alone offered her the job.

Would she be interested?

“If I were I wouldn’t say. That’s private,” she said.

Quinn, on the other hand, has not returned my calls – again.

The job is both internal and external communications, but perhaps most importantly it involves liaison with the Federal Government. He takes up the post at a time when the ABC’s triennial funding submission is being considered, and controversies such as the A-Pac spectrum battle are both fresh and continuing.

Millett replaces Gary Dawson, who did the job through the years of the Howard Government, and who left late last year.

Apparently Millett told Fairfax management only this morning that he was not taking up the Canberra Times job, and was leaving the company.

It came as a shock for management, which perhaps explains the sparse, even grudging, nature of the announcement Acting Editor-in-Chief Philip McLean made a short while ago. (See previous post).

The equivalent announcement from ABC Managing Director Mark Scott is, predictably, more fulsome.

FYI…text of Internal ABC announcement

Dear Colleagues,

I am pleased to announce that Michael Millett will be joining the ABC from 16 February as Director of Communications.

Michael has had an extensive career in Canberra as a political journalist and then as a senior media manager. He started his career with the Melbourne Herald before moving to The Sydney Morning Herald in 1989. Since then he has played a number of senior roles at the SMH including chief political reporter, News Editor and North Asia correspondent, based in Tokyo. He is currently the paper’s Deputy Editor.

As Director of Communications, Michael reports to me and sits on the ABC Executive. He is responsible for internal and external communications and will head our liaison with Canberra.

I am delighted we have been able to attract someone with Michael’s experience, understanding and skills into this vital role. I greatly value his tenacity, professionalism and his determination to work as part of a team committed to leading the ABC through a period of technological change and further strengthen its connection to all Australians. I am sure you will join me in making Michael welcome at the ABC when he joins us next month.

Mark Scott

Millett has been popular at the Sydney Morning Herald, and has done a lot of hard and thankless work through that publication’s multiple troubles in recent years.

In the end, he must have decided that being a Fairfax newspaper editor in the current climate, struggling with limited resources to manage decline, was not the best way to expend his talents and energies.

Which leaves the question – who gets the Canberra Times job?

Working on that one…

Dear All,

Bob Cronin has urged staff who believe they are up to the task to apply for the vacant editor’s position.

I also encourage our people to apply for the job if they think they have got what it takes.

We have engaged some outside help to assist in the recruitment and selection process.

If you want to throw your hat in the ring, in the first instance please send your CV to Company Secretary, Peter Bryant, as soon as possible.

Regards,

Chris Wharton

Chief Executive Officer

West Australian Newspapers Limited

“I’m still making up my mind,” he said to me a few moments ago, but declined to say what factors he was weighing up in making the decision.

An announcement is expected towards the end of next week.

The other man whose name was in the hat, deputy editor of the Canberra Times Bruce Jones, this morning said he had no comment to make. He has told colleagues he was not as keen on the position as some had supposed.