Dacre: Fleet Street’s last silverback gorilla
When I worked at the Daily Mail, I began to think of it like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. It wasn’t exactly that “nobody ever goes in and nobody ever comes out” – after all, there was a steady stream of workers on the escalators up to the airy atrium above Whole Foods in Kensington, west London – but the whole operation felt so hermetic.Outsiders saw it as a strange citadel, where political reputations were created and destroyed, and where our national conversation was greatly enlivened or maliciously poisoned (depending on your point of view). But its workings were hardly ever exposed to outside scrutiny, even by the cloistered standards of the press. Every day, the Daily Mail casts its eye over the world, and usually finds it wanting; the world hardly ever gets to gaze back.
As with so many elements of the Mail, this secrecy springs directly from its editor’s psyche. That is why, when news broke that Paul Dacre was stepping down after 26 years, so many commentators hailed it as the end of an era.
The Daily Mail is the most influential newspaper in Britain, and its editor has the purest power of any person in Britain. His successor, the Mail on Sunday’s Geordie Greig, has a close relationship with the group’s proprietor Lord Rothermere, but it is inconceivable that he will preside over a paper that reflects so precisely his own enthusiasms, hang-ups, obsessions, and vendettas. Dacre was Fleet Street’s last silverback gorilla.
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