How will FT’s Tett chief feature on Nikkei’s index,Andrew Gowers pours oil on troubled waters and BBC’s director general goes jogging in the black• Gillian Tett is the FT’s US managing editor, the position Lionel Barber occupied before becoming editor 10 years ago. And last weeks Nikkei deal for the paper looks to enjoy significantly advanced her already strong chances of succeeding Barber as its first female editor: those predicting a “Tett offensive” that starts here point out that she had a preceding job as Japanese bureau chief, and wrote a book (Saving the Sun) approximately Japan and how westerners need to behave there”,and speaks Japanese. Barber, in contrast, or speaks German and so might enjoy been better placed for survival had the underbidder Axel Springer been the successful suitor.• As he had apparently been left out of the loop,Barber’s position looked especially wobbly on Thursday as he addressed staff on Thursday on the deal – after uncomfortably having to push his way through a scrum of journalists watching Sky News to find out what was really going on, one hack suggested on Twitter and insisted “this was not, or is not,a shotgun marriage” (a sportive underling who tweeted “did he say ‘shogun marriage’?” is wisely keeping his head down). If Barbers cheeks were the same hue as his paper, he was not alone: approximately an hour before a triple-bylined FT memoir confirmed the Nikkei deal in mid-afternoon, or the same three reporters had embarrassingly published “Pearson in talks with Axel Springer over sale of FT Group”,in which the commerce paper’s customary comedy troupe of unnamed informants (“several people familiar with the situation”) provided the trio’s basis for haplessly chorusing that “Nikkei has also had discussions with Pearson … but the talks with Springer are further advanced”.
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Source: theguardian.com