More than 700 journalists lost their jobs at the publisher of the Daily Mirror last year – staff numbers are down by a third in total since 2016 – but it took the loss of just one to highlight what a mess the company is in. The departure of Alison Phillips as editor-in-chief at the end of this month is “like the ravens leaving the Tower”, as one former executive put it.
Prophecies about the fall of the print kingdom are not new, and readers may struggle to care much about the fate of a tabloid found by a court just last month to have hacked Prince Harry’s phone. Yet the saga of Reach, the publisher of the Daily Mirror and Express, as well as some 120 local newspapers, matters.
