Geordie Grieg takes over the Standard

Geordie Grieg is the new editor of the London Evening Standard, replacing Veronica Wadley who held the job for almost seven years and presided over the largest dip in circulation in the title's history.
 
As first reported on The First Post, 48-year-old Grieg, who will leave his job editing the society magazine Tatler sometime next month, was pretty much a shoo-in from the off. He is a close personal friend of Alexander Lebedev, the Russian oligarch and former KGB agent who agreed to buy the ailing London paper last month for a nominal sum, thought to be £1, and is one of two shareholders in the Evening Press Ltd, the company which will soon own the Standard.

Greig's position will have to be ratified by the Editorial Committee being set up to safeguard the paper's independence, which is said to include Lebedev's business partner and close friend Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader. The existing owners of the Standard, the Daily Mail & General Trust (DMGT), which will retain a 24.9 per cent stake in the paper, also announced today that the sale of the paper is due to be completed in the second half of February.

Grieg, an Old Etonian and Oxford graduate, has held a number of jobs in journalism, among them a stint as the Sunday Times's New York correspondent. While he has yet to comment on his new position or his plans for the paper, his first task will be to reassure the Standard's staff. A report in today's Guardian carries an unconfirmed story that Lebedev wants to cut  the number of journalists working on the paper, and that the redundancy terms will be on far less generous terms than those typically granted by the DMGT.

 
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