Former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre has accused his successor Geordie Greig of being “economic” with the truth when it came to claims a new approach for the paper had helped lure back advertisers.
In a letter to the Financial Times, which itself was a response to an interview the paper published with Greig last week, Dacre delivered a scathing assessment of the new editor’s claims about his handling of the publication.
The pair’s rocky relationship has been well documented over the years, with each editor taking very different approaches.
During his 26 years at the top of the Daily Mail, Dacre developed a reputation for the paper that centred particularly on its reporting on politicians and celebrities alike.
The style he oversaw, which lead to headlines such as the now-infamous “Enemies of the People” front page, had reportedly caused anxiety amongst advertisers putting money into the paper.
Greig, by comparison, has been perceived as bringing a softer, more upbeat tone to the paper – one he claimed had made the publication more commercially attractive.
In the interview published last week by the Financial Times, Greig said he was a “very commercial editor”, and claimed to have brought 265 advertisers back to the paper, including Nationwide and BP.
In a fiery response to these claims, Dacre accused Greig of being “economic” with the truth and claimed that although 265 advertisers may have returned to the paper, “far more than that number had left during the same period”.
This allegation was denied by a spokesperson for Daily Mail Group Media, who said: “The advertising revenue from the 265 new advertisers in Mail newspapers more than offset the loss from those advertisers we didn’t see in the past financial year.”
In the letter, he claimed that the Financial Times had painted a “ludicrous caricature” of the Daily Mail, which he said was “unrecognisable from the paper that in those years increased its circulation by nearly a million in a contracting market and made billions in profits.”
Dacre also pointed to the “quality” of the paper’s journalism, which he said had earned the title “an unprecedented number of awards”.
He congratulated Greig on his “solid start” as editor, however added: “I’m sure he’ll forgive me for suggesting that he (or his PR) defer his next lunch with the FT until he has notched up a small fraction of those journalists’ achievements.”
Greig declined to comment on Dacre’s letter, the Financial Times reported.