We’ve discussed the current shambles in and around the Washington Post a lot recently, all related to Jeff Bezos hiring a sleazy British editor to take over the Post. It’s been happening across American media too, with British “journalists” and editors washing up in American newspapers and trying to whitewash their history of hacking, blagging and unethical journalism. The WaPo/Will Lewis controversy has ended magnifying the issue in both British and American media, with American outlets now wanting to prove that they’re paying attention to the shenanigans across the pond. Speaking of, the Hollywood Reporter has a fascinating story about the Daily Mail and its missing online editor-in-chief Gerard Greaves.
As guests sipped from The Daily Mail-branded coconut drinks in the courtyard of the Hotel Martinez at the annual Cannes Lion advertising gabfest in the south of France last week, the New York newsroom of the British tabloid was suffering from a leadership crisis that has grown more dire by the day following the mysterious departure of its now former online editor-in-chief Gerard Greaves. Greaves, an old-school Fleet Street editor who had been parachuted into the U.S. to help steady the site in 2022 following the departure of hard-charging British founding editor Martin Clarke, was last seen in the New York newsroom in late February frantically asking staff for help to delete emails off his computer.
When he did not appear back in the newsroom following a trip to London, senior editorial leadership was advised he was on “compassionate leave” with no further explanation. By the end of last month, the Mail announced Greaves, who did not respond to multiple requests for comment, would be leaving the company after 24 years and Katie Davies, currently the U.S. editor of The Times and The Sunday Times, had been poached for the top job. Davies does not start her role until the fall.
Since his arrival, the former deputy editor of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday had set about hiring almost exclusively Brits with American journalists routinely passed over for jobs. One senior American employee told Hot Source she was asked by Greaves to take a demotion after having a child. The employee, who left the Daily Mail after the incident, said Greaves told her that he did not like working with women who had children.
According to the employee, who asked to remain anonymous, Greaves even asked her if she was planning on having another child and said that mothers had a hard time focusing. “It was just a mess,” the former employee told Hot Source. “It was a chaotic mess. I couldn’t believe he was in that position of power.”
Greaves, who held a membership paid for by the Daily Mail to the exclusive Manhattan private members club, The Ned NoMad, would routinely lavishly entertain people on the company dime, according to two people familiar with the situation. “He was like a rapper with his first hit album spending money,” one former colleague told Hot Source.
Several current and former employees who spoke with Hot Source say the leadership vacuum has allowed another Brit, Sean O’Hare, to rise in the newsroom. O’Hare, who wasted no time moving into Greaves’ glass office, assumed the role of acting editor, but his chronic absenteeism and erratic management style have only added to the toxic work environment, according to the people familiar with the situation. (O’Hare did not respond to a request for comment.)
As Brits claim top postings in U.S. media at CNN, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, the events that have played out at the Daily Mail may serve as a cautionary tale of imports arriving from across the pond with a lack of understanding of American news, its practices or its audience.
Now, Hot Source has learned the Mail’s London HQ at Derry Street is sending yet another Brit, Nicholas Pyke, to act as its eyes and ears. But for many staffers, the damage to the brand has already been done. “People are truly fed up,” one recently departed staffer told Hot Source. “This place is completely f–ked, and there is zero leadership coming from London, and they have destroyed the potential we had here in the United States.”
So the Mail Online successfully broke into the American market with celebrity gossip and publishing mega-exclusive photos, but they ruined it by chronic mismanagement at their New York hub of operations by only employing Brits and treating the few American employees like sh-t. I honestly didn’t realize that the Mail’s operation in New York was even that large, and that’s because everything on the Mail Online is written in that weird tabloid Britspeak, like they’ve never spoken to an American in their life, even as they’re reporting on American celebrities. The Mail Online is also leaning heavily into political coverage of the American election, and they’re all-in on Donald Trump. Anyway, the chaos and mismanagement is funny and I’m sure there’s some larger story with missing editors and all. They’re up to their neck in crimes, I’m sure.
Front-page covers courtesy of the Mail.