Media

POWERPLAY: Ramadge in arm wrestle with Baker while Neil Mitchell lurks

The Age’s “Acting” Editor in Chief Paul Ramadge, once known in the Spencer Street Soviet as disgraced former editor Andrew Jaspan’s hatchet man, is quietly positioning himself already as his permanent successor.

Ramadge has a lot of ground to make up, and will be attempting to exploit a bizarre wave of pro Jaspan sentiment that has emerged from The Age newsroom for their fallen and once much-loathed former editor.

Gone is the talk of Jaspan’s random, impetuous and arbitrary rule that once dominated the water-cooler and caf conversations of the Age’s supposedly hard-done-by and ever whining lefty scribes. All that meanness has been replaced, VEXNEWS has learned, by concerned talk about the mega-salaried Jaspan’s family and mortgage (held by The Age, no vulgar financial institutions for Jaspan) on his Park Street West St Kilda property.

Jaspan is believed to be planning on heading back to England although is believed to be waiting/hoping by the phone for a call that might never come from Herald Sun Editor in Chief Bruce Guthrie who might like to put Jaspan in a role with a similar level of productivity as the Herald Sun’s Alan Howe, with a weekly column about not much. Certainly such a move would annoy The Age but it would probably also annoy the Herald Sun’s vast number of readers who roll with Bolt and wouldn’t slum it with Jaspan.

Ramadge - closely associated with his former boss - is understood to be hoping to make the most of this strange change in sentiment in order to out-maneuver Rural Press’s candidate for the position, Mark Baker who was tipped initially by Andrew Landeryou’s blog as the man most likely when he returned to the paper last year.

Ramadge and Baker are believed to be very wary of each other, with Ramadge particularly annoyed with Baker being hired from outside undermining his position and authority.

Industry insiders say though that there could well be another looming threat on the horizon to the dominant lefty paradigm at the nation’s most stridently left-wing journal. 3AW’s morning presenter Neil Mitchell is believed to be interested in making the jump to the editor’s chair in the Spencer Street Soviet to “round out his career”.

3AW insiders scoffed at this suggestion today assuring VEXNEWS that Mitchell is “perfectly happy” winning the ratings and would be unlikely to make the jump in a climate of cuts and carnage at the journal.

© 2008 VEXNEWS.