Newland steps down as The National editor

Martin Newland has stepped down from his role as The National editor and has moved "upstairs" in a new role as editorial director, it was confirmed on Monday.

In his new role, Newland will be working to expand the National brand across digital platforms, he told Arabian Business in an interview.

The former Telegraph editor will be replaced by his current deputy, Hassan Fattah.

“We have many things we want to do to expand the product,” Newland said.

Newspapers in the region are better off than in the west, where the migration of readers online has prompted a sharp fall in advertising revenue, but are facing “a storm” in a few years’ time, he said.

“We have to be ready. At the moment we have 270 staff who are currently all feeding into the newspaper and the website, and we need them to feed into a lot more.”

He refuted claims that the move was as a result of disagreements between himself and The National’s owner, the Abu Dhabi Media Company (ADMC), over the editorial direction of the paper.

“Everyone is going to try and bolt on a ‘western editor bolts’ type of angle, but that just isn’t the case here I’m afraid,” he said, adding that he had “nothing but praise and gratitude to those who conceived of the paper in the first place”.

“I have done this several times, with a lot of proprietors, and there are always disagreements, and the workings out of middle ways. But I have found the leadership of ADMC to be entirely sympathetic to our aims, and very supportive.”

Branching out into the business side of publishing was his own idea, he said.

“I have been editing, in three continents, three big newspapers for the last ten or eleven years and I want to move on.”

Newland took up the post at the English language newspaper in 2008 and has previously been the editor of the Daily Telegraph in the UK, and the deputy editor of Canada’s National Post.

During Newland’s tenure, The National has grown into the UAE’s largest newspaper with 270 journalists, including 40 foreign correspondents.

When speaking to Arabian Business in May, Newland said the newspaper aimed to break even in the next four years and double advertising revenues in 2009.

He also insisted the newspaper never had an “open-ended chequebook”, despite being backed by the Abu Dhabi government.

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