An acquaintance in Canada says he kept a close eye on what was going on at home. “He was a frequent ranter about how the Telegraph was not a meritocracy. Under Charles, he felt it was who you knew that decided whether you got promotion.”Though Newland and Moore’s relationship was civil during the former’s news-desk stretch, it was made clear that Moore did not see a space for his news editor higher up the hierarchy. A lot of people think Martin will put a bit of oomph in the paper, which might be a good thing.”Those who remember Newland seem to like him; comparisons of his style to that of Paul Dacre, the fearsomely aggressive Daily Mail editor, are laughable.Newland rejoins the Telegraph after five years as the founding deputy editor of the National Post in Toronto (he left when the Telegraph’s owner, Lord Black, sold the paper). Apart from stories about his great obsessions – hunting, Northern Ireland, religion – he is not that bothered. “In a funny way, Charles is quite shy; he doesn’t mix easily in the newsroom,” I am told.Newland, a former home-news editor at the Telegraph, is quite different in that respect, and he perhaps has the news operation in mind when he says: “Drop me into a situation, and the chances are you’ll have a more energised and revitalised operation.” He also says: “I am a great fan of human-interest stories – stories that grab you by the heart, not by your prejudices.”A Telegraph source says: “Charles is not terribly interested in news. The view of some is that Moore, who has never been a news reporter, has not placed enough emphasis on chasing stories, preferring the “high-table” school of editing, concentrating his attentions on the paper’s comment pages.

The general consensus of the people I have spoken to is that they were not expecting Moore to be around for very much longer. “But I was gobsmacked when I heard Charles was actually going – there have been so many false alarms,” says one long-serving staffer.Unusually for the days after the announcement of a new editor, the mood in the building is calm Newland is not expected to slash and burn on his arrival. “There is no feeling of great terror, but neither is it: ‘Thank God Charles is gone,’” says one writer. My understanding is that the scoop was the result of David Blunkett’s indiscretion. He had heard about the Telegraph’s game of musical chairs from a source at the paper, and, unable to remain silent, passed on his tip to Tom Baldwin, associate editor of The Times, over dinner.If the Telegraph staff were taken aback, it was by the timing rather than by the substance of the announcement. The poor foot soldiers at the front line were, as is the Fleet Street tradition, the last to know that Charles Moore was going. Indeed, the reporters and sub-editors at The Daily Telegraph (and the rest of us) might still be unaware of the imminent arrival of Martin Newland as editor, had it not been for the intervention, last Tuesday night, of the Home Secretary, who found himself at the Labour Party conference in Bournemouth in possession of a piece of gossip he regarded as too hot to keep to himself.
It was The Times that broke the story, reporting in its first edition on Wednesday morning that Moore was “believed to be stepping down” and Newland was on the way in.

But I felt like less of an idiot, since he had managed to convince a whole team of ITV researchers.. It wrecked the story and I felt acutely embarrassed about the whole thing.Then, about a year later, ITV ran a documentary alleging that Diana had been murdered I was aghast to see that their main witness was my man. I asked a French friend who had good connections with the police to check this guy out. We were going to press when my friend rang me up and said: “Your witness is a professional witness. The police aren’t doing anything because he has claimed to have been present at too many accidents.”So I rang the paper and said: “Quick – we’ve got to ditch it,” and they said: “We can’t – the graphics are done.” So I had to rewrite the story in a way that still used what the man had said but also made it clear that we didn’t believe him.