MacKenzie calls for Trinity Mirror board to sack Sly Bailey

By June 17 2010, 10:22 am 2 Comments
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In his column in The Sun today Kelvin MacKenzie has called for Trinity Mirror to sack chief executive Sly Bailey. The former Sun editor calls her years at the helm of Trinity Mirror a “disaster for the readers, shareholders and the employees”.

He contrasts her career seven and half year career as chief executive with that of former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan who Bailey sacked in May 2004 (under the headline: “Piers has got talent…shame boss who sacked him hasn’t”).

“I wonder if you would set aside a couple of minutes to compare and contrast careers of the charismatic Piers Morgan with that of the chief executive who fired him without even allowing him to collect his jacket on the way out,” MacKenzie writes.

Mackenzie highlights the successes that has come Morgan’s way on television with ‘America’s got Talent’, ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ and now this week the news that he could be set to sign a multi-million pound deal to succeed Larry King as a chat show host on CNN.

It is a stellar rise no doubt that was borne out of the ashes of his departure over fake Iraq war pictures.

Then MacKenzie turns his attention to Bailey and his point is simple: she needs to go.

He points to the key numbers that have charted her reign as chief executive of Trinity Mirror. At the top of this list is the decline in the Daily Mirror’s circulation. It once stood at two million and now stands at 1.2 million.

The company’s share price has declined hand in hand with circulation. It was at 370p and now stands at 87p as profits have crashed 41% to £105m.


Last week, Bailey announced that a quarter of the editorial staff (200 jobs — 140 full time and 60 part time) at the company’s national newspaper business will be cut while Bailey picked up an overall pay packet of £1.68m with a cash bonus of £671,000. Nice work.

MacKenzie writes: “Don’t you wish you could pick up that kind of money for failure Naively, I thought this kind of racket only happened in state run industries. Is this board asleep or playing dim? Discuss.

“Could I suggest that he board redeem itself by gracefully offering Miss bailey her coat as she is shown the door – after all, it was more than she ever offered Piers.”

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  • Carla Dragmar

    Sly Bailey has to take responsiblity, but more so do the talentless staff at TrinityMirror.

    It’s farcical, for example, that the digital division chops and changes strategy faster than the direction of the wind. They launch a new white-label site every three days it seems (check out the number of links to white-labels on the top of Mirror.co.uk) and then forget about ones they were promoting with ghusto a few weeks earlier. Unfortunately they are your classic ‘newbies’ making mistake after mistake, trying to learn how digital works, ten years after everyone else. Hence the mammoth losses.

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