Alan Rusbridger's tenure at The Guardian showed that good journalists can make for terrible business leaders

When City tough nuts like Carolyn McCall and boardroom veteran Paul Myners were chief executive and chairman of the Guardian Media Group they kept a leash on the editor's excesses. But then the grip fatally loosened

Media excess not seen since the dotcom bubble (Getty Images)

Journalists make lousy businessmen. We’re an unpredictable, chaotic and, in many cases, innumerate bunch. Many of us end up in newspapers because no one else would have us. That’s why so few reporters and editors make good managers, or become business tycoons.

There are exceptions, of course. Martin Lewis made £80m flogging his MoneySavingExpert website. Will Lewis, former editor of the Telegraph, now runs Dow Jones. Our own Anthony Hilton made a decent fist of being managing director of the Evening Stanard.

But as I say, those are exceptions to the rule. Sir Alan Rusbridger is not.

A brilliant editor, to be sure, Rusbridger led The Guardian newspaper for 20 years through scoop after scoop. They don’t dish out Pulitzer’s for crummy journalism. The editorial staff I spoke to this week still revere his transformation of the paper and its website.

But, like most editors, Rusbridger wanted to spend more and more, doing what he figured would make for better and better journalism, in more parts of the globe.

An enthusiast like him needs a strong board to keep the costs under control. When City tough nuts like Carolyn McCall, now running easyJet, and boardroom veteran Paul Myners were chief executive and chairman of the Guardian Media Group, they kept a leash on his excesses. But recent years seemed to see that grip loosen, to the extent that its owner and benefactor, the Scott Trust, is now facing a financial crisis. Its cash reserves fell from £838m to £743m just in the last year. At that rate, it would run out of money in a decade.

For years, there seemed no end to the resources Rusbridger’s Guardian would throw at stories it felt it “owned”. Where most papers would have one or two reporters covering events like the Leveson Inquiry, multiple numbers of Guardian journalists would be filing tweets, features and live blogs. There were reputedly seven journalists on the environment desk alone.

Rusbridger’s zeal for a story was, it seems, echoed in his enthusiasm for the mantra that open access, free for all content over the Internet was the future. Build it and advertisers will come, was the theory. The Guardian hired 480 of its 1950 employees in the past three years – a mark of profligacy unheard of in media since the dotcom bubble.

But the advertising revenue didn’t come anywhere near fast enough. Now, the Guardian is having to shed 310 staff, with insiders expecting more may follow.

That being said, the pernicious briefing to the media from the Stop Alan camp opposed to his succession to the Scott Trust chairmanship was distasteful. “Shameless,” as Press Gazette editor Dominic Ponsford described it last night.

Such leaks were an indication of a dysfunctional management.

But the very idea of such a controversial figure as Rusbridger ever becoming chairman of the Scott Trust was outlandish from its inception. Not only because of the profligacy of which he was accused, but because of the huge influence he would have continued to have in the organisation.

In other big businesses, best practice dictates that the men and women running companies should not be elevated to being chairman. The thinking is that the chair needs to be a completely independent, free-thinking spirit who’ll bring an external cool head to bear on the running of the company.

It would be unthinkable that Rusbridger, with his 20 years’ history as an editor and kingpin in the organisation, could fulfil those criteria.

Although the Guardian organisation is unique, with the trust structure sitting above the company, there’s no reason why it should be any different.

In other words, the Scott Trust’s outgoing chairman Dame Liz Forgan should never have given him her job in the first place.

Rusbridger’s departure message to Guardian staff described the cataclysmic “force 12 digital hurricane” hitting media companies’ finances. “We will come through….” he concluded.

With him now out of the organisation, there’s more chance that prediction will come to pass.

Unruly popcorn and lesbian love at the Veuve Clicquots

The Veuve Clicquot awards bash for women in business is one of my favourite evenings of the corporate calendar. This year’s do on Monday night was no exception. It’s not just the glamorous frocks, the champagne and celebrities that make it such a fun occasion, but the party atmosphere that’s unmatched at other dos.

Like the overwhelming majority of British boardrooms, most functions on the City calendar are overwhelmingly attended by men in suits running large, sometimes monolithic businesses. The Veuve Cliquot do is a total celebration of the fact that it doesn’t have to be that way.

The winner, an irrepressible former academic called Sarah Wood, had gone from university lecturing in American studies to founding Unruly, a business creating digital advertising technology. She told me how there was little difference at the core between being at the lectern and running her business: “It’s just about being able to communicate,” she said.

Clearly she’s pretty good at the communication thing: she managed to sell the business to Rupert Murdoch for £114m. Despite that, she still sticks to her insistence on running the show with diversity (nearly 50 per cent women in senior positions) and social responsibility at its heart.

The winner of the youngster’s award was also dazzlingly different from the usual City suits; the founder of the Peppercorn popcorn brand Cassandra Stavrou told of how she created her prototype popcorn in her mum’s kitchen, spraying flavoured oil on the corn with a superfine spray like they use for car paint. So engrossed was she in the task that she failed to notice the rising mist of seasoned oil engulfing the whole of her mum’s house. The oily film damaged the house so much that it had to be decoratored from top to bottom.

Then there was Robyn Exton, who was shortlisted for her dating app for lesbians. Apparently, before she came on the scene, the main lesbian site was one for gay men which had pretty much just had the “boy” words changed to “girl” ones. “How much body hair do you have” isn’t really a question at the top of most lesbians’ minds when they’re looking for love, she says.

Love and body hair. I told you the Veuve Clicquots aren’t your run of the mill awards.