THE IRISH DAILY Star has announced a new editor this afternoon – Gerard Colleran, who formerly served as editor until November 2011 when he took over as managing director at the Star’s publishing company.
He is to replace Michael O’Kane, who resigned last November over the Kate Middleton topless pictures controversy.
In turn, the Independent Star Ltd, publisher of the Irish Daily Star, will get a new managing director. This will be Gerry Lennon, who will combine this role with his current post as managing director of the Sunday World.
This doubling up and closer integration of the operations of the Irish Daily Star with other INM (Independent News Media) publications is compounded by news that the paper’s staff will move en masse to the INM headquarters on Talbot Street. The Star currently operates out of an office building beside Dundrum shopping centre, but will now be lodged in the same building in Dublin’s north inner city which already houses the Irish Independent, the Evening Herald, the Sunday Independent and the Sunday World.
A statement issued on behalf of Independent Star Ltd said that the move was a “very positive development for the future of the Irish Daily Star”, designed to deliver savings and production efficiencies. It isn’t all positive news for staff members, however: cost-cutting measures will also include “pay cuts for all staff” and up to nine redundancies. These jobs will be lost in the circulation and advertising departments – and are just the “first phase of its restructuring”.
The announcement comes after almost five months of wrangling between Independent Star Ltd and its two 50:50 shareholders, INM and Northern & Shell (controlled by Richard Desmond, publisher of the British Daily Star and the Daily Express). INM is now to “assume full executive responsibility for the Irish Daily Star” but INM said today that the Independent Star Ltd would “remain as a standalone entity, with a separate board and identity”.
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