He lamented the sharp fall in circulation and the arrival of a “click culture” at the newspaper, which meant stories were no longer judged by their importance, accuracy or appeal to those who actually bought it.
“With the collapse in standards has come a most sinister development,” Oborne wrote Tuesday, in a rambling commentary published on opendemocracy.net.
“It has long been axiomatic in quality British journalism that the advertising department and editorial should be kept rigorously apart. There is a great deal of evidence that, at the Telegraph, this distinction has collapsed.”
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“I told him that I was not leaving to join another paper. I was resigning as a matter of conscience.
“Mr. MacLennan agreed that advertising was allowed to affect editorial, but was unapologetic, saying that ‘it was not as bad as all that’ and adding that there was a long history of this sort of thing at the Telegraph,” wrote Oborne.
READ: Full commentary piece from Oborne
