Media: The Word on the Street

THE CANADIANS have at last got their man. Richard Addis, former editor of the Express titles, currently at The Mail on Sunday, has accepted, "after a lot of dithering", the editorship of the Toronto Globe and Mail. The Thompson organisation, which owns the paper, wanted a British newspaper man, "used to an old-fashioned newspaper war", to take on Conrad Black's year-old National Post. The owners sounded out a number of senior journalists here, including Jeff Randall, editor of Sunday Business. As a consequence, Mr Addis is braced for reports from others claiming to have been offered the job, but has been told he was Thompson's first choice. "I'm looking for a top team to take to Canada," says Addis, who has signed a three- year contract and will leave in September.

ALEXANDER Chancellor, media commentator of The Daily Telegraph, was suitably chastened by the recent description by Sally Emerson, novelist wife of Times editor Peter Stothard, of the the media page as the post- Fleet Street substitute for the pub, where "the bitterness of journalists' frustration, no longer softened by sweet ale and sawdust" had found another outlet. Mr Chancellor declared last Friday with due solemnity: "It behoves us all to try to prove her wrong." Unfortunately, The Telegraph's resolve faltered before the sawdust had even settled on that same media section. A few inches from Chancellor's piece was a pint of bitter invective from Rebecca Nicolson, erstwhile deputy editor of The Independent on Sunday. From the Sindy's editor in chief and management to former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee and a fictitious PR, there were more villains than Sally Emerson would dream of putting into a fair-sized novel.

TESSA HILTON, former editor of the Sunday Mirror, who also launched Saturday Magazine at The Express, is the new editor at large at IPC's Woman & Home magazine. She will work with new editor Sarah Kilby, who says, "This is the best time to be a 40+ woman." Whether she is referring to herself, her readership or to Ms Hilton - or just thinking wishfully - is unclear.