Guardian Media Group begins tough search for new chief exec

Timing of Carolyn McCall's departure worries staff at loss-making newspapers

Carolyn McCall yesterday confirmed that she was quitting Guardian Media Group after 24 years to become the chief executive of easyJet, making her the first woman to control an airline.

Sir Michael Rake, the chairman of easyJet, said Ms McCall, 48, had been the unanimous choice of the board and possessed the "strategic ability, operational capability and passion" to take the budget airline forward.

Ms McCall said: "The chance to lead a FTSE company of easyJet's calibre is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."

The news was greeted with dismay within the newsrooms of The Guardian and The Observer, where large numbers of staff are being laid off in an effort to stem losses of £100,000 a day. Journalists were critical of the timing of the departure and claimed that GMG was in need of strong leadership after posting a pre-tax loss of £89.8m in the last financial year. The departing GMG chief executive said The Guardian "has been my second family for a quarter of a century".

George Brock, the professor and head of journalism at City University in London, said Ms McCall's successor at GMG would inherit considerable problems. "Despite the fact that everyone at The Guardian is naturally saying that everything is fine and secure, quite plainly The Guardian as a business is not in very good shape and it can't be absolutely ideal to have to look probably rather suddenly for a new chief executive right at this stage," he said.

"No media business is an easy thing to manage because they are not quite like ordinary businesses. Finding a talented chief executive for a business, which while it has done lots of impressive things in digital still has a large piece of legacy newspaper media in it, is probably getting harder. I can't imagine that the Scott Trust [which manages The Guardian] is exactly overjoyed."

Professor Brock said that, in spite of its ambitious digital media strategy, it had yet to convert innovation into profit. He added: "The bigger problem is Guardian Media Group has set its face very hard against most forms of charging. One is bound to ask, 'If you are not going to charge for digital content, on what are you relying to get yourself out of the economic hole that you and everyone else are in?' Did she feel that she had gone as far as she could in answering this question? I don't know."

Arif Durrani, the group news editor at Haymarket Brand Media, said media agencies took a mixed view of Ms McCall's record. "People appreciate what GMG has done in terms of its innovations and it has paved the way online. But there are critics who say there has been an online drive for international expansion and to build audiences without any real revenue streams identifiable," he added.

Others saw the move as an obvious step up. Paul Richards at Numis Securities said easyJet would offer Ms McCall a much higher profile than GMG. Julian Goldsmith, of the management blog BNet UK, said: "GMG ... is a minor player in a high profile but troubled sector with no clear way of safeguarding revenues. Perhaps this is the real reason for Ms McCall's decision to fly the nest."