Paul Dacre and pay: how best to spend the Mail millions? | Peter Preston

The question all thoughtful editors ought to ask themselves is: how much am I worth? If I’m, say, Paul Dacre at the Mail, am I worth nearly £2.5m a year?

The answer isn’t as easy as it may seem. Paul sits on a highly paid group board. His editorship, over 25 years, has brought much profit as well as awards – as well, these days, as some wonderfully bonkers Brexit front pages.

Does he stand ostentatiously to one side while other salaries soar and thus create the impression that editorial isn’t an important part of the business? Surely such reticence wouldn’t strengthen his team or his clout with colleagues who link pay and power together.

And yet £2.5m … roughly five times what we pay the Mail-reviled director general of the BBC. Doesn’t that create the impression that the editor is more interested in personal riches than journalism that serves his readers? Doesn’t it cut him off from those readers and their preoccupations? Couldn’t he use £2m of that £2.5m to pay for more staff, more investigations, more journalism (a trade that can’t be defined by cash)?

My vote goes to option two. But I’d never pretend that it’s an open-and-shut case. No front page denouncing these greedy men.