Greg Hadfield announced his resignation as head of the Telegraph Media Group's digital development in dramatic fashion yesterday. He stood up at the news rewired conference at City University to make a keynote speech, told a questioner that newspapers had no future and, as a consequence, he was leaving his job.
But TMG this afternoon issued a statement saying that his departure was mutually agreed at the conclusion of his contract. Hadfield said that journalists needed to develop entrepreneurial
skills and added: "The future is individual journalists, not big media."
Hadfield said he had decided to go off to a creative agency that will partner with the "brightest and best." He was referring to Brighton-based Cogapp, an innovative company that builds websites, interactive installations and mobile applications. .
Hadfield urged people to be more entrepreneurial: "The future is much more diverse. There's not a dichotomy between being a journalist and an entrepreneur - the future is the individual journalist, not big media. "The challenge is for big, monolithic media to recognise that being entrepreneurial is corporate ethos, to reflect in the structure to leverage the skills of the individual within the organisation."
Hadfield, a former Sunday Times news editor, has been a pioneering editorial internet entrepreneur. Along with his son he founded Soccernet in 1995, a football website that was sold to ESPN/Disney for £15m in 1999. He then created Schoolsnet, an education website which he sold in 2003.
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