Carter to head group ad sales team at News International

by John Reynolds, Media Week 01-Jul-08, 07:30

LONDON - Dominic Carter is to head News International's merged advertising sales operation, while Mike Gordon, deputy managing director of News Group Newspapers, is leaving after missing out on the top digital role at the company.

Carter, trading director at Times Media, has won out against Mark Chippendale, media director of News Group Newspapers, in the fight to become head of a merged ad sales operation that takes in The Sun, News of the World, The Times and The Sunday Times.

Carter returned to News International in 2006 after six years at Mirror Group Newspapers.

Last week's appointment of News Group managing director Mike Anderson to a new role of managing director of digital and development is thought to be behind Gordon's decision to leave the company.

He is expected to leave the publisher in about four months' time after completing a consultancy project. He joined News Group as a sales executive in 1987, rising to ad director, and left in 2000 to become commercial director at Virtual Internet, before returning to NI as commercial director for Times Newspapers in 2004. He has a largely digital focus in his current role and so might have expected to get the new digital role for the whole of NI that his boss, Anderson, has now taken.

Employees are braced for further staff rationalisation as a result of the sales department merger that was instigated by an operational efficiencies review conducted by Boston Consulting Group.

Last week, a new flat executive structure was announced whereby chief operating officer Clive Milner, managing director of commercial Paul Hayes, Anderson and a yet-to-be appointed marketing director all report to James Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corporation Europe & Asia.

News International declined to comment on Gordon and Anderson.