MEDIA: New Statesman appoints editor

Although the title will retain its political slant, its editorial

content will be widened in the revamp to include extensive non-political

coverage.

The changes are aimed at halting the magazine’s declining sales, which

now stand at around 25,000.

Hargreaves replaces Steve Platt who has edited the magazine since 1990.

Details of the changes are still being discussed by Hargreaves and the

magazine’s new owner, MP Geoffrey Robinson, who bought the title earlier

this month.

However, Hargreaves has already made his first appointment, signing up a

former editor of the New Statesmen, John Lloyd, who, until recently, was

Moscow correspondent of the Financial Times.

The magazine took on its current form in 1988 when the New Statesmen and

New Society merged Hargreaves quit as editor of the Independent in

November last year, a job he took up 16 months earlier after leaving his

post as deputy editor of the Financial Times.

Before joining the FT in 1990, Hargreaves was director of BBC News and

Current Affairs. He is currently working on a documentary for the BBC

and also writes a weekly column for the Sunday Telegraph.