The Evening Standard’s editor takes one last trip

Just two months after the launch of its new weekly edition – and the accompanying loss of half of its editorial staff – the team of the newspaper formerly known as the Evening Standard are facing another loss: that of its editor, Dylan Jones.

Jones, whose departure has been revealed less than 18 months since joining the paper (generously rounded up to “nearly two years” in the email announcing the move), is leaving “to spend more time on writing and on his various other projects”.

This has caused much scratching of heads among the few remaining hacks at the Standard, who have seen little of his editor but much of his “other projects” during his editorship.

While promoting his book, Jones wrote in the New Statesman about how hard it was to part with colleagues in the Standard’s redundancy programme – despite not having found the time to speak with or email any of the affected staff.

As other Standard bosses explained to the newsroom that the company simply didn’t have the money to fund anything other than the bare minimum redundancy payments required by the law (even unused holiday would not be compensated), Jones was away on a trip – according to rumours, in a £6,000-a-night hotel suite – on a side gig for Aston Martin.

Even as the newspaper’s new weekly edition was launching and all hands were on deck, Jones seemed to have found the time to personally attend a Joni Mitchell gig on the West Coast of the USA, which he wrote up for the London newspaper he edits. Only four days ago, his Instagram feed showed an image of an opulent hotel room with the caption “Not sure there is a better hotel room in Paris right now than Room No.7 at Soho House France.”

Still, hacks need not despair that Jones will be entirely absent. While the editor’s chair will be filled in an acting capacity by Anna van Praagh – having only narrowly survived the paper’s layoffs herself – Jones “will stay on as Editor at Large,” Evening Standard executive chairman Albert Read reassured staff. “In this capacity, he will write frequently for the Standard and still be very much in our lives,” he concluded.

At least Jones’s continued involvement with the paper means there’s no need for a whip-round for a leaving present. Judging by the mood of some remaining staff, the envelope might have come back very empty indeed.