Media Headliner: Can Dave King turn his hand to newspapers?

The Telegraph Group's shrewd new sales director says he can handle his first job in publishing.

From bricklaying to US business school, Dave King's CV boasts everything apart from the obvious: the man who has just joined the Telegraph Group as an executive director has never worked at a newspaper before.

So when the Telegraph Group chief executive, Murdoch MacLennan, ousted his sales chief, Chris White-Smith, in December and installed King in his place, more than a few eyebrows were raised. National press is a conservative world and many key players would claim that it sits some-where ahead of nuclear physics and brain surgery in the pantheon of awkward sciences.

In short, many think King won't hack it. An ad director at a rival national newspaper group predicts: 'He'll be in the job for about a year before Murdoch MacLennan eats him alive. The Telegraph needs an experienced commercial director; King doesn't know how to run a newspaper. What they've hired is a sales guy who knows nothing about publishing.'

King is joining the Telegraph Group from Emap Advertising, where he was the managing director and previously its broadcast sales director MacLennan is convinced that he has got the right man, based on King's experience as a tough negotiator at Carat (where he was broadcast director before joining Emap) and on his reputation for delivering the numbers at Emap.

Sources suggest that MacLennan was concerned that The Daily Telegraph - which, with a circulation of 905,889, is the best-selling quality daily - was not acting like a market leader in its commercial dealings; King's first task is to address this issue. Some agencies, off the record, indicate that the Telegraph could raise revenues by 10 to 15 per cent with a more compelling argument. King will also be involved in the ongoing discussions over whether to take the Telegraph compact. So far, its directors have indicated, it hasn't been able to make the numbers add up.

King refutes the suggestions that his lack of newspaper experience will hamper him in his task. He says that MacLennan, the former Associated Newspapers managing director , and John Allwood, a former Mirror Group chief executive hired by MacLennan last October, have all the necessary knowledge.