British tabloid editor to take helm of New York Daily News

Colin Myler is one of a very short list – editors-in-chief of big circulation daily tabloid newspapers. Most are either British or Australian. New York Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman has a track record of hiring Brits to run the paper and that may explain why he decided to overlook Myler's connections to the phone-hacking scandal.

Myler replaces Kevin Convey, a Boston guy and former editor of the Boston Herald, who had been editing the NYDN for less than two years.

It is also possible Zuckerman hired Myler to get under the skin of his great commercial rival, Rupert Murdoch, owner of the New York Post.

Myler used to edit the Post before being sentback to London by Murdoch to edit his top-selling News of the World. Myler was the man who broke the news to the staff that the paper was being shut after the phone-hacking scandal erupted last July.  Myler also lost his job then (don't the Murdoch's believe in non-compete clauses when they terminate senior executives?)

Myler got swept up in the phone-hacking scandal cover-up shortly after his arrival. Last summer he testified to a committee of the British parliament that despite his testimony to the contrary, Rupert's son James, the man in charge of his father's British newspapers, knew that phone-hacking was widespread at the NoW. The younger Murdoch has since resigned as chairman of News Group Newspapers, the British holding company for Murdoch's British newspapers.

Some interesting comment from New York on the appointment is here.