WHEN Matt Cooper enters the offices of the Sunday Tribune in Baggot Street today, he starts his new job with the blessing of his former employer, Independent Newspapers, which owns 29.9 per cent of the Sunday Tribune and has been covering its losses with additional loan capital.
His predecessor, Mr Peter Murtagh, resigned because he did not have the funding to promote and market the newspaper and to hire staff.
Mr Murtagh was identified as being in the camp of the chairman of the Sunday Tribune board, Mr Gordon Colleary, and not close to the two Independent Newspapers' directors.
While Independent Newspapers has been funding the newspaper, its control was circumscribed by both the Competition Authority, which had refused Independent Newspapers permission to increase its holding, and by the editor not being a person of its choosing.
Mr Cooper, it is believed, was approached by a director of Independent Newspapers about becoming editor. He is considered one of the company's stars, a finance editor and associate editor of the Irish Independent at the age of 30.
He has resigned from Independent Newspapers and does not have a letter of comfort guaranteeing a position in Independent Newspapers after his Tribune stint. However, a few years of editing a national Sunday newspaper will give Mr Cooper the sort of management training, along with his journalistic experience, that will make him very attractive to Independent Newspapers, should he choose to return.
But what of his task? It is rumoured that Mr Cooper might not be the only person from Independent House about to move to the Tribune and that commercial staff may follow.
This would indicate that Independent Newspapers is intent on strengthening the operational performance of the Tribune as well as the product itself. In the eyes of some, including many of the staff of the Sunday Tribune, such a strategy would be a radical change. It has been felt that Independent Newspapers was willing to fund the Sunday Tribune so long as it acted as a block to the Sunday Times.
This "drip feed" theory assumed that the role of the Sunday Tribune was merely to tick over, make it more difficult for the Sunday Times to increase its penetration, but not to be strong enough to take significant circulation from the Sunday Independent.
The appointment of Mr Cooper would suggest that this strategy is no more. Mr Cooper says he has the finances to do what is necessary to turn the Sunday Tribune around.
The job will not be easy. The newspaper has been losing sales since 1990, when its circulation totalled 102,000. There was a slight improvement in circulation in the six months to last December, probably due to the demise of the Sunday Press. For the first six months of this year, circulation is down again. Officially it now stands at 79,180, though it is believed to have fallen below that level.
Accumulated losses now stand at £7 million and rising. Operating losses are believed to have dropped from £45,000 a week to about £20,000 in the period Mr Murtagh edited the newspaper.
However, there is a rationale behind appointing a strong editor with the resources to do the job.
A weak Tribune, with insufficient finance to fight its competitors, clearly failed to block the rise of the Rubert Murdoch owned Sunday Times. The fear within the Independent Group is that continued Sunday Times success will have an impact on sales of the Sunday Independent.
The Sunday Times is in the middle of a relaunch of its Irish edition, with an expensive advertising campaign.
As far as Independent Newspapers is concerned a strong Sunday Tribune is preferable to an even stronger Sunday Times.
It has always been central to Independent Newspapers commercial strategy to fight off any outside competition, whether it is Rupert Murdoch - or Conrad Black, the owner of the Telegraph, who had his eyes on the Irish Press group - in order to protect the most profitable area of Dr Tony O'Reilly's growing worldwide newspaper empire.
An improved Tribune would also make it more difficult for The Irish Times to launch a Sunday newspaper. Such a development is still under consideration.