Mark Thompson, the BBC director general, has pledged that the corporation's weekly in-house magazine Ariel will have a new editor and continue in its role as an independent voice for staff and occasional thorn in the management's side, in both paper form and online.

Thompson's assurance came last night at the leaving party of the retiring editor, Andrew Harvey, whose departure has sparked speculation that the BBC may make Ariel an online-only publication.

Under the editorship of Harvey, brought in by former director general Greg Dyke in 2001, Ariel has provided an outlet for staff to criticise BBC management and policies via its editorial and letters pages.

Recent editions, including this week's, the first after Harvey stepped down, have provided extensive coverage of staff anger over revelations about the pay, bonuses and expenses of senior executives.

"There will be another editor of Ariel, and [he or she] will bring that spirit of independence to it," Thompson said last night.

He added that the BBC wanted to drive forward Ariel's role, not diminish it. Thompson reflected that when he joined the BBC in 1979 Ariel tended to moulder, unread, in piles, as it specialised in features on retirements and corporate strategy.

Then, in 2001, Dyke handpicked Harvey, a former national newspaper journalist, to run it in a more professional manner, with 51 editions a year.

"Andrew just changed it. It was a brilliant appointment, it was about opening up the BBC. It changed the culture of the place for the better, which you can never change back. I believe in what Andrew has done," said Thompson, speaking to an audience that included the BBC's creative director, Alan Yentob; David Jordan, the editorial director; Kevin Bakhurst, controller BBC News channel and the BBC1 1pm news; and Ed Williams, director of communications, to whom the Ariel team reports.

"It is true that the most difficult member of the press can be the man from your own in-house journal. But that spirit of independence and proper journalism... has transformed the sense of what Ariel is, in paper, and on the web. Its been worth it. To me it has been one of the biggest changes," Thompson added.

Speculation about Ariel's future had been fuelled because the BBC has not yet advertised for Harvey's successor as editor. This aroused fears that the BBC's communications team would prefer to see Ariel "wither on the vine" as its critical stories frequently provide other media organisations with material about the corporation.

One option understood to be under discussion by the internal BBC communications team was to drop the paper edition, and simply carry an online version, available only in-house on the corporation's intranet.

Harvey, 65, responding to Thompson, said that d**e specifically wanted "a paper with its own character, one that didn't look to senior management for a sense of direction".

He added that Thompson had been a "genuine supporter of Ariel willing to engage on tricky issues". "He has given courageous leadership over the last five years and in the coming months the fight will be even tougher," he said.

Harvey also said that Ariel's editorial independence meant that what was in the interests of the staff may not conform to the corporate message and that senior management have to accept that. Earlier this year Ariel carried letters from BBC regional television news journalists accurately predicting that the proposed sharing of resources with their ITV rivals would not work.

Harvey said that the weekly paper version was important in an era of instant online news because stories need context, so the two formats were complementary.


From Maggie Brown, "The Guardian" 23/7/09