Time management

I don't know if Tim Davie has an executive coach, but here's a little suggestion. Drop some of the minor online conferences, especially those that major on journalism. 

Mr Davie has already made his commitment to impartial reporting clear, but his way of expressing it in looser settings puts the English language on a pulse setting in a NutriBullet. As at yesterday's Reuters event. 

“Impartiality isn’t dull. It is absolutely a real appetite for evidence, for truth, for testimony. It can be really good flavoursome reporting.

 "I think we need to be confident and double down on our point of difference which is we are impartial, we do believe there is a truth and we know it’s a somewhat impossible task to get to perfection in the endeavours we make but that is what we’re going to do. I think we have to be really proactive.

“I think it’s very important that those of us fighting for impartial media and for truth telling should absolutely not give way to ‘we have to do this in a way that gets the maximum clicks immediately’ but it also doesn’t give up on the theatre of it, the emotion of it, all the things we want to bring.

“It’s never going to be a perfect solution here. We know that. But it is really important we get on the front foot and we don’t assume this is the norm. I think there’s enough scale between us and there’s some quality organisations that could work together to have a material effect on this.”

In less than two months, the BBC will have to go public with a long-term plan for its continued existence. Let the DG concentrate on getting that right, in a form than puts its opponents on the back foot for a good while.