John Mulholland (journalist)

John Mulholland (born 20 November 1962) is an Irish journalist who is the editor of the British Sunday newspaper The Observer and assistant editor of The Guardian. He has worked for most of his career with the Guardian Media Group.

Mulholland was born in Ranelagh, Dublin, and has seven siblings. Mulholland received a degree in Communications in 1983 from Dublin City University and he also studied for an MA in media and communications at California State University, Sacramento.

Mulholland worked as arts assistant at The Independent from 1987–8, then briefly for London Daily News in the same role. He co-founded Listings Limited in 1988 as the deputy editor, providing arts and entertainments listings to newspapers.

He joined The Guardian as assistant editor of the arts desk in 1990, then became media editor in 1994. In 1998 he left The Guardian to manage the relaunch of Mirror Group Newspapers' Sporting Life, but his contract was ended after three months and before the launch after a disagreement over the management of the project.

Mulholland rejoined the Guardian Media Group as deputy editor of The Observer in 1998, overseeing the magazines, sport, travel and culture sections. He developed and launched the monthly food, sport and music magazines and lead the change of format to Berliner. He encouraged Nick Paton Walsh when Paton Walsh was a trainee at the newspaper, and entered his first piece into the Press Gazette's Young Journalist of the Year award in 2000, which it won.

Mulholland succeeded Roger Alton as editor in January 2008 (announced in October 2007), having read The Observer as a teenager, and reshuffled the paper's editorial team. He closed the monthly sport, music and women's magazines in 2009, and relaunched the paper in February 2010 with four sections and a reduced staff of 70 to reduce costs.

...
Wikipedia