The long-serving editor-in-chief of the Australian Chris Mitchell has confirmed he is stepping down but says he will remain with News Corp Australia where he has been a newspaper editor for 24 years.

Mitchell has not indicated when he will be departing his powerful position running Rupert Murdoch’s national broadsheet or who his successor will be.

“I will step down when a successor is agreed at a date yet to be worked out,” he told Guardian Australia.

“After such a long period running the paper I wanted to give the company plenty of time and am in no hurry. I have been asked to remain in a couple of capacities but no decisions have been made.”

Born in Queensland, Mitchell started working at the Australian in 1984, leaving to become editor of the Courier Mail and then returning to Sydney as editor-in-chief the early 2000s.

“I advised the company earlier this year of my intention to retire from this role at some point in the future,” Mitchell told Crikey on Monday.

Paul Whittaker, the current editor of the Daily Telegraph, has been reported as a favourite to replace Mitchell. Whittaker is a fellow Queenslander who was national chief-of-staff and then editor of the Australian under Mitchell between 2007 and 2011.

Although he rarely gives interviews or appears at industry events, Mitchell is a well-known if polarising figure in Australian media and politics for his strong editorial positioning of the paper.

He says he works 18 hour days and he would find it hard to adjust in retirement.

“I’ve been a working journo since I was 17,” He told the Monthly in 2011.

“I’ve never had a day when I wasn’t a working journo. I think one reason I’m able to work such long hours, decade in and decade out, is that I started so young. I’ve spent 20 years as an editor, which gives me a fairly big advantage over my rivals.”



Speculation about when Mitchell would retire has been rife since the 50th anniversary of the Australian last year when Mitchell indicated privately it would be a good time.

But at a Mumbrella media and marketing conference in the same year Mitchell said there was no obvious successor.

“I would like to hand the paper and the digital businesses over in a good state. I would like to have clearly defined successors who I felt were ready for it,” he said.

After those comments it seemed unlikely his loyal lieutenants Clive Mathieson or Michelle Gunn would inherit the role.

When Malcolm Turnbull was minister for communications he angered Mitchell after deciding to launch the left-leaning the Saturday Paper, which the Australian has described as “the Green Left Weekly”.



After Turnbull mocked the Australian for running agendas by saying there was “nothing too small in terms of the deficiencies of the nation for them to focus on”, Mitchell said Turnbull was “seeking approval from his party’s enemies”.

Mitchell famously fell out with former prime minister Kevin Rudd, with whom he had earlier enjoyed a good relationship and had backed in the 2007 election.

The Mitchell and Rudd families were close and Rudd is the godfather to one of Mitchell’s sons.

Several months after Rudd was elected the two began to fall out over the Australian’s coverage of his Labor government. The nail in the coffin was a highly unflattering piece in the Australian headlined Captain Chaos: Inside Rudd’s Office.

Last year Mitchell admitted the Australian had not been profitable since the global financial crisis in 2008.