Don Churchill, chief executive and publisher of Fairfax in Melbourne, yesterday afternoon announced his retirement, following a management meeting in Sydney last Monday.

Despite his extended hero-gram to staff, which details his career from New Zealand origins to Melbourne,  his tenure in the job has been far from stellar.

He oversaw the departure of much of the firms’ real estate advertisers — the dregs of the rivers of gold — to The Weekly Review, founded by turncoat former Fairfax property editor and marketing director Antony Catalano in competition to Fairfax’s Melbourne Weekly.

Churchill also oversaw the departure of other senior Fairfax executives who took  with them a great deal of goodwill and corporate memory.

His critics point out that a large part of the job of Melbourne head of the company is meant to be glad-handing and raising the profile of Fairfax with advertisers and other stakeholders, but Churchill has been low profile. Many movers and shakers in Melbourne don’t know him. Or as one insider put it cattily this morning “he is well known at the New Zealand Chamber of Commerce”.

Yet, to be fair to the man, over the past 12-18 months, trading results in Melbourne have been less woeful than the equivalent in Sydney, and since the appointment of Greg Hywood as Fairfax CEO, the Melbourne team has barely put a foot wrong.

According to Churchill’s departing memo, he has been offering to resign for 18 months or so, but has held off because of all the other changes being introduced at Fairfax.

Perhaps so, although only eight months or so ago I was being told by senior Fairfax sources that “Churchill is going nowhere”.

So what happens next? There are implications for the editor of The Age, Paul Ramadge, who was Churchill’s choice as editor. The two men have been very loyal to each other, and Churchill is Ramadge’s main supporter.

Ramadge, insiders say, would be interested in taking on Churchill’s job, if it was offered to him. Nobody seems to know whether the board of Fairfax, and CEO Greg Hywood, would smile upon such an appointment.  Hywood did not return calls asking for comment before deadline.

There is also “wild speculation” that Catalano himself might be interested in replacing Churchill, although in order to take it he would surely have to bring back the crown jewels — The Weekly Review and its advertising clients. Presumably he would not do that for nothing.

It is no secret that had the job been offered to him three years ago, Catalano would probably not have left The Age.

Catalano told Crikey this morning that while he would have been interested once, the situation  now — with him established running his own company in competition with Fairfax — was too difficult for it to be an option. He described the Churchill job as “a great opportunity and a great job”, but “I am having a lot of fun where I am.”

Others in the running to replace Churchill include bean counter and axeman  extraordinaire David Skelton, who is presently director of business planning and operations, and David Hoath, previously sales and marketing director, and recently appointed chief operating officer for Melbourne publishing.

Some of those in the know are tipping Hoath. He would not be popular with the journalists. “He sees journalism as an impost on the business of selling ads,” said one who knows him.

There is another possibility. In Sydney, journalist Peter Fray holds the position of publisher and editor-in-chief of The Sydney Morning Herald. If the same structure was adopted in Melbourne — combining the two roles —  then the post would presumably have to be held by a journalist, and that might give Ramadge  the front running, opening up a vacancy for editor of The Age.

The Churchill job on its own is a shrinking, and somewhat powerless role, given that Jack Matthews is dominant as CEO of Fairfax Metropolitan Media. Advertising and client management has been centralised in Sydney, leaving the Melbourne-based publisher to oversee circulation, distribution and community newspapers and not much else.

So the true significance of the job may well be what vacancies it leaves elsewhere, and what any new appointments tell us the board and  Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood’s plans for the paper, and the company.

After eight years out of the business, Hywood is in a position where Matthews knows more about digital than he does, and people such as Skelton and Hoath know more about print operations.

Whether any of them are up to the very difficult challenges they face remains to be seen.