COO John Allan leaves The Australian

Chief operating officer John Allan will leave The Australian this week

JOHN Allan has resigned as chief operating officer of News Limited’s The Australian after one year in the role.

His resignation is effective this week and a replacement is yet to be announced.

Mr Allan ends a six year period at News Ltd with other roles in NewsLocal, wherelive.com.au, and TrueLocal.com.au.

Mr Allan oversaw the introduction of a pay wall on the broadsheet’s website last October.

The publisher now has 40,000 paid digital subscribers.

“John’s extensive experience and understanding of both the newspaper and digital arena has been invaluable to The Australian. We are the leading digital subscription newspaper in the country and I’d like to thank John for his contribution to our success,” said The Australian’s editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell.

Mr Allan said: “I’ve worked with some highly talented people across both the digital and newspaper businesses and I leave the organisation in their capable hands”.

“I’d like to thank Chris Mitchell, my management team and all our staff who create world-leading newspapers and digital assets every day and wish them well for the future.”

Mr Allan told a media conference in May if newspaper publishers had their time again they would never have put news online for free in the 1990s.