A brouhaha is brewing at the Oxford alumni magazine, as it comes under pressure to be 'on-message'

In the latest issue of Oxford Today, a glossy sent three times a year to about 190,000 alumni around the world, Terry Jones recalls his student years; the award-winning historian Margaret MacMillan argues for the importance of her subject; a professor describes his work on genetic signposting; the bosses of the Royal Opera House and National Portrait Gallery reveal how "Oxford set them on their respective courses"; and there are pretty photos of honey-coloured buildings in the snow.

Nothing there, you'd have thought, to concern the university's sinister-sounding Public Affairs Directorate, which oversees a magazine whose purpose is to "publicise Oxford's achievements and its future plans". But it looks as if the directorate wants change, and the widely admired editor, Greg Neale – a former reporter for the Times, Guardian and Sunday Telegraph, who was the launch editor of BBC History magazine – may as a result be on the way out.

This has caused a bit of a brouhaha. Cherwell, the student paper, recently reported that Jeremy Harris, Oxford's director of public affairs, informed the editorial advisory board (which includes journalists such as the Daily Telegraph's Gillian Reynolds and the Independent's Mary Dejevsky) that when a new publisher takes over Oxford Today from Wiley-Blackwell this year, Neale's job will be advertised, because the editor's contract is with the publisher. Neale was unavailable for comment, and it's unclear if he will apply.

Board members have been talking anonymously to Cherwell, though, and they complain of a failure to consult them, the magazine's editorial independence being "on the line", and bureaucrats seeking "an excuse to oust Greg" (the university insists he will be "fully in a position to take part" in the selection process).

One board source told the Guardian that the recent growth of both Oxford's PR operation and its fundraising efforts has put pressure on Oxford Today to be "on-message" (although Lord Patten, the university's chancellor, has said "the last thing we want is some sort of North Korea Times"). And so Neale looks to be in jeopardy because his journalistic instincts are inconvenient when stories about disagreements, resignations and scandals that do little to further the PR drive are unwelcome. But as last year's hullabaloo over the poetry professorship and now the Oxford Today row demonstrate, Oxford is unhelpfully good at generating them.