When there are no more savings there
THE MEDIA columnists are convinced that one or more of the UK national papers will fail to survive the slump. They daren’t speculate but obviously they mean the Independent and Express groups.
Where they’re right is that no-one in their right minds is going to buy them up if the present owners throw in the towel, for the very good reason that they have cut back on staffing so ruthlessly that there are no more savings to be made.
Fortunately — though staff may not see it like that — both have proprietors to whom newspaper ownership matters.
The Independent will last as long as “Sir Anthony” O’Reilly does at the helm of the group. It’s his entrée to the British ruling class, which presumably means something to him, and if he loses control of the group, as he might, then no doubt the Mail group — whose offices it is moving into — will snap it up for practically nothing.
As for Richard Desmond at the Express, he has milked his declining titles of sums for his private use that are frankly miraculous. How does he do it?
I suppose one day the udder may dry up and he will try to sell. The only people taking over clapped-out British institutions are Gulf-based Arabic banks and sovereign funds. They’ve bought some ropey football clubs so why not the Express and the Star?
Then they could turn the Star into the Daily Muslim. Staff on the paper would appreciate a certain ironic justice in that.
Of course we don’t work hard, do we?
I HAVE every confidence in the ability of the NUJ chapel at the Guardian to ensure that journalists in its new multi-media wonderland are fairly treated — see the feature on page 4 — but I’m not so sure about the management.
In October I heard Emily Bell, the group’s director of digital content and a grande dame of the online world, speaking at one of the numerous irritating seminars on the effects of digital convergence on the news. Answering the point that the expansion of the workload for ever fewer staff is affecting both the journalists and their work, she said: “I don’t recognise some of the characterisation of the industry ... I don’t think it is true that journalists are being asked to produce more.
“The best journalists have always been incredibly busy all the time. I don’t believe an increase in output leads straight to a decline in quality. I know journalists say, ‘I just can’t do more because if I do quality will go down’, but it is not true.”
Emily Bell cited a blogger on her site who can put up an impressive seven posts a day — as if tossing a blog item off the top of your head was the same as producing a properly researched story.
Perhaps Emily Bell is one of those starry-eyed web evangelists who can’t see the difference — there do seem to be people on the Guardian with this affliction. Perhaps she was just being provocative.
EMILY BELL also told the seminar that the Guardian was different from other media in that it was controlled by a trust. But it isn’t — and as a director she might have known — since the Scott Trust was quietly folded in October, to be replaced by a limited company. What’s that about then? They can’t be thinking of floating can they? Madness.
Why we should give MPs a helping hand
TWENTY-NINE Labour MPs rebelled against the UK government in the Commons vote on Speaker Martin’s attempts to stifle criticism of his handling of the police raid and arrest of Tory shadow minister Damian Green in December — shamefully, because it should have been more.
They included my friend Denis MacShane, who rarely does so, though the half-dozen previous instances in his 16-year career did include two against the installation of Michael Martin in 2000. At any rate his newfound defiance must have ended any real chance of reviving a ministerial career; I fear he will never make the Cabinet now.
But he and Damian Green have something in Common: both are former journalists, and NUJ members — though Damian Green, until 1992 a financial journalist with The Times, the BBC and Channel 4, never attained the lofty post of union President, held by Denis MacShane in 1978-79; he’s now a Life Member.
So they could both see the legal parallel between MPs and reporters — a connection highlighted by the bizarre coincidence of the case coming to light just as the NUJ’s latest hero, reporter Sally Murrer, had her hour of triumph at Kingston Crown Court.
She and Damian Green were both charged with the same obscure common law offence — “aiding and abetting misconduct in a public office” — that had not been used or even heard of for decades.
Someone at the Crown Prosecution Service, where both charges were decided on, is mucking about, aren’t they?
A court order is required to seize a journalist’s material — that was one reason why the case against Sally Murrer collapsed — and I can’t see why that shouldn’t go for MPs as well. Much safer than leaving our freedoms in the hands of a small-minded tribalist like Michael Martin, who can drive even loyalists like Denis MacShane into wilful rebellion!
Silent revolution
THERE WAS a much bigger Labour backbench rebellion a month earlier, which was hardly reported at all. Forty-five of them voted for an amendment to the Employment Bill, which would have removed some of the restrictions on union strike ballots that make them virtually impossible to conduct lawfully.
It was the biggest rebellion of Gordon Brown’s premiership. Why then did no paper other than the Guardian report it? It has been suggested that the date — November 4 — the day of the US Presidential election, was the reason. Right.
Damned lies and web traffic reports
I NEVER thought I would agree with Martin Clarke, editorial director of the Mail Online, whose performance as an editor of various newspapers in Scotland did not endear him to the union, but I see he has signed up to my crusade on website statistics.
I have argued before that the monthly figures vaunted by publishers, which simply show the number of visitors, are as ridiculous as the ones on newspaper readership that they have presented for decades.
Martin Clarke told the Society of Editors conference in Bristol in November that the “web traffic metrics” presented by publishers were “meaningless, vainglorious figures ... an utter waste of time”. Instead they should publish daily stats on visitors and the time they spent on pages.
All he has to do now is admit that the figures peddled by his employer and others about newspaper readership, based on the notion that every paper is read by three people, are even more nonsensical.
Something for nothing
THE UNION thought it was routine when it took a call from someone asking for advice on how to advance a freelance career. But it was a “life coach” whose client was a freelance journalist — and an NUJ member. Smart thinking by the coach, but you can see why the member needs help, if she’s mug enough to pay a charlatan for advice she could get for nothing — or at least for the subscription she pays the union, which is considerably cheaper.
Scoff at your peril
SHARE prices of the big newspaper groups have fallen faster than their payrolls and bosses like to blame the recession for both. In the case of Johnston Press, however, they are wrong.
It’s all down to the Curse of Saint Edmund the Martyr, murdered by the Danes in 870 AD, it says in the authoritative Fortean Times.
A property development company called Centros is running into local opposition over a scheme centred on a proposed Debenhams store on the site of a former cattle market in Bury St Edmunds, and this has activated the curse, which, according to tradition, can have four dreadful effects: death, insanity, venereal disease and the destruction of property.
If you find this tenuous you have to explain why Centros is also in trouble over two other schemes, which are in Portsmouth and Lancaster. Fortean Times explains: “The Johnston Press newspaper company, which owns local papers backing the schemes in all three places, has suffered major falls in share prices.”
There is only one known respite from the curse, and that is to pay large amounts of money to journalists on the papers concerned.
Buttoned-up secret
EVERYONE wants to know the identity of Grey Cardigan, the Press Gazette’s marvellously irascible columnist and blogger whose misogyny can sometimes take the breath away.
I cannot reveal it, but thanks to the whimsical blog of former PG deputy editor Jon Slattery, I can tell you that the character is based on a real-life deputy chief sub with whom Jon Slattery worked on a regional daily many years ago — and that the writer of Grey Cardigan worked there as well.
Ah! I’ve said too much already.