THE PRESS

Paying the price

BILL GRUNDY

Whatever you can say about the Prices and Incomes Board—and I could say plenty—its report this week on the costs and revenue of national newspapers has given me a lot of pleasure. Not, I hasten to add, the report itself, which is written in the usual appalling style, a style that has the effect of making me think I am asleep as I read it—and I pro- bably am. No, there's no wit in the report; rather is it the cause of wit in other men. Wit isn't perhaps the right word, but you know what I mean.

For the publication of the report produced two most enjoyable leading articles, one in

the Times, the other in the Daily Telegraph.

The Telegraph one was shorter, and was written with a sarcasm so scalding that my

copy was still warm when it landed on the mat. 'How right the Prices and Incomes Board is,' the article began, in a way which

made it quite clear the Telegraph thinks just

the opposite, 'to conclude in its 141st report that its recommendations "will not fun- damentally affect the [newspaper] industry's economic situation". How very kind of the Board to allow that the actual timing of price increases must be for each paper to decide "in the light of its competitive situation"' And that was only the beginning.

Of course, the Telegraph may have been a little soured by the fact that the PIB hadn't

looked too kindly on proposals for a 2d rise

in the price of the paper. Or it may belhat the Telegraph really does look on the pro- duction of reports by the PIB as the 'Enormously time-wasting exercises' it called them later in the leader.

But are they? Isn't the truth rather nearer to what the Observer said on Sunday :

'Newspapers tend to be very good at expos- ing the affairs of every industry except their own: hence the special interest of last week's report . . . The report's real importance, however, is not so much in what it says about prices—which is mostly convincing—but the light it sheds on the general problems of the industry' Those problems are real and they were analysed very ably by Robert Jones in

the Times Business News on the day the PIB report came out. Mr Jones first points out

that the report should help to dispel a bit of the gloom with which Fleet Street has been staring mesmerised at 'the spectacle of its own decline for much of the last decade'. But he then goes on to say that the Street's problems really 'become apparent when one looks at the profit figures'. Profit is perhaps the wrong word since the qualities, taken together, made a loss of £1.1 millions and, as Mr Jones remarks, 'the quality Sundays' profit is derisory in relation to their total revenues of £22 millions'.

Mr Jones comments on most of the situa- tions examined by the PIB in coming to its conclusions, and sums it all up by saying that the continued existence of the six quality papers can only be assured by Miter

management methods, a better pricing policy, and better co-operation between unions and management. That sounds un- likely, to say the least, but Mr Jones is hope- ful because he ends by saying that 'there is nothing wrong with the industry that the in- dustry does not have within its power to put right. Fleet Street's salvation lies in its own

hands.' Of course, you can die by your own hands, as well, and the PIB report makes it clear that if things go on as they are that's just what's going to happen.

While Mr Jones was producing his analysis, his paper's leader-writer was prac-

tising his productivity with a 600-word piece that was priceless. For one thing, it seemed at first reading to be largely a defence of the Guardian, which it said 'adds an in- dispensable and distinctive note to the voice of the British press. The Guardian is a great newspaper, and it is also the only quality paper of defined left-wing views.'

Then came a sentence which suggests that the leader writer does not himself actually

take this indispensable and distinctive paper. `The Guardian', the man said, 'did not itself ask for an increase.' I should think not, since it went up 2d to 8d only last week. 'Its com- petitive position . . . is such that it could not

afford to take the initiative.' Well, well. After that I found myself unable to take the rest of the article seriously for a while. And when,

having praised the Guardian, it went on to commend the Telegraph for 'giving its read-

ers excellent value', I began to wonder just

what the man was up to. (The Telegraph does, of course, give its readers excellent

value, but such a remark coming from such a source put me very strongly in mind of Virgil's celebrated suspicion of Greeks bear- ing gifts.

For the odd thing was that, while it discussed the problems of other papers, the leading article somehow did not get round to

discussing the problems of the Times itself. Somebody else had to point them out, and point them out they did. The Guardian, doubtless disliking being patronised by the Times, carried an acid little paragraph in its

`Miscellany' column, remarking that the paper which currently has the biggest pro- blem of all—like losing more than a million a year—is the paper so apparently obsessed with the problems of others that it forgot to mention its own little local difficulties. As I

said at the start, publication of the PIB report

has been productive of quite a lot of pleasure. And the effect of the price increases themselves? Well, there'll certainly be a tem-

porary falling off in circulation—the Finan- cial Times is the only one I can remember recently that succeeded in putting up its price

without that happening. What proportion of the falling-off will be permanent is, of course, the question nobody knows the answer to. Preliminary inquiries suggest that

the Guardian has hardly been affected at all by last week's extra 2d, but that may be because your regular Guardian reader can

think of no other paper that would suit him so well. In an odd way, it may be other

papers which suffer because of the Guardian price rise; a newsagent I spoke to said that where Guardian readers do take a second paper, they've tended to knock that one off rather than the Guardian, for which they're willing to cough up the extra coppers.

But those price increases have got to come, and very soon. The Thnes has said it isn't going to put its price up just yet but the Observer said on Sunday that 'an early in- crease in price is unavoidable', and the others will soon be doing the same. There will be moans and there'll be cancellations,

but surely readers will come drifting back? Because, as I've pointed out before, the value of modern newspaper offers is tremendous. Who's going to turn down the offer for the sake of half the cost of a box of matches? Only the stupid, surely?