MEDIA STUDIES
I have my doubts as to whether this Labour lord is the right man for the Express
STEPHEN GLOVER
There is a sense of excitement at the Daily Express, where the new editor, Richard Addis, has been installed for six weeks. Almost every day brings a new change. A new masthead is introduced. So is a new headline typeface. New writers are hired and old ones are sacked. The humor- ous column Beachcomber is revived, as is the gossip column William Hickey. The let- ters page is promoted, and the great and the good are persuaded to write to the Express, as their predecessors might have done 40 years ago.
And now the paper has a new proprietor — Lord Hollick, the Labour-supporting businessman. Well, he is not really a pro- prietor and he will not officially be in charge. But MAT, the company of which he is chief executive, is merging with United News and Media, which owns the two Express titles. Lord Hollick will be the chief executive of the merged company and Lord Stevens, at present chairman of Unit- ed, will continue in the same role in the new conglomerate. Since Lord Hollick is younger, more ruthless and more dynamic than Lord Stevens, he will end up calling the shots. This assumes that the merger will go ahead, which some in the City doubt.
Is it possible that the 35-year decline of the Daily Express, during which period aver- age daily sales have fallen from 4 million to just over 1.2 million copies, may at last have ended? The temptations to believe so are great. One can quarrel with some of Mr Addis's innovations — the revived Beach- comber seems to me to be grindingly unfunny, and I groan at Roy Hattersley's television reviews — but he has introduced an infectious sense of energy into his paper. There are even a few good jokes. How nice to see a new editor having fun. This reminds me that next week I should at last be ready to write about another newly installed editor, Max Hastings, now that I have followed up all those loose ends.
Among the media chattering classes few have a word to say against Daily Express Redux. The paper is regarded as a spirited underdog locked in battle with the rather brutish Daily Mail. But readers take a dif- ferent view. This is no reflection upon Mr Addis, whose editorial innovations are so recent that they could hardly be expected to have stemmed so ancient a decline. Sales were down in January, normally a strong month, to 1,265,967, which is close to a post-war low. By contrast, the circulation of the Daily Mail rose by nearly 4 per cent to 2,065,985. The paper has never been so far ahead of the Daily Express since the 1920s. It sales have been boosted by at least 150,000 as the result of the closure of Today last November, whereas the poor old Express has not picked up any new readers. There could be no more telling illustration of the relative strength of the two newspa- pers. In the minds of too many readers the Express has the smell of death about it.
It would be cheering if we could believe that brilliant journalism could alone save the paper. Granted that the Express still has some way to go, in six months it may hold a candle to the Mail in most departments. Mr Addis has been throwing money at new writers with abandon — one of whom has already been found wanting as a whole- page weekly columnist, though apparently he has been retained for other things. Mr Addis has certainly attracted some good people. But editorial investment is only part of what is needed. Though word of mouth can help to spread the message, I doubt whether the good news of the Express's transformation has travelled all the way from the Groucho club to the English heartlands. Being a succes d'estime is not enough for a mid-market newspaper which must rely on a much wider con- stituency than the chattering classes.
Mr Addis has to find a way of telling peo- ple who have deserted the paper, or never read it, that things have changed. Though marketing devices such as scratch-cards can attract readers, the Daily Express is so low in the water that it needs the much greater pull of the kind of advertising which will establish a new image for the newspaper. This naturally costs a very great deal of money. The Mail spends over £20 million a year on marketing and promotion, and with its war chest swollen by the extra revenues coming from its Today readers it could afford much more. Mr Addis has been promised an annual promotional budget of £10 million. This represents an increase, but in his predicament he needs far, far more.
Lord Stevens' ten-year stewardship of the Express titles (I shall be writing about the new Sunday Express on another occasion) has been a prolonged feat of cost-cutting. He has never been a great proponent of investment. I suppose he might say that as the Express titles are making only about £20 million a year, United cannot afford the enormous sums which the Mail lavishes on promotion. But how else do you get out of a period of remorseless decline? Appointing Mr Addis, and giving him some money to hire some good writers, was an inspired first step on the part of Lord Stevens — so inspired, and so apparently out of character, that it may be that Lord Hollick had a hand in it. The Labour peer will certainly need to play a part in the next stage which calls for some hefty expendi- ture. He will also need to turf out many senior Express managers who do not match up to the sabre-toothed chaps who run the Mail.
I am not sure about Lord Hollick. I'm not worried that he will try to Blairise the Express, since he is a businessman who understands the value of 'brands'. Every- one says he is sharp and clever, and many speak admiringly of his understanding of modern media conglomerates. For all that, like Lord Stevens he is a leading light of a public company with a tiny shareholding rather than a proprietor with a controlling stake. It is doubtful whether any accoun- tant would sanction the kind of expenditure which the Daily Express needs. Lord Rothermere, the proprietor of the Daily Mail, would, but he is undisputed captain of his ship. Old-fashioned proprietors, if they are benign and take the long view, offer many advantages.
The question is whether Lord Hollick, answerable to shareholders and with his eye very much on the bottom line, will take the investment risks that are necessary for the prosperity of the Daily and Sunday Express. Those who have made or saved great newspapers have mostly been journal- ist-businessmen. Lord Stevens was never one of those, though he has vaingloriously placed his bust in the foyer of the Express building, as Beaverbrook with much more justice did before him. Lord Hollick isn't one either, and for all his reputed way with figures I can't conceal my fears that he may not be the man to save the Express.
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