Inside the Eye

Richard West

If Sir James Goldsmith wants to know how to run a cheap and efficient newspaper, he could hardly do better than take a look at his erstwhile antagonist Private Eye. The fact that Private Eye has survived so many libel actions and, dutifully paid both the damages and the costs, is due only in part to the generosity of its readers. It also makes money, thanks to efficient management.

The Greek Street premises of Private Eye occupy three floors and just over 1000 square feet of a dingy, narrow house over a café. The rates are just over 0000 p.a. There is another smaller office in north London where two women work full time on the subscriptions.

Since Private Eye is a fortnightly, the journalists work only alternate weeks but there is a small non-editorial staff. This consists of: an editorial assistant, who is also librarian, secretary, telephone operator and receptionist — with the unenviable task of quieting people whose nanies have appeared in the last issue. The accountant is also Private Eye's ace photographer, whose exclusive picture of Eric Levine, Sir James's publicity-shunning lawyer, appeared last week in the Sunday Times.

The previous accountant and business manager now works as publisher of Gnome Books, which add to the revenue of the company. The fourth full-time Private Eye employee acts as lay-out and picture editor during edition week, and as advertising manager during the off week.

The freelance, non-journalistis workers include a man who types Private Eye on an IBM composer (about three days a fortnight), a lady who deals with the small ads (perhaps two days) and a cleaning lady, who gathers the waste articles to be thrown into dustbins, where, in those unhappy days of the lawsuit, they used to be gathered and photographed by Sir James's lawyers. Of course Private Eye also employs a

lawyer who comes in on edition day to read the magazine for libel. The men allotted this task are usually very young, perhaps on the principle that you teach a child to swim by throwing it in the deep end.

Of the journalists, only Martin

Tomkinson, who is in charge of Business News, is actually on a full-time basis. The 'funny men' who produce the middle, or joke section, come into the office from one morning a fortnight to eight days, like the editor Richard Ingrams. The cartoonists are paid by what they get published.

The journalist, Patrick Marnham, who

usually edits the front part Or 'Colour Section' comes from his home in South Wales to London about three days a fortnight. If any regular journalist goes on holiday, or abroad or has to spend weeks in court, a freelance may be called .in on .a weekly wage, subject to bonus (for extra scurrilous stories) or docking (for getting drunk or spending all day at the Oval).

Although some information comes from

friends of Private Eye, that tightly-knit group which Sir James has called 'the Pas seeping through the system', still more comes from freelance journalists with a good story to sell. Payment attracts interesting articles or information. It also commits the correspondent to make sure that his information is accurate.

Private Eye employs freelance journalists ' at a time when many newspapers will not publish them, because of the jealousy of the full-time staff. Even those newspapers an , magazines that will employ freelance journalists tend to insist that they do nOt write anywhere else. • Private Eye does not pay expenses for drinks and entertainment; the lunches at the local pub would not appeal to most neat Street journalists;• and the swimming P°° does not work at the Villa Disraeli, the magazine's holiday farmhouse in the Dordogne. Nevertheless it is much more fun to work there than at a big Fleet Street newspaper.

Of course, people say, Private Eye is only

a small newspaper. But not all that sMall Many much larger magazines would envY its circulation of 100,000 and also its Mall pages of ads. In those parts of Europe wheret managements and trade unions have gone mad, even daily newspapers ar' published with staffs not much bigger th3P that of Private Eye.