23 APRIL 1983, Page 18

The press

Ancestral voices

Paul Johnson

The eclipse of Christopher Ward as editor of the Daily Express is a sad but instructive tale. A serious young man from the Daily Mirror, he has thought deeply about Fleet Street's problems. His appoint- ment to the Daily Express was welcome and for a time he did well. Would he work the miracle and turn round morale within the Beaver's black-glass palace? But then one detected signs that he did not know what the Express was all about. This remarkable paper was shaped in Beaverbrook's own image. It shared his strident belief in money, capitalism, power, Western might and British patriotism and, like him, combined it with a streak of radicalism and mischief- making which gave it a delightful unpredic- tability. To this it added glamour: it brought the exciting world of the rich and powerful to the breakfast tables of its upper-working-class and lower-middle-class readers — and as a result the rich and powerful read it too. Indeed in the Forties and Fifties everyone, especially the am- bitious young, read the Express. What the paper never was, under any circumstances, was progressive, do-gooding, highminded.

Over the past year it has become clear that Ward misunderstood the paper's character. He turned out to be an incorrigi- ble Mirror-man after all. Or, worse, a would-be Guardian-man. Guardian-like creatures began to rise up the Express hierarchy and snippets of Guardian philosophy popped up in its robust pages. It started to take an interest in the Third World and that sort of humbug, about which Express readers cannot hear too lit- tle. The final straw came on Easter Satur- day, after the absurd CND demo the day before. The front-page splash was 'HAND IN HAND FOR PEACE'. This straight-faced, solemn, quasi-pacifist treatment of an over- publicised non-event was about the last thing one expected to find in the Express. To do the Guardian justice, it would never have led the paper with such a ridiculous headline. It was more like the Mirror on an off day or the Morning Star on a normal one. True, Ward and his deputy, Leith McGrandle, were both away that night (why?), but the man responsible was a Ward appointee and I didn't hear of any drumhead court-martial afterwards. So I suspected then that Ward could not last and inquired about the latest circulation figures, which turned out to be dismal. He is now to go back to the Mirror, which is certainly in need of his talents.

The truth is, a good paper has a powerful personality of its own. The editor, however strong his own views, must listen to its voice, through which its traditions and its readers speak. All papers have these secret voices — ancestral voices prophesying cir- culation decline if unheeded. Once the editor attunes to the voice, he understands the paper's character; and his job is to reinterpret it in modern terms. The difficul- ty lies in the subtle variations in newspaper

personae. The Daily Mail, shaped by Nor- thcliffe and his brother Rothermere, never had a radical streak like the Express. It was and is a hard-nosed conservative paper, with a propensity from time to time to hit the Left with devastating accuracy, sometimes well below the belt. For most of the post-war period it floundered about because it could not find an editor who grasped its character. Then, suddenly, it got David English, who heard and rein- vigorated its voice; and it flourished.

The voice of the Daily Express has gone unheeded for many years now. Perhaps the last editor who understood it thoroughly was the late and much-missed Derek Marks, who once confided to me that he regarded editing the Express as the most im- portant journalistic job on earth, the sum- mit of the profession. No one could say that now. For this I do not blame its many editors but its management. For it is management that hires and fires editors, not vice versa. All Fleet Street management tends to be of low quality, because good managers do not want to work on national newspapers where they know they will spend most of their time arguing with the greediest, most powerful and tiresome unions in the country. But Express manage- ment, over the years, has made more mistakes than most. It was slipping in the last phase of the Beaver, worse under 'Little Max', worse still under Trafalgar House, now Fleet. Holdings.

The group is not doing too badly finan- cially at present. But this is largely due to the profits of the Morgan Grampian publishing interests and the 12.1 per cent stake in Reuters, now coining money through its worldwide financial services (a £36.5 million profit in 1982, expected to ex- ceed £50 million this year). In appointing editors, Express management has been at sea. Sometimes it went upmarket (Alastair Burnet), sometimes down (Derek Jameson), but at 'no point does it seem to have con- sidered: is this man likely to be an ini- aginative reinterpreter of the Express tradi- tion? Instead, it asked: can this man raise circulation? That, with respect, is to put the cart before the horse. Unless the editor understands the paper's character, circula- tion will go down, not up.

For the fact that a man was a first-class editor of one paper is absolutely no guarantee that he will succeed with another. Larry Lamb, whom Lord Matthews has thrust into Ward's place, did a striking job at the Sun; saved it, in fact, from extinction and set it on a course which now enables it to knock the once mighty Mirror all over the Street. But all that is largely irrelevant to his chances of saving the Express. He should spend some time in the back- numbers room studying what the paper was like thirty years ago and seeing whether that wonderful reactionary élan can be resur- rected in the terms of the Eighties. He, should ponder, too, the tragic tale of Harold Evans's brief sojourn in Printing House Square. For Evans thought the Times could be made a daily version of the Sunday Times. It is, of course, a totally different animal. Charles Douglas-Home, his suc- cessor, may not have all Evans's profes- sional brilliance, but he listens to the voice of the Times and he understands what it is saying. Alas, as a by-product of the Evans fiasco, no one seems to be listening to the voice of the Sunday Times itself these daYs. Once a right-of-centre heavy with all unrivalled reputation for major stories of world importance, it now seems unable to distinguish between high seriousness and sensational trivia. Last Sunday it had a front-page story, plus most of an inside page, on 'Soho vice', for heaven's sake' That kind of thing should be left to the News of the World and the Sunday People i which, each in its characteristic way, does t far better.