MEDIA STUDIES
In the end, they'll have to give him some management job. Who? Max, of course
STEPHEN GLOVER
So that is where I start, watching the beast at a distance, though his conduct towards me has caused some bewilderment. Last November, Mr Hastings indicated that he would not welcome my contributions as a columnist for the Evening Standard when he became the paper's editor in January. The reason — though he hedged a little was that he had not appreciated every obser- vation I had made in my column about his editorship of the Daily Telegraph. Shortly before Christmas, I was told that Mr Hast- ings had opposed my membership of a Lon- don club for which I had been put up. This seemed entirely consistent with his obvious antipathy towards me. And then, a few days later, I received a Christmas card from Mr Hastings. I have it before me now. I don't suppose I shall ever get rid of it. It depicts a pleasing, if not specifically Christian, pas- toral scene, and inside are the words: 'With Best Wishes for Christmas and the New Year — Max'. I imagine I was on one of those lists drawn up so that important peo- ple can send cards to their staff without being put to any trouble themselves.
It was from a desire to know more about this strange person that I appealed in this column for information to help me form a clearer picture. I have been overwhelmed by the response. Letters have poured in, and readers have telephoned at all hours. A few submissions have been made on scraps of unsigned paper, the respondents pre- sumably being unaccountably frightened of Mr Hastings' reaction were their identity revealed. The scope, and sincerity, of all these offerings have moved me.
Alas, they have increased rather than lessened my confusion. One writer asserts that Mr Hastings was a 'very stimulating editor of the Daily Telegraph' and a force for all that was good when he previously worked for the Evening Standard. Others, who I suppose are in a majority, take a less generous view, and one or two say things which could not be repeated in a family magazine.
With great reluctance I have therefore decided to set aside this mountain of evi- dence, which must await the attentions of Mr Hastings' biographer, and rely instead on what I see with my own eyes and hear with my own ears. For the wonderful thing about newspapers is that they have no secrets. Their virtues and defects are there for all to see. Mr Hastings may be a fishin' and shootin' man, and a distinguished author of books on warfare; a lover of fine houses and of grand people. He may, as is commonly alleged, have the attention span of a small insect and the same insect's understanding of, and interest in, contem- porary politics — or he may not. But in the end he is a practising journalist, and it is as such that we must judge him.
Appointed editor of the Evening Stan- dard, he developed the theory that the paper needed radical surgery. It was not in crisis, he said, but he saw himself, and had been encouraged by the group's chairman, Sir David English, to see himself, as mount- ing a bit of a rescue operation. This was not a wholly ludicrous view. Though the paper had been a succes d'estime during the three- year editorship of Stewart Steven, its circu- lation had slipped fractionally, even if in that process the proportion of ABC1 read- ers (those people so beloved by advertisers) had risen. Sophisticated minds explained the loss of sales by such causes as the diminishing number of rail commuters. Mr Hastings may be forgiven for thinking that he could reverse this seemingly inexorable trend, having already, as he believes, per- formed the offices of a journalistic Red Adair in saving the Daily Telegraph for its proprietor, Conrad Black. As he assumed command at the begin- ning of January, it is too early to say whether he will succeed. A circulation increase that month of ten per cent over December is mostly attributable to season- al factors. The Evening Standard is selling roughly what it sold a year ago, but I do not think that it is such a good newspaper as it was then, and I wonder whether it will be selling as many copies in a year's time. Mr Hastings has enveloped it in a fog of dull- ness. The news machine is as sharp as ever, and the paper excelled in its coverage of the Aldwych bomb. But the all-important features, which used to react to news and be invariably jolly, have become timeless and depressed. They have been shunted towards the back of the 'book' and present- ed in a way that is typographically reminis- cent of the paper's own `advertorials' — a disagreeable mixture of advertising and editorial. Londoner's Diary, until recently rather zippy, is top-heavy with approving `puffs', some of which relate to Mr Hast- ings' pals.
These are early days, as I say, and it may be that he is massing his tanks for a deci- sive push. He has been sacking journalists with abandon — the tally is now over 20 and has recently turned his attentions to photographers, one of whom, a long-serv- ing employee, was told baldly that he was `surplus to requirements'. Milton Shulman, who has spent most of his life writing for the Standard, has been asked to lay down his pen. This all seems rather disgraceful, but in a hard world it might be justified were there a prospect of editorial improve- ment. To shed so much blood, and produce a worse paper, would be an act of consider- able folly.
Much is made of Mr Hastings' achieve- ment in turning around the Daily Telegraph. I think that he may have been the man for the hour (Mr Black is quoted in a recent book as saying that Mr Hastings was 'very good at drowning the kittens'), though we should remember that circulation fell somewhat during his editorship. My worry now is that he may have lost his zest for journalism, even if he has not lost his zest for sacking people. I may not get another Christmas card for saying this, but it would be a great kindness to Mr Hastings if some management job could eventually be found for him that would enable him to continue to be driven around in his large car and to enjoy his salary of some £300,000 a year.
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