MEDIA STUDIES
It will be some time before the first national newspaper goes up in cyberspace
STEPHEN GLOVER
On Sunday the Sunday Times carried some very exciting news: Britain was to have its first totally on-line daily national newspaper. Existing national newspapers have their own internet versions — so does The Spectator — but what was planned was an all-cyberspace financial publication. According to the report, two high-flying Financial Times journalists, Robert Peston and William Lewis, were planning to leave the FT with an unspecified number of col- leagues to start their own show.
Monday brought disappointing news. The editor of the Financial Times, Richard Lambert, was quoted as saying: `Peston and Lewis are not leaving. The idea of a mass walkout is complete nonsense.' So that was that then. Actually, I found the whole thing a bit incredible. People don't plan to start a new national newspaper and then suddenly give up because a story about their activi- ties appears in the press. I don't know Mr Lewis, but I have come across Mr Peston, and his reported behaviour sounded implausibly wimpish.
In fact, the Sunday Times article was rather ahead of itself — or rather behind. Messrs Peston and Lewis had indeed planned a cyberspace national newspaper. Their feeling was, and possibly still is, that Britain is lagging behind America. In that country there are several cyberspace-only daily publications including Slate, owned by Microsoft, and Salon (both can be accessed free at www.slate.com and www.salon.com). There is also a Murdoch-backed daily financial internet business newspaper called TheStreet.com, which costs $9.95 per month or $99.95 per year.
This publication seems to have served as something of a model, though the planned newspaper would not be so exclusively tar- geted at investors, and would carry more high-quality reporting and commentary. Like TheStreet.com, it would be updated throughout the day. Venture capitalists were contacted during the spring — Peston and Lewis were looking for about £30 mil- lion start-up capital — and the response seems to have been generally quite favourable. The argument was that, in the same way that a technological shift had produced the Independent in the mid-1980s, so developments on the internet offered new opportunities that no one in this coun- try had yet seized. Then came the crash of intemet stock in America. Whether their paper would have got off the ground if this bubble had not been pricked is difficult to say. But once venture capitalists in the City saw what was happen- ing in America they were understandably alarmed. They seriously doubted whether there would be enough advertising revenue to support the new venture. And so Messrs Peston and Lewis were forced to put their newspaper on ice. While the Sunday Times was announcing the imminent appearance of a new on-line publication, the idea was, if not dead, certainly sleeping.
This is all rather disappointing. I haven't seen their revenue projections, nor do I have any idea of their costs, but their plan has the smack of success. I am about as far as is pos- sible from being an intemet boffin, but it seems to me most unlikely that we will have a totally on-line general daily national news- paper in the foreseeable future. As I say, there is Slate and Salon in America, which are really magazines rather than newspa- pers, but both lose money and have hardly set the world alight. It is difficult to see how Britain, with its much smaller population, could support such on-line publications, the more so given that, unlike America, we already have a developed national press.
But there might well be a market for an on-line financial newspaper. Political news can generally wait until the following morn- ing's breakfast table; financial news often can't. I can imagine an on-line publication with expert commentary and analysis updat- ed throughout the day as shares crashed and soared, companies announced results, and central banks raised or lowered interest rates. The ultimate point of such a publica- tion would be to serve investors who would otherwise have to wait for the next day's Financial Times or Wall Street Journal. Its value to them would be speed. You would get better information and analysis more quickly than is at present available, and the paper would offer you an instant opportuni- ty to buy, sell or invest. Just click here.
For all their entrepreneurial flair, Mr Peston and Mr Lewis appear to have got their timing a little awry. That does not mean that someone else will not revive their idea, or that they themselves may not get a second wind. Perhaps the Financial Times will put up the money. (It should cer- tainly be proud of its two journalists.) Its own internet business, FT.com, is said by some experts to be rather uninspired. Meanwhile TheStreet. com is threatening to move into the paper's own patch by launch- ing a European service. I have a feeling that there may be an opportunity here, though I can't say who will seize it.
It is amusing to see how Conservative newspapers are embracing the new wonder woman Ann Widdecombe, hoping against hope that this strange creature may single- handedly restore Tory England. During William Hague's absence in America Ms Widdecombe has been particularly evident, bashing poor Jack Straw one minute and heaping abuse on the Blairs the next. All good fun, I suppose, and perhaps I am unusual in not finding her wonderfully charismatic and inspirational. I would say it was her voice that let her down — it has the same effect on me as chalk drawn across a blackboard — but it is practically a law of modern politics that Tory leaders should speak differently from the rest of us. Think of Heath, Thatcher and Major, and ask yourself how many people you have met who talk like that. Since it is another law of modern British politics that prime ministers cannot be bald (Sir Alec Douglas-Home was the last baldie), I suppose it is inevitable that Mr Hague will in due course be replaced by Ann Widdecombe. But now that she is becoming so grand and important, the time has come for her to drop her weekly column in the Sunday Express. It is not a bad column, though not as good as that of Mary Kenny which it replaced. The point is simply that a prac- tising leading politician should not be seen writing such saloon-bar stuff. In fact, other than Roy Hattersley, who used to write for the Guardian during the long years of Labour opposition, I am hard-pressed to think of a precedent. And, of course, Ms Widdecombe shoots much more from the hip than Mr Hattersley ever did. Last Sun- day we had her in columnar mode attack- ing Mr Straw for his alleged pusillanimity over asylum seekers, which is exactly what she was doing on the airwaves in her role as shadow Home Secretary. Somehow the one undermined the other. It would be perfectly in order for her to write occa- sional long and boring 'think pieces' about the future of Conservatism, but she really can't go on as she is. I feel that on his return Mr Hague should act.
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