Seth and Sun
Taki
Why are the phrases "honest journalist" and "free press" so often greeted with a snicker?' asks Tom Fleming in Chronicles magazine. Well, most of us exempt ourselves from this general condemnation — if we are journalists, that is — just as we exempt our favourite politician from the general loathing we feel for those we pay to represent us in parliament. I've been laid low with Montezuma's revenge since I returned from south of the border — my God, what a price to pay for a snort or two; it was the ice cubes, apparently — and then Bill Buckley rang. Bill's voice is unmistakable. It's a cross between Cary Grant's and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's, but friendlier. `Are you free for dinner?"Well, no, I'm actually dying .. . 'but then Bill does live across the street, and the dinner was for Conrad Black, and as it turned out it was the most enjoyable evening I've had since the fall of Tobruk to Rommel.
There was the great Tom Wolfe, looking not a day over 28, all dressed in his traditional white suit and black-and-white corespondents' shoes; Richard Lowry, a man too young to vote but the successful editorin-chief of National Review; Jeffrey Hart, a long-time editor of NR and professor at Dartmouth University; a couple of other contributors; my hostess Patricia Buckley; and Seth Lipsky. Lipsky is the mother of all editors, to use an overused metaphor, the secret weapon that Lord Black came up with two years ago when he and a couple of 'my secret Jewish billionaires' — Seth's words — decided to take on the formidable Noo Yawk Times. Mind you, it was laughable at the time. One cannot repeat verbatim a dinner conversation, but Bill asked Seth to fill us in about the Sun,
the broadsheet daily that in my opinion makes reading the Times redundant.
What a story. When the paper began to form in Seth's mind, he calculated a daily circulation of 7,000 copies. In stepped Conrad, thinking big. 'Don't even think about it, go for it . ' The results are amazing. The Sun is selling more than 50,000 copies daily, is beating the Times in local news, and covers sport and culture like no other paper at one tenth of the cost. Eight metropolitan reporters are wiping the floor with the 100 the Times employs, and the Sun's columnists make those of the Times seem not only predictable, but exhausted and repetitive. This coming from a man who hates the paper's foreign policy over Iraq and especially Israel.
When the Sun was launched, I used to refer to it as The Sharon'. It still is very pro-Sharon, but it's so good in every other respect, I had to cast my loathing for that particular monster aside and say bravo. The Times was always essential reading because it provided details that the tabloids did not — in five sections, each weighing a ton. The Sun provides both details and insights in 22 pages which do not overwhelm but inform and delight. If! were Stephen Glover and launching a daily, I'd take a very long look at it, or. better yet, go and sit by Seth Lipsky for a while, and he has a very pretty wife to boot.
Why is High life writing about a low-life subject like journalism? Easy. I've just received my Speccie and read about Piers Morgan and the Mirror. Of course he should have been sacked. In the good old days, Morgan would have been tried for sedition and for giving comfort to the enemy. The next time a British soldier falls into the hands of the mob and is torn apart, Mr Morgan should be made to pay. But it ain't gonna happen. He was trying to sell papers, and to hell with the truth and the lives of those serving their country. This is a Murdochian world we are living in, and journalists are immune from the normal decencies expected from citizens in the past.
'Honest journalist' is greeted with snickers because it is a contradiction in terms. The words are mutually exclusive. Honest journalists go to the highest bidder and do his bidding and pretend they believe what they write. There are exceptions. We at the Telegraph group and, as much as I hate to say it, at the loathsome Guardian, and others, of course. And then there's Bill Buckley and Seth Lipsky, and those at the American Consemative. Oh, yes, I almost forgot_ I had a wonderful talk with Conrad Black, whose new name is Conrad Google.
He came up with details quicker than Google and just as accurately. He was in fine form, and all I can reveal is this: those who have counted his lordship out might, just might, be eating humble-pie one day. I sure hope so, but then I'm prejudiced.
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