SHEETS OF MANY COLOURS
The press: Paul Johnson
looks at the latest moves in the print revolution
CONSERVATIVE professionals who talk about Britain's newspaper revolution as though it were complete are kidding them- selves. It is only just beginning. Breaking the power of the unions not only opened access to many new technologies but also freed managements to exercise their im- aginations in using them. Until two or three years ago, London newspaper mana- gers spent over 90 per cent of their time locked in recurrent, niggling disputes with print chapels which held the whip hand. Naturally, few who were any good wanted the job. Now, with the union burden largely lifted, and with the industry hugely profitable, top talent is flooding back, and all kinds of far-reaching ideas are in the air. For instance, to see Rupert Murdoch's purchase of a 15 per cent stake in S. Pearson as a crude bid to get the Financial Times (which he is well aware the Monopolies Commission would never per- mit) is to take an old-fashioned view of things. The acquisition is merely one move in a long-term plan to turn the Times into an international newspaper, a field in which the FT and, still more, the Wall Street Journal are pioneers.
The Times is now dabbling in colour, which another Murdoch paper, the News of the World, has recently adopted with conspicuous success. This marks the rever- sal of an old Murdoch prejudice. A lot of readers still share it and think black-and- white 'natural' for newspapers, especially serious ones. They will have to change their minds. Colour, especially in the high-definition quality now becoming available, offers newspapers a new appeal to advertisers which they simply cannot afford to forgo, whatever the technical difficulties and cost, and the first chance since the 1960s to ' hit back really hard against television. Within a decade, perhaps within five years, the monochrome newspaper will be as dead as hot metal.
This will force editors to re-educate themselves. They will have to become not only colour-conscious but much more picture-conscious than they are now. Already colour magazines play a big and growing part in the economics of newspap- ers, and therefore are beginning to affect editorial attitudes. The notion that a news- paper editor has to have a news as opposed to a magazine background is one of those assumptions which will soon look quaint. A pioneer here is the Evening Standard's John Leese, who came to edit the paper after creating the superb You for the Mail on Sunday. Leese, having seen off the London Daily News, has now exploited both the Standard's London monopoly position and his own magazine skills to produce a 100-page giveaway colour-mag, ES, which made its first appearance' last Friday. This is a high-quality product, with a proper spine, and with an obvious appeal to advertisers aiming at the booming Lon- don AB market. It is a monthly at present but with the clear potential to become a weekly.
The re-launch of the Observer colour magazine on Sunday, also with a spine and, like ES, fashionably entitled M, is another sign of the expanding colour market in national journalism. The size, and not least the weight, of the Sunday mags is now becoming a problem in itself. My newsa- gent says sourly that if the Sundays get any heavier his boys will flatly refuse to deliver them on foot or bicycle. This Sunday the six mags alone weighed over a pound. Even the News of the World's Sunday had 48 pages. The Sunday Express Magazine managed 96 pages, the Telegraph 100, the Sunday Times Magazine 104, the new M 112 and You a staggering 136, not counting its comics and its 32-page insert Decora- tion. Indeed, most of these publications have inside extras, both fixed and floating, plus elaborate stick-ons, all of which add to the avoirdupoids — and the revenue.
Editors of newspapers must take these mags more seriously and exert their au- thority over their context. For they vary greatly in quality and reader-appeal and can decisively affect circulations. I am not impressed by M, which seems to have killed the outstandingly successful feature of Sunday magazine journalism, 'A Room of My Own'. How could Donald Trelford, the Observer's editor, have allowed this to happen? The idea has been ingeniously adapted by the new ES, as 'My Office and I', and was the perfect feature for a colour mag, which has to think in terms of visual detail and how long a picture can hold the eye. By contrast, profiles and pure perso- nality pieces, which show only mug-shots and fail or succeed by the quality of the writing, are best left to the newsprint sections. When they pop up in the mags it is a sign of editorial idleness and lack of imagination. The new M had two, on Jack Nicholson and Cleo Laine, neither of which was able to exploit the colour-photo opportunities. You, uncharacteristically, made the same mistake this week, com- pounding it by displaying the gruesome proscenium of Clive James not only inside but on the cover. James is one of those over-exposed personalities I never again wish to hear about or from. Another is Peter Langan. Both, believe it or not, are featured in the first ES.
The colour mag which at present most consistently makes effective use of photo- colour, and therefore rates highest in my view, is the Sunday Times Magazine. It takes full advantage of its larger format and high varnish and some of its double- page spreads are breathtaking. They show, among other things, that newspaper colour still can beat television at its own exotic game by allowing you to take your time and look. Even a mug shot can fascinate if it is the work of a master with imagination, as is shown by the current issue's selection from Snowdon's latest album, including a brilliant and sinister study of Nureyev posing as a Velasquez. Equally, black-and- whites can be made to carry their weight if well chosen and carefully timed. The same issue had a collection of rare late photos of Oscar Wilde, to mark the publication of the new Ellmann biography, which intri- gued me more than any of the lengthy reviews. Traditionalists should stop under- rating the colour mags. Well edited, they can speak as loudly as the brashest head- line, and as softly as the most sensitive prose.
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