The
Spectator July 12, 1975 Implicit in the above is the fact that journalists are expendable. If the NUJ chapel at a particular paper chooses to go on strike it does so in the knowledge that the management aren't going to be all that worried. There are always the PA tapes to make do with. But if any of the print unions decide to "withdraw their labour," to use an exquisitely old-fashioned phrase, and especially if they do it just before edition time, the management would throw up the sponge immediately. That may not be the case in the future, but it certainly was the case in the past. And another thing is that journalists, being fundamentally a lazy lot of chaps, who quite sensibly prefer telling anecdotes about each other over a drink or eight, to getting worked up about the ways of the world, are not the sort of people who strike, or even threaten to strike, all that easily.
The result is, and we saw it happen some years ago in the Mirror chapel in Manchester, that one day they wake up, take their customary Alka Seltzers, and suddenly realise that they've fallen behind in the lemming-like rush for more money. Then, and only then, are they amenable to the idea of striking. I hope that what has happened in the Mirror chapel in London this week won't happen again — the newspaper industry has quite enough-other troubles to be going on with, thank you very much — but I hope it succeeds. It has always been my contention that newspapers are really about the words they contain. From such a contention I have been led to assert that the chaps who write the words are the fellows who should get the cash.
What is happening in Bouverie Street? Larry Lamb comes scurrying back from America to resume his job as editor of the Sun, Bernard Shrimsley, editor of the Sun, is made editor of the News of the World (an appointment which has probably wiped the smile off his face for ever), and the NoW editor, Peter Stephens, has been demoted to associate editor of the Sun. Mr Lamb assures us, with that unconvincing smoothness which is part of his character, that "there is nothing sinister in these moves and they have no hidden significance. They are designed, as the chairman says, to make the best possible use of the editorial team." Which means, of course, that until now they haven't been making the best possible use of the editorial team, which is very stupid of them.
Circulation figures seem to support that idea. When the Mirror was having its industrial troubles over Easter, the Sun picked up a lot of readers (some of them being acquired by methods which might be thought a touch dubious). It held those readers for some time, but now they have begun to fall away a little. Moreover, the Sun, or rather its parent company, News Interna. tional Limited, has had a bad year. So any sign of sliding on the Sun was clearly a cause for alarm. Hence the changes. How Larry Lamb is supposed to halt a decline which is common to all newspapers is quite beyond me.
Previous page
