The Spectator
Most of our readers will be aware from the announcement made earlier this week that a change in the proprietorship of the SPECTATOR has been arranged. Mr Ian Gilmour, MP, who has held the controlling interest since 1954, has agreed to transfer it to Mr H. D. F. Creighton, chairman of the Scottish Machine Tool Corporation.
Their joint purpose has been to safeguard the future of the SPECTATOR as an indepen- dent journal—independent in its policies, and independent of groups and combines, as it has been since its inception. The new proprietor has already declared his intention to ensure the continuation of the paper in its present character, under the same editorship and with the existing staff. In other days such a change might have seemed merely a domestic matter. Today, however, there is general concern at the way economic pressures have caused the owner- ship of the press to be concentrated more and more inside rich and powerful groups. When genuinely independent journals are so few, it follows that those which have success- fully maintained that quality have an extra importance thrust upon them. The SPECTATOR recognises this, and accepts the responsibilities it implies. It has nourished its own tradition of determined in- dependence ever since Robert Stephen Rintoul published the first issue in 1828: and it has every intention of continuing to do so.
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