MATTER OF INTELLIGENCE
The press:
Paul Johnson asks what makes
a newspaper intelligent
SO MANY things are going on in the national press at the moment, there is so much change, novelty, anger, bitterness, fear — even desperation in some places — that we are sometimes inclined to forget the purpose of a paper. We need to be like the child who, observing a tremendous display of vocal fireworks from the late Randolph Churchill, asked, 'Mummy, what is that man for?' A Sunday Times journalist, Ian Jack, who resigned from the paper last week, gave as his reason: 'It has stopped being an intelligent paper.' That set me thinking. Is it the primary purpose of a paper to show intelligence? And if so, how do we judge the result? How, for instance, do this week's Sunday papers display intelligence?
It occurred to the Sunday Mirror that the opening of Cliveden as a luxury hotel meant that Mandy Rice-Davies could now stay there. They phoned her. She said, 'I might well go there if I can afford it.' They telephoned the manager, to ask if she would be welcome. He said, 'We have no policy of discrimination.' The same idea occurred to the Mail on Sunday. They actually did something about it. They took Christine Keeler back to Cliveden, photo- graphed her there, and got her to reminisce about July 1961. It made an amusing two-page feature, flagged on the front page. Obviously, the Mail handled the idea more intelligently than the Mirror. But was it an intelligent idea in the first place? I think so. You may not. It's all a matter of opinion.
Again, let's take the new paper, Sunday Today. This is a very big paper indeed: 88 pages, 30p. Moreover, though it's a tab- loid, the number of editorial words in it is very large. In addition to the newspaper itself, it has a newsprint magazine section called Extra. There were half a dozen wordy columns, and features on the Par- kinsons, Sunday opening, Gorbachev, Norman Tebbit, exiled dictators, David Bowie, politicians' clothes, a Liverpool vicar, female self-defence, Sir Robin Day, the skier Martin Bell, the Mexican earth- quake child-survivors, the Brussels football disaster, and so on. In two cases effective use was made of colour photographs. But in nearly all the others display had been sacrificed to words. The headings were too small or anaemic. The pages gasped for air. Which is the more intelligent thing to do: to go all out for readers and pull them into the article by slashing the copy and making space for a stunning display? Or to put the author first, keep the text in its integrity, and put off some of the customers? The weight of newspaper experience is that it is nearly always more sensible to give display priority. But this, too, is a matter of opinion.
Again, take foreign news coverage. The overseas story which interests me most at the moment is the French elections. Most of the Sundays paid it no attention at all. That may be intelligent from their point of view: their readers are not interested. Or it may not be: I could find nothing on this topic in the three middle-weight papers, the Sunday Express, Mail on Sunday and Sunday Today, and that seemed to me 'Save me from Satan, Sir.' unintelligent editing. But it is only my opinion against that of their editors. The Sunday Times and Observer, on the other hand, had major feature articles, by Alex- ander Chancellor and Robin Smyth respec- tively. The French election has not gener- ated much actual news, and the polls seem to have made the result a foregone conclu- sion. So it may have been more intelligent to run features giving the background and speculating on the future. On the other hand, the Sunday Times story by Brian Moynahan actually gave me up-to-date information which was new to me. Which was the more intelligent approach is matter of opinion. I know what I think: I always prefer news to views in a news- paper.
What constitutes an intelligent act is subjective matter. The Sunday People ran a beautifully designed and written double- page feature about the Northern comedian Les Dawson, talking about his wife who is very ill. I don't know whether it would meet Jack's standards of intelligence in 3 paper. Some people might think it maw.- kish, sentimental or corny. To me it seemed a brilliant example of how a popular newspaper should reach out to its readers. In the Observer, Neil Ascherson wrote his column about an attempt by Polish Catholics to rehabilitate Jan Huss, the proto-Protestant martyr, and con- cluded, 'It is always, everywhere, wrong to kill people for their opinions.' AschersOfl15 an intelligent man, but that struck me as a foolish remark. If Hitler had been killed for his opinions at Mein Kampf stage, slx million Jews would not have been mur." dered. If Kerensky had shot Lenin for his opinions, before he had a chance to Put them into practice, 20 million Russians might have lived out their lives naturallY, and Ascherson's Polish friends would be free men and women today. But does printing a sentence like that make the Observer an unintelligent paper? I do ildr think so.
The truth is, when we say, 'That's not very intelligent remark,' what we usuallY mean is: 'I don't agree with you.' Jack seems to have resigned from the SundaY Times because he does not agree with the editor's view on Sellafield. Some people believe passionately that nuclear poor, threatens the whole future of mankind.ano should be abolished completely; or, failing that, should be investigated to death by the media. Others think nuclear scares are tbe, modern equivalent of a witch hunt and tba` sensible people, in government and media, should support a highly safety-conscious and efficient industry with excellent pects. I happen to agree with Neil's view, and so in that respect consider the SundaYa Times an intelligent paper. But it's all _ matter of opinion. The significance of tiles high-tech revolution is that it is bringing ri more papers, and so more opinions. Soon,. we shall all be able to find one we consider intelligent.
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