MEDIA STUDIES
So this is how serious the Sindie now is
STEPHEN GLOVER
Neal Ascherson is perhaps the most distinguished left-wing columnist of his generation. He has spent the greater part of his journalistic life on the Observer, first as a foreign correspondent and then as a columnist. He became formidably knowl- edgable about Eastern Europe, particularly Poland, and is the author of several very good books.
Politically speaking, he stands a fair way from me. He is, for example, an ardent Scottish Nationalist, whereas I am a hardly less ardent unionist. But he is an upright, clever and thoughtful man. He is also a fine writer of English prose. He is engagingly romantic too. He believes that many lives are wasted. If only people are shown the light, they will be drawn towards it. Oppor- tunity can make heroes of us all.
Before we launched the Independent on Sunday in 1990, I wanted Neal to be one of its columnists. He wasn't, and never really became, a friend. It was not easy to wean him away from the Observer, where he had spent many years and had a large following. But he felt, I think, that the paper of David Astor had rather lost its way under the thrall of Tiny Rowland. His idealistic nature was inspired by our project. He real- ly believed that the better the paper we produced, the more copies we would sell. People only had to be shown the light.
His coming to the newspaper was a signal to the rest of Fleet Street that the Sindie should be taken seriously. For him, at the age of 57, it was something of a risk. He could easily have sat out his time at the Observer and collected a fat cheque. As things have turned out, the Sindie has sur- vived, though it has scarcely ever prospered. Editors have come and gone. The paper has been acquired by new owners, one of which, Mirror Group, now manages it. But through- out everything Neal has proved one of its most loyal supporters, writing a weekly col- umn for the paper, as well as other articles, from the moment of its first issue.
Now Neal Ascherson has been let go'. The official reason is that he is 65, which has been invoked by the paper's management as a mandatory retirement age. That is poppy- cock, of course. For some months Neal sought assurances from Rosie Boycott, edi- tor of the Independent on Sunday, that he would continue writing for the paper after his 65th birthday, which fell last October. He appears to have believed he had got the pledges he sought. Then, after Christmas, he received a letter which said that his days as a columnist were over, though he could continue to contribute occasional pieces as a freelance if he so wished.
Neal's dismissal — for that is what it is exemplifies the malaise afflicting several so-called quality newspapers. He should be regarded by his editor as an exceptionally knowledgable and experienced commenta- tor before whom she should prostrate her- self in awe and admiration. The man has no equal in his field. And yet, far from rever- ing him, Ms Boycott apparently believes that her columnist is too advanced in years to ply his trade, and that his columns are anyway rather over the heads of Sindie readers. I very much doubt that this is the case, though it is certainly possible that they are over Ms Boycott's head.
Some people, a few of them supporters of Neal, say that in recent months his columns have not always been as readable as they used to be. If this has been so, I pre- sume it is because he has not been receiv- ing the guidance and encouragement from his editor that all writers require. There is nothing more likely to depress the spirits of a columnist than the knowledge that his editor does not appreciate, and possibly not even understand, what he is writing. Columnists may seem serene but they are as much in need of love as anyone else.
It is rumoured that Neal's column will be taken over by a young woman with half his talent and a quarter of his experience. But because she is young and — let us admit it — female, and because she pontificates from time to time on television and radio, she is regarded by Ms Boycott and Mirror Group's managerial boneheads as mar- ketable. They are calamitously wrong. Some papers may gain sales from being 'dumbed down' but not the Independent or the Inde- pendent on Sunday, or, come to that, the Observer. Of course these papers should be lively and entertaining and informative
`This is my husband, I'd like you to make me a spare.'
Ms Boycott is good at that — but their rai- son d'être is to be serious at heart. They run terrible risks in presuming that their readers are impressed by a columnist merely because he or she is young and personable.
It so happens that last month each of these three papers sold fewer copies than ever before. There are doubtless several reasons for their decline. The two Indepen- dent titles have been starved of resources. But if Ms Boycott dumbs down the Inde- pendent on Sunday further she will lose more readers and risk dumbing it out of existence. She has only made her problems worse by getting rid of Neal Ascherson.
Here is a contemporary Fleet Street story. If you are interested in serious ideas, and getting on a bit, you are expendable. No mat- ter if, like Neal Ascherson, you have helped found a paper and sustained it through thick and thin. No matter if, like Neal Ascherson, you have been one of the most outstanding columnists of your generation. All that is for- gotten when a modish new editor comes along, backed by a know-nothing manage- ment that does not have the slightest under- standing of the paper it is publishing. At the Sindie, as elsewhere in Fleet Street, loyalty and distinction no longer count.
a Daily Telegraph columnist, I don't think I should compare that paper's new ten-section Saturday edition to the Times's equally voluminous production on the same day. So far as last Saturday's first bout was concerned, the Times can be congratulated for running an exclusive interview of Mar- garet Cook and for publishing an excerpt from Paul Routledge's new biography of Gordon Brown. The Telegraph began its gripping series about 'the Cambridge spy ring'. I wasn't greatly impressed by the Times's new glossy magazine, lovingly over- seen by Nicholas Wapshott. A model on the front, a story about a porn king and a piece about a twin who murdered her sister set a resolutely downmarket tone. Perhaps it will become more ambitious. What really stuck in my gullet was the Times third leader crow- ing about the paper's improvements and advertising the magazine as 'an opportunity for our writers and photographers to show their skills on a wholly new and different stage'. Ugh! I do wish my old friend Peter Stothard, the paper's editor, wouldn't degrade the Times leader column by turning it over to self-interested commercial puffs.
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