A PSEUDO-QUALITY PAPER
the new Guardian but finds it an ominous portent
WE ARE now witnessing a hard-fought battle for readers among our five posh national dailies. By their standards a great deal of money is being spent. Paradoxical- ly, the net result, whoever wins, may be a loss of quality. Let us look first at the figures. The Financial Times may be thought of as above the battle since it has a specialist readership and costs a lot more. But in the last six months of 1987 it averaged over 50,000 more than the corres- ponding figure for 1986, reaching a figure of 306,857, not all that much short of the Independent and far more than the Times sold a generation ago. The Independent had a December sale of 377,181 (the six-month average was 360,887), which is magnificent, but there are now signs that the rise may be flattening out. The Times averaged 447,279, down 20,000 on the previous year; and with a December figure of 431,073 it looks as though it lost about 35,000 to the Independent in its first year. The Guardian was the biggest loser, its average of 460,340 recording a loss of over 46,000, though it is now running at an unofficial figure of over 480,000. The Telegraph, after many years of slow de- cline, has made a good recovery: at 1,169,406 its average was nearly 40,000 up on last year. Although the Telegraph is way ahead in sales, it no longer has a price advantage, and all four non-specialist qual- ities can be regarded as directly competi- tive.
So what are they doing about it? On Monday the Times and Telegraph both raised their prices 5p to 30p, a big jump which will provide cash for larger papers and editorial improvements. Both are get- ting steadily bigger anyway. Last week alone the Times had two colour supple- ments, and having got right on top of the unions it can do all kinds of daring things at minimum cost (as the huge improvements in the Sunday Times, reflected in large sales increases, demonstrate). The Tele- graph has more union restrictions but the fundamental improvement in its manage- ment at all levels, which the new Black regime has brought about, gives it a strength it never possessed in recent de- cades. The editorial, too, is much livelier, though there has been some loss in political coherence. Both these papers are commer- cially in good shape and the extra 5p is a sign of their self-confidence.
The Independent funked the price-rise, perhaps because its sales actually declined last month. That was an unwise decision in my judgment and it was not surprising it was reversed this week. Since inflation really set in a quarter-century ago, price- rises have lost much of their old capacity to hurt sales; people have got used to them. It may be that the recent decline in inflation (now down to less than four per cent) has changed people's attitudes again, but I have seen no sign of it yet. Delaying a price rise merely means you lose revenue and risk drawing attention to yourself after the rest of the pack has moved on and you are finally forced to follow suit.
The Guardian seems to be keeping its price to 25p with a more plausible reason since it is giving itself the biggest rejig in its history. The consensus among the wiseacres of the national press seems to be that it is a disaster. I do not agree. Of course some marginal corrections will have to be made, indeed may well have taken place by the time you read this. The by-lines, for instance, are far too small, which makes no sense on a paper with as many good writers as the Guardian. It is also true that last Friday's paper, the first in the new style, had a disastrous front page — a feeble opinion poll splash and a second story with a headline in German, for God's sake. 'Thatcher in New Con- frontation' and "No" for Clough' sug- `The phone's dead.' gested too that the sub-editors had simply not got used to the new bold, sans-serif typeface, which cuts down the number of words you can get into a headline.
However, the masthead itself is dashing and powerful and the device of putting mug-shots above it is brilliantly effective. It gets right away from the old boring quality logo, which has been a straitjacket ever since the days of the first steam presses. It allows the Guardian to exercise some of the bold appeal of the tabloids (indeed it already makes the Daily Mail, still in gothic, look old-fashioned). I hope the Guardian's editor, Peter Preston, is not too dismayed by adverse comments from with- in the journalistic professions (the advertis- ing world, very design-conscious, is much less critical) and keeps his nerve. Subject to the kind of marginal improvements I have suggested, the change is not only right but adventurous: it means that, at one bound the Guardian has leapt right over the heads of all the competition and placed itself firmly in the van of the coming generation. Of course the Telegraph peo- ple, who have carried through with im- pressive skill a conservative but very thor- ough rejig of their own in a softly, softly manner — so that most readers have scarcely noticed it — are particularly sca- thing of the Guardian changes. It is, certainly, a high-risk strategy and it may be that the Telegraph alternative, which is certainly better suited to its own read- ership, may get the readers' verdict. But my guess is that the Guardian will be proved right; that the younger readers will find its new appearance exciting and diffe- rent, and that the other papers will end by copying it in one way or another.
Having said all that, I am still in one sense dismayed by the change, even though I regard it as probably inevitable. It is no accident that critics have picked on its unsuitability for handling large numbers of news stories. The new modular form is much better adapted for features or news- features than hard news itself, which comes in awkward shapes and pieces. Less and less hard, routine news and more and more material written around the news, are going into newspapers. This is undoubtedly the effect of television, which gives the news, at least in summary, long before the newspapers can print it. There are some who continue to want the news in extenso, as a traditional quality paper used to provide it. But there are probably not more than a quarter of a million prepared to buy a general paper which provides such a service at what it would cost, say 50p. As a result, instead of having one true quality paper with a 200,000-plus circulation, and three pseudo-qualities at 350,000 upwards, we have. four, all offering essentially the same, and to my mind unsatisfactory, product. The Guardian has accepted the logic of this situation, and leapt into the future. All credit to its commercial fore- sight. But it is a future I do not like.
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