The Press
The House of Scott
IRVING By CLIVE
WHEN the Guardian was printed only in Manchester its shortcomings were accepted as part of its declared non-metropolitanism. One forgave the fact that in its southern editions the news was hours out of date; this was a price worth paying for the good things in it—its re- freshing northern attitudes, the quality of its descriptive reporting, the sanity and wit of its editorials. The fact that it was never really a newspaper was not important.
But it is now exactly two years since the Guardian became a truly national newspaper by printing in London. Two years is long enough to cover teething troubles. The Guardian can now justly be assessed against its larger am- bition. Its critics have established what they don't like about it: the tweedy, materially self- denying philosophy, political ambiguity and decision-funking, unctuous moral postures, woolly leaders, front-page pictures of sunsets on Winder- mere, tote refusal to acknowledge the existence of horse-racing and the news sense so selective that it amounts to perversity. The sum of all this is perhaps harsher than it is fair, and yet the flaws are many. These have been tolerated to an ex- tent because to correct them, one feared, would irrevocably transform the Guardian into just another newspaper, and people would surely not buy it for being that. Yet its virtues seem now to be so few that they no longer compensate for the eccentricities of character.
The Guardian has not been above self- criticism. This year it acknowledged some of its failings by altering its make-up: it put eight columns into a page instead of seven and made the typography more robust. The object was to make the paper look more 'newsy.' Yet it was only window-dressing, Narrower columns did not pro- duce tighter writing, merely longer stories. There was a feeling that if the lady was raising her skirts, the knees were no trimmer than the ankles.
The real trouble is perhaps deeper than this, deeper than the simple inadequacy of the Guardian's basic news coverage. It is probably psychological, and it dates from the decision to move to London. The independence of provin- cialism was eroded by the new aspirations. In London the Guardian felt that it had to become more professional. Now this, in fact, was true —but what kind of professionalism? It seems to have accepted the Fleet Street definition. In doing so it became the victim of its own strengths: it seemed unable to combine them with the Fleet Street idea of professionalism, and its individualism was sacrificed to the amateur improvisations which it adopted in the pursuit of the kind of paper which it really lacked the resources to produce. The Guardian finds professionalism compromising, like an English- man fluent in French who none the less loathes good cooking. Hence the painful typographical experiments to emulate the Fleet Street customs, while the paper goes on missing as many news stories as ever.
If make-up and typography were alone the way to rejuvenation, Sir William Haley might long ago have put. news on the front page of The Times. As it is, not only is The Times still outstripping the Guardian handsomely on news coverage, but there has been a fascinating rever- sal of the editorial roles of the two papers. In the last year The Times has become the com- mitted opponent of the Prime Minister and the Tory leadership, of the Establishment, of Execu- tive omnipotence and of public complacency. The Guardian, meanwhile, has been caught too frequently with its head in the sand vainly wish- ing away scandal, or with its head in the clouds, peddling political naiveties.
In a sense (though this is not to be taken too far) the organ of radical opinion is now to be found in Printing House Square, while the tame servant of the Establishment is at the once- mighty house of Scott. Though the motives of The Times are not always clear, there is no mistaking that its leaders have once again ac- quired a cutting edge of passion, and passion maketh newspapers. Haley, who rose under the Scotts before the war on the Manchester Even- ing News, has always been a radical at heart, if sometimes an old-fashioned one. In ten years of editorship he has moulded a paper which often reflects his own personality.
But opinions apart, The Times is now in- finitely superior to the Guardian in the quality and the range of its coverage. It has a fine (though at times transparently committed) correspondent in Washington. Its political correspondent, if sometimes convoluted in style, is usually a clear nose ahead of the pack. The foreign coverage as a whole is indispensable, with especially brilliant reporting from places poorly covered in other papers: Japan and India. It has perceptive commentaries on Com- munist affairs and its defence correspondent is so superbly in command of his subject that even the Americans respect him. The arts coverage is uneven in quality but remarkably comprehen- sive, and some of the sports writing, particularly on soccer, has a graphic quality.
Ironically, some years ago all this might have been said about the Guardian. But while the Guardian has lost its direction, The Times has recovered its own. It is still constrained by an anachronistic format, is still apparently—like the Guardian----unaware of what constitutes modern news photography. It still carries some appallingly laboured prose, and its women's page is a sur- vival made tolerable only by its rarity value. But it is a newspaper.
The Guardian has fallen behind not only in coverage, but in political instinct. Its policy is consequently equivocal and blurred. Its editor, Alastair Hetherington, was at first pro-Common Market and then turned against it, reportedly under persuasion from Hugh Gaitskell. When Gaitskell died, Hetherington took the unrealistic course of backing James Callaghan for the Labour leadership. The now notorious leader in which this support was given appeared on February 1, having been delayed for twenty-four hours by internal dissent. Contradictions be- tween the view of the editorials and the views of the paper's specialists tend to cause these ten- sions. With Callaghan eventually eliminated from the leadership contest, the Guardian's thinking did not get any clearer. On February 8 it wrote: `Much can be said in favour of either candidate [Wilson and Brown]; something can be said against both.'
There are still some fine talents on the Guardian, but their ability tends to emphasise the weaker points. In the end the Guardian will have to decide whether London or Manchester is the place for the editor to be. At the moment Hether- ington has one foot in each place, and daily con- ferences are conducted over a loudspeaker system connecting the two centres. But a disembodied editor is not much of a general. The paper, given its chosen ambition, will be no bigger than Man- chester unless and until it finally commits itself to London. It can surely do so without being corrupted by the conventions of Fleet Street. Above all, what it needs to do is to pursue news with more dedication, but not sacrifice identity to coverage: at the end of that road lies the Daily Telegraph.
When the Guardian came to London its cir- culation was 245,451, compared with 240,826 for The Times. The Guardian is now up to 266,243, while The Times is down, marginally, to 240,180. Such a small gain can be no compensation for the enormously increased expense of London printing. But it does appear that the improve- ment in The Times has had no impact at all on its sale, in spite of the fact that the new Printing House Square plant will be capable theoretically of turning out a million copies a day—if not of The Times, certainly of something.
Some of the Guardian's most vocal critics are graduates of the paper. This is the warning sign, because affection sometimes requires and justifies attack. The Guardian can be as great a newspaper in its new role as it was in its old; it can have invaluable influence on both political debate and British journalism. But so far its greatest achievement in becoming a national newspaper has been to induce in The Times a competitive spirit by which it has vastly improved. That cannot have been the Guardian's intention.
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