MEDIA STUDIES
Andrew Neil and the Barclays are after the Independent. To my surprise, I hope they get it
STEPHEN GLOVER
Strong papers evolve, weak ones keep on relaunching themselves. On Tuesday the Independent received its fourth or fifth `makeover' since 1990. Previous attempts did not succeed in reversing the decline in sales, which stood at 423,000 in March 1990 and seem to have stabilised at a little over 250,000. The question is whether this latest effort will win back much lost ground.
I shall be surprised if it does. Design is admittedly a subjective thing. A new look can grow on one. Perhaps I will come to like the new version of the Independent, but at first sight it seems uninspired. There is a sense of slowness about it, a lack of energy, which is the cumulative effect of too much white space, small, undifferentiated head- lines and little featurey `standfirsts' intro- ducing news stories.
The content remains much the same, though the paper's editor, Andrew Marr, unwisely let a single article about Tony Blair dominate Tuesday's front page with a messianic picture under the headline, `Blair: My vision for the year 2000'. Does the Independent have to sound like Labour Weekly? Elsewhere there were several examples of coarseness. A feature on the centre pages about breast implants was headlined, 'Thanks for the mammaries', a barnacled old joke anyway. Most of page three was given over to Kitty Kelley's new book — this from a paper that once shunned royal stories.
Let's hope these are uncharacteristic flaws. The paper's owners are intending to spend £5.5 million on promotion within the next six months and a further £6 million in the following 12 months. The paper will sell at 20 pence throughout this week. I sup- pose new readers may be tempted into becoming buyers of the Independent. The trouble is that deep down the paper's prob- lems remain' the same: the furniture has been rearranged to no particular effect, just as it was on previous occasions. The Inde- pendent suffers from a lack of journalistic resources and appears to have lost its way.
Its editorial budget has been subjected to yet another round of cutbacks which leave it much less well funded than its rivals. Money lavished on promoting the paper would have been much better spent on edi- torial improvements. A comparison with the Guardian, which is not the world's rich- est title, shows that the Independent is light on stories and features and cannot match its competitor in scope or depth. However hard the Independent's journalists work, however gifted many of them are, they are fighting at a disadvantage.
But money is not the only problem. The Independent was launched in 1986 as a pro- prietorless, politically independent, up- market newspaper which aspired to being a journal of record. Now it is controlled by two very wealthy companies — Mirror Group newspapers and the Irish Indepen- dent group. Its political independence has been compromised in favour of Blairism, as Tuesday's front page attests. It is no longer more up-market than its broadsheet rivals, and has given up any pretensions to being a paper of record.
Some of these developments were hard to resist. It proved impossible to survive without the deep pockets of a proprietor. Politics changed, and Blair came along to advocate much of what the Independent had formerly stood for. But the paper has been unable to apply its original values to changed circumstances with marked suc- cess. Surely the one thing it should have clung to in an age of 'clumbing down' was its sense of being a cut above its rivals.
The Mirror Group, which manages the Independent and its Sunday sister, and the Irish, who largely look on, have kept the titles alive but failed to develop them. It was not sensible to squeeze their resources. The Independent's owners have also failed to find a new raison d'etre. How on earth could they do so, Mirror Group having been hitherto exclusively a publisher of tabloid newspapers, and the Irish being both strange to this country and also with- out any experience of publishing up-market newspapers?
These two publishers can never together revive the Independent. That is why, some- what to my surprise, I am glad to learn that the Barclay brothers and their editor-in- chief Andrew Neil want to buy the title and have indeed made a preliminary offer. Mr Neil, a former editor of the Sunday Times, has not always been my favourite pin-up, and the Barclay twins seem secretive to the point of eccentricity and possibly beyond. But their thinking makes sense.
They want to move the Independent up- market and turn it into a paper of record in the style of the New York Times. The Bar- clays are prepared to make the consider- able investment necessary to make such an ambitious project work. In deciding whether they should be believed or not one should bear in mind that they are investing heavily in the European and also in the Scotsman. They also hope to make some- thing of the moribund title Sunday Business which they have just bought for practically nothing.
In response to the Barclays' initial bid for the two Independents, the Mirror Group has indicated it might be interested in sell- ing its 46 per cent stake, though money has not been discussed. The Irish don't want to sell their equal stake. They seem to regard the Independent as a sort of trophy to stick on the corporate board table. So the Bar- clays have to decide whether to try to get the Mirror's share and either 'flush out' the Irish or hammer out a modus operandi with them. Co-operation could only work, from the Barclays' point of view, if they were allowed to manage the papers, and if the Irish agreed to match their investment.
As things stand, the Independent is going nowhere. I fear that this relaunch, though far from being a disaster, will turn out another costly failure because it doesn't address the paper's real problems. It is still a good newspaper, despite the neglect that has been lavished on it, and it cries out for a rescuer. I can't be sure whether the Bar- clays and Mr Neil exactly fit the bill, but they seem to be the best bet in town.
Last week the solicitor Geoffrey Bind- man had a letter in this magazine accusing me of all sorts of things including being overindulgent of my former Independent colleagues. He was defending his client Kojo Tsikata, the former head of the Gha- naian security service, and Mr Tsikata's friend, the Guardian journalist Victoria Brittain. I would like Mr Bindman and Mr Tsikata and Ms Brittain to know that a col- league and I have been working hard on this case, and that our inquiries are bearing fruit. I am looking forward to dealing with Mr Bindman next week.
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