REBORN PROGRESSIVES
The press: Paul Johnson
comments on plans by left-wing journals to renew themselves
THE projected left-wing Sunday national, News on Sunday, contrived to raise all its initial share-capital last week, and so will now presumably make its appearance. Meanwhile, two other journals of the Left announced plans to improve themselves. The Observer is to have a completely new production system, and not before time. For some years it has been in the unenvi- able position of being the sole occupant of its own London printing works, whose presses were in consequence used only on Saturday. It would be difficult to think of a more expensive way of publishing a news- paper.
Added to which, or perhaps on account of which, the Observer's operation is un- usually union-dominated, even by the stan- dards of old Fleet Street. It was during the long Times-Sunday Times strike, and in order to take advantage of it, that the Observer management first allowed itself to drift through the £600-a-week ceiling in paying some of its print-workers, setting a new high for the national newspaper indus- try. As usual, rocketing wages went with grovelling subservience to union demands. The recent shameful episode, in which the paper's editor, Donald Trelford, was obliged by the unions to censor copy from Bernard Levin, indicates the depths the paper has explored in its own printing works.
The paper's circulation is at present flourishing, thanks partly to the losses of the Sunday Times, but it rightly fears that much stiffer competition is to be expected. For one thing, the News on Sunday will be angling for its stauncher Labour readers, especially in the North. For another, it is highly unlikely that Rupert Murdoch will accept the Sunday Times's recent decline: we must expect changes there, backed by huge resources made available from the increased profits of the Wapping adven- ture. Then too, the Sunday Telegraph, once discounted as the weakest and least competitive of the Sunday qualities, has suddenly become a real rival. Since he took over the editorship, Peregrine Worsthorne has managed to give it a new and interest- ing flavour, as well as a lot of editorial punch. This is already reflected not just in sales but in what I regard as the best index of a paper's health: its correspondence columns. Last Sunday it had letters from, among others, Robert Blake, Diana Mos- ley, Max Beloff, Nigel Dennis, Robert Maxwell and Corelli Barnett — not bad for mid-August! Moreover, all this is occurring even before the autumn transfer to the new printing works, which will undoubtedly make both the Telegraphs far more attrac- tive to look at and handle.
For all these reasons, the Observer is making a radical change. Its old London printing plant will go, with heavy redun- dancies among its part-time Saturday workers. Instead it will do the obvious thing for an independent Sunday paper: get itself printed under contract, in this case in four provincial centres. At the same time it will introduce electronic technology in a completely new editorial building in Battersea. The savings should be consider- able. Unlike the coup de theatre of the Wapping transfer, the Observer has announced the changes well in advance. So there may be trouble, even though the redundancy terms are generous. The Observer journalists stand to gain greatly by the new arrangements, certainly in the long run. But instead of welcoming them, they have adopted a policy of non-co- operation'. In particular, the chapel has `expressed concern about transport arrangements at Battersea'. Poor darlings! How one's heart bleeds for them as they hack their way through the South Bank jungle, machete in one hand, NUJ card in the other. The hostility and suspicion with which unionised London journalists greet novelty — even when it is in their interests — is a paradigm of feeble, defeatist Bri- tain. The truth is that these changes are essential to the paper's health and survival and the editorial staff should embrace them eagerly and be determined to make them work. After all, Observer journalists are supposed to be enlightened, progres- sive, open-minded people; whence, then, this Luddism?
The New Statesman is also turning over a new leaf — is 'starting again', to quote the leader in the first issue published under its new editor, John Lloyd. The paper's losses are heavy and it is fast running down its once-substantial financial reserves. So its problem is urgent. The difficulty is that the solution is bound to take time. It is two-fold. The paper was founded by the Webbs not so much to lecture to socialists or to the infant Labour Party, as to influence rational-minded people of all parties and of none. It slowly achieved this object. In the 1950s and 1960s, about one-third of its readers were Labour, one-third from other parties and one-third uncommitted or non-political. Since then the paper has become a purely sectarian journal of the Left, one of dozens to be found in Collet's bookshop, and in the process has shed virtually all its non- Labour readers. To survive it must sell itself across the entire spectrum and to do that it must become persuasive and ques- tioning, rather than assertive and raucous; above all, it must cease to be predictable.
That, however, will not be enough. In its heyday the paper sold on the quality of its writing. Good writing and an obsession with politics are, in my view, nearly always mutually exclusive. Most civilised people find time for a great many other things. In addition to leaders, a journal like the New Statesman should not carry more than two articles a week dealing with politics, leav- ing space for comment and description dealing with the thousands of other topics which make up life. It is the open- mindedness of a paper, its willingness to put breadth before intensity, and grace before commitment, which attract the talented writers. I wish the new editor well, but to succeed he will need to make fundamental changes in the paper's present priorities.
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