MEDIA STUDIES
The Observer has new readers in mind, and they're all knee-high to a grasshopper
STEPHEN GLOVER
Ican't resist writing about the Observer. For many weeks after Will Hutton's appointment as editor little happened. Then in early July came the relaunch. This was quite radical. Since then the paper has given the impression of being edited by an anarchist with a sense of humour but abso- lutely no reverence for the past. Last Sun- day's issue, produced during Mr Hutton's absence on holiday, was a vintage specimen — one to put aside for your great-grand- children to savour. The new Observer appears to be particularly directed at the 11 to 14 age group.
At the top of the front page was a large cartoon of Lady Thatcher's head upside down with a strip across her demonic eyes in imitation of the much-derided Conserva- tive Party poster of Tony Blair. This was to get us in the mood. Below lay the unforget- table headline: 'Beefburgers linked to can- cer.' Even by the standards of Sunday newspaper scare stories, this was a corker. Some scientists at the University of Iowa had 'found that hamburgers pose a signifi- cant risk in the development of non- Hodgkin's lymphoma'. (Have they? It would be jolly interesting to hear those sci- entists speak for themselves.) There were a selection of 'mugshots' of people who have suffered from the disease, including Jacqueline Onassis, who must have spent her life ingesting carcinogenic hamburgers. But the greatest changes have been wrought in the Review. With that 11 to 14 group in mind, there was a piece last Sun- day on the front of this section about the Pop group Blur. There was plenty more inside about pop and jazz, although much less about opera and classical music. The previous Sunday there was a review of con- doms written by Jay Rayner. There are still some old Observer hands such as Katherine Whitehorn and Richard Ingrams toiling in the vineyard, but they seem outnumbered by new voices and dwarfed by the exuber- ance and zaniness of the headlines and lay- out, which are designed to zap teenagers whose formative years have been spent watching The Big Breakfast. One headline last Sunday read: 'Q. What do you call a novel with half the pages left blank: (a) post-modern, (b) a swiz, or (c) both?' This is not high culture as it has been understood by traditional Observer readers, some of whom are grumbling. What is going on? The new broom is being wielded not so much by Will Hutton as by Jocelyn Target, the thirty-year-old deputy editor whose previous job (which he did extremely well) was to edit the 'Night and Day' sup- plement of the Mail on Sunday. Previously Mr Target was a young turk on the Guardian, where he upset a lot of old turks who regarded him as frivolous and insuffi- ciently committed to serious left-wing caus- es. The Mail on Sunday may not have turned him into an intellectual heavy- weight, but it has taught him how typogra- phy and headlines can achieve spectacular visual effects.
Certainly the Observer was in need of improvement, having lost sales since the Guardian bought it three years ago. Last month circulation reached a 40-year low. I wish the new changes were for the better but on the whole they aren't. The thinking behind them is understandable: the paper has too many elderly readers. That is why Mr Target, in his way a rather brilliant jour- nalist, was appointed. But there are many risks when you upset one group of readers in search of another. The old ones may stop reading, and the new ones may never start. I can't help wondering whether Mr Target may not have not set his sights a bit too low in the age range.
It is curious that the Observer's main rival, the Independent on Sunday, has a sig- nificantly higher proportion of young read- ers. Yet it does not go in for very many of Mr Target's tricks, Though there is a sec- tion called 'Real Life' partly aimed at a teenage constituency, it is by and large a serious and intelligent liberal newspaper (too left-wing to build up a large circula- tion, I would say, but that's another matter) which looks classically beautiful. The wide- ranging Sunday Review remains particular- ly striking. Peter Wilby, the Independent on Sunday's fifty-something editor, cut his teeth on the Observer, for which the paper's two distinguished columnists, Neal Ascher- son and Alan Watkins, also once wrote. In some ways it breathes the intelligent, civilised values of the old Observer.
I don't want to give the impression that the new Observer has been turned overnight into a comic. There remain some serious things in it, such as Salman Rushdie's essay last Sunday on the novel. There must also Classifieds — pages 44-46 be jolly things. The magazine 'Life' section has improved, and Messrs Hutton and Tar- get have hired the interviewer Lynn Barber who, although being worked like a pit- pony, is back to something like her old form. But, though. every broadsheet needs light relief, the Observer can surely only sur- vive by becoming again a serious liberal newspaper. I doubt that intelligent young readers of broadsheets welcome the kind of visual gimmicks and grunge journalism practised by Jocelyn Target, and I'm quite sure older ones don't. If things go on as they are, sales will continue to fall and the Guardian, as owner of the paper, will face not a problem but a disaster.
Several defenders of our civil liberties are unhappy that the Queen should have warned four freelance photographers not to trespass at Balmoral. There is also anxi- ety because a court has ordered a freelance photographer by the name of Martin Sten- ning not to go too close to the Princess of Wales. Mr Stenning seems to be in a cate- gory of his own and I don't propose to write about him. But any concern for the sensi- bilities of the other four photographers is surely misplaced.
Gentlemen who make their living by tak- ing photographs for tabloid newspapers are generally among the toughest people on God's earth. If you have ever had the mis- fortune to get in the way of one of them while he is in the course of carrying out his business, you will know what I mean. They believe they have a divine right to take pic- tures on their own terms. Italian magazine photographers tend to be the most abra- sive, and even when sober will cheerfully fight among themselves in order to get pride of place at an event.
I am sure that these characters can look after themselves at Balmoral. The indefati- gability of photographers can be best observed when they run after a car which may contain one' or two occupants whom they would like to photograph. They will do this even when — one might say, especially when — they have no conceivable hope of catching their prey. M the vehicle speeds off into the middle distance at some 40 or 50 miles an hour, still they keep running, often emitting strange warlike cries before suddenly desisting with all the insouciance of an elderly dog who has finally lost sight of the neighbour's sprightly cat.
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