WHEN A PAPER LOSES ITS WAY
The press: Paul Johnson
is unhappy at the way things are going on the Independent
ONE casualty of the Tory leadership crisis has been the reputation of the Indepen- dent. I have heard widespread criticism of its tendentious presentation of the news during the last ten days, with stories and headlines angled to undermine confidence in a Thatcher victory. The Independent started off its existence by declaring it would adopt a policy of strict separation of news and comment, with America-style op-ed pages putting viewpoints, and the news columns kept sacredly objective. For a time this seemed to work, primarily because the paper did not have a coherent editorial policy at all. Indeed in its early days I repeatedly criticised it on precisely this score, saying that it lacked a world view and a set of interlocking principles with which to make political judgments.
Gradually an editorial policy of a kind has emerged, an entirely negative one consisting almost entirely of dislike for Mrs Thatcher. This is curious in view of the fact that, without Mrs Thatcher's trade union reforms, it would have been difficult if not impossible to start up a new daily like the Independent, let alone make a financial success of it. People like Andreas Whittam Smith showed great enterprise and courage in setting the paper up, investing their life savings and in some cases mortgaging their houses, a classical example of entrepreneu- rial risk-taking, and I for one am delighted that their boldness has made them rich. But it has to be remembered that without the enterprise and courage of the Iron Lady, which led to a revolution in printing costs and labour practises, none of this would have happened. How then to ex- plain the personal vendetta which the paper has conducted against Mrs Thatcher for some time now and which reached its climax during the leadership contest? I recall nothing like it since Cecil King's campaign against Harold Wilson in the Daily Mirror, which culminated in King's dismissal by his fellow directors.
The editorial line may be connected to the paper's other troubles. In the immedi- ate aftermath of the Wapping Revolution national newspapers suddenly became im- mensely profitable, given good manage- ments, and City money became easy to attract. With Britain now in recession and an advertising famine developing, the financial climate today is chilly in the extreme. The Independent has felt the fall in temperature more than most because it has no super-rich backers and owes £12 million to the banks. While the daily did well in 1989 and in some ways is still doing well, Whittam Smith felt he had no alterna- tive but to get into the Sunday market and this high-risk strategy has absorbed a lot of cash. The pre-launch costs of the Indepen- dent on Sunday amounted to nearly £4 million and in addition there were losses of £3.9 million for the year up to 30 Septem- ber 1990. As a result the company has had to look around for money. Last Week it announced a scheme whereby Spanish and Italian publishing groups, which own El
Pais and La Repubblica, are to put £21.5 million into the company, in return for a 12.5 per cent stake each, plus a further share offer which will raise their joint holding to nearly 30 per cent. Whittam Smith declares: '[The arrangement] brings new capital into the company without in any way compromising our independence.'
How can this be? It would not, from now on, be very easy for the paper to take a hard, anti-European Community line in defence of British national interests, for
example. Perhaps the Independent ought to mark the link-up by changing its name to the Continental.
Unease about the paper's future policies might be lessened if there were a clear distinction between editorial and business at the top. Whittam Smith is not only the editor but also the Chief Executive. How can the same man do both jobs effectively, especially now there are two papers? Readers will recall that I strongly criticised Andrew Neil for seeking to combine edit- ing the Sunday Times with running Sky. He eventually bowed to reason and relin- quished the Sky job. Recently Whittam Smith has been trying to edit the paper during a major political crisis while at the same time engaged in tricky negotiations to raise money. He has got rid of one of his star contributors, Terry Coleman, in a manner which has raised many eyebrows on the staff. There is a feeling that the editor simply did not devote enough time to devise a way to make full use of Coleman's extraordinary talents. There is also gloom at the loss of the paper's cartoonist, Nick Garland, whom Charles Moore has lured back to the Daily Tele- graph, and indeed about the high staff turnover in general. Expenses, so dear to the true journalist's heart, have been cut to the bone and sometimes beyond it. Econo- mies are hard to bear even when carried out by a reluctant editor under orders from the faceless men on the business floor. They are much more resented when the editor is also Mr Money Bags himself. It is of course not only right but desirable that editors and other senior people who pro- duce a paper should have a financial interest in its success. But it is equally right and desirable that there should be a separation of executive functions between editorial and management. No one dis- putes the magnitude of Whittam Smith s achievement at the Independent. He has been head of a team which, in an asto- nishingly short time, has created from. nothing a paper of great merit which is already an institution. But perhaps the time has come for the Independent's chair- man, Lord Sieff, that wise and prudent elder statesman of the business world, to have a quiet word with Whittam Smith and ask him to choose which job he wants. What is it to be, the presses or the ledgers, print or cash, the words or the digits9 The newspaper would be healthier if a fill" decision were made, and soon.
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