MEDIA STUDIES
The truth about Mr Neil's Sunday Times: it went down (in both senses)
STEPHEN GLOVER
Has the Sunday Times declined as a newspaper? The question arises with the publication of Andrew Neil's new book Full Disclosure (reviewed in this issue by Charles Moore). Mr Neil edited the Sunday Times for 11 years. He writes about his time as editor in Maoist or American manage- ment guru terms: leading the paper out of darkness into light, from failure to tri- umphant success.
When Mr Neil became editor in October 1983 the Sunday Times was a three-section newspaper plus colour magazine selling an average of 1,338,000 copies a week. When he stepped down in the summer of 1994 it was a ten-section paper selling just over 1,200,000 copies. The market share of the Sunday Times had fractionally increased, and the paper had pulled far ahead of its old rival, the Observer. It had also become much more profitable as a result of the printing revolution which followed the move to Wapping: Mr Neil says that by 1994 it was making a profit of a million pounds a week. But, judged by the yard- stick of circulation, the Sunday Times lost ground during Mr Neil's watch Sales provide a crude yardstick, though we can be sure that Mr Neil would gleefully seize on it had they gone in the other direc- tion. Let's leave that aside for the moment. The deeper question is whether the Sunday Times has gone off. I have been looking at old copies, from 1975 (very roughly midway through the 13-year editorship of Harold Evans), and from 1980, when Mr Evans's reign was coming to a close. I have also been re-reading the final issues before Mr Neil took over a paper which he describes in his book as being a virtual 'basket case', staffed by mostly left-wing journalists opposed to every sort of change, some of whom were allegedly incapable of putting in a hard day's work.
The first thing one notices about the 1975 Sunday Times is the poor quality of printing and photographic reproduction. Ink still comes off on your hand even though these copies have been sitting in a library for 20 years. There was no colour in 1975, save in the magazine. All in all, the modern Sunday Times appears to be a more attractive thing than its counterpart of 20 years ago, as could be said in the case of every other newspaper. But when you look at it more closely, you notice that the old Sunday Times is more painstakingly designed. The typography is more restrained, and the maps and graphics are much more beautifully drawn than the modern computer-generated versions.
Twenty years ago there would usually be one, sometimes two, foreign stories on the front. Now there are quite often none. There was perhaps less foreign news inside (the number of pages was restricted by the presses, whose improvement the unions blocked) but it was serious stuff in contrast to the personality-baSed articles often favoured by Mr Neil. In one issue (7 July 1975) there were interviews with Valery Giscard d'Estaing and Mrs Gandhi. The Review section was more elevated 20 and 15 years ago than are the two or three sec- tions that have superceded it. In one issue in September 1980, book reviews were writ- ten by George Steiner, John Carey, Marina Warner, Victoria Glendinning, Peter Ack- royd, Ian Jack and Woodrow Wyatt.
Articles were both longer and shorter in 1975, 1980 and 1983 than they were during most of Mr Neil's editorship. That is to say, the average news story went into greater detail, while the longer features (Insight' and such like) were much less long-winded than they are today, presumably because there was not the space to bang on for three or four pages. There is a sense of remark- able denseness in the longer scoops such as Phillip Knightley's piece on the tax avoid- ance wheezes dreamt up by the Vestey fam- ily. But tight space was not always an advantage. There were fewer serious columnists than there are now: in 1975, Ronald Butt almost had the field to him- self, though he did not write every week. By the early 1980s, Hugo Young had pride of place as the paper's political columnist.
The multiplicity of new sections followed the move to Wapping. Spanking new press- es were installed capable of producing much Larger papers. The model was the Sunday edition of the New York Times. First there were five sections, then seven, and so on. Of course, all this provided much more scope for advertisers, which was much of the point of the exercise. But, My husband's a Tory MP, so I told him I'm seeing my lover.' with the possible exception of the new books supplement, it is difficult to think of a new section that marks a journalistic improvement. Where is the brilliant new journalism? More really did mean worse too often. New supplements were added, such as the 'Style' section, which were aimed at a new middle-market readership and therefore bound to disappoint many traditional readers. The integrity of the old Sunday Times was destroyed.
The analogy — which I have used before and for which I am going to claim author- ship — is that of a supermarket. Mr Neil inherited a reasonably up-market store which, if it was not so refined and well-run as once it had been, offered a service that was pretty uniform. Once they were free of the unions, he and Rupert Murdoch trans- formed their store into a sprawling super- market offering a whole range of services for different sorts of customers. It was no longer possible for one single reader to be happy with every aspect of the Sunday Times. It was no longer possible for one reader even to read the whole paper. We simply dip in, read what interests us, and ignore the rest.
Mr Neil did some good things. Contrary to the belief of some old Sunday Times lags, his paper produced many scoops. His lead- ers were noticed. It was inevitable that the Sunday Times would spawn new sections given the new economics of newspapers. The question is whether Mr Neil could have accomplished the transformation without coarsening so much of the Sunday Times and taking it so far down-market whether he could have devised an altogeth- er more enthralling supermarket. Was there any need to turn the news section into a de facto tabloid? Almost to eliminate seri- ous foreign news? To put half-clothed mod- els on the front of the business section?
If the effect had been to increase the circu- lation of the Sunday Times, one could at least have shrugged the shoulders, and passed some comment about the nature of the mod- ern world. As it was, these changes did not improve the sales of the Sunday Times. Mr Neil's successor, John Witherow, is very cau- tiously edging the paper up- market, hiring the columnist Robert Harris and a couple of distinguished foreign corre- spondents. The effect has not been disas- trous. Sales have been going up, though no doubt for other reasons as well. Perhaps more need not always mean worse after all.
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