MEDIA STUDIES
I'm not one for the politics of envy, but is old Charlie worth all that money?
STEPHEN GLOVER
As time went on, and profits poured out of the Daily Mail, Northcliffe paid much more, and some of his editors became quite rich men. All his senior journalists were put up, and travelled, in style. Beaverbrook car- ried on the tradition, if anything going fur- ther. He showered gifts on his editors and favourite journalists. Arthur Christiansen, appointed editor of the Daily Express in 1926, received occasional presents of up to £1,000. When the young Michael Foot was appointed acting editor of the Evening Stan- dard in 1942 he was paid nearly £4,000 a year, about £300,000 in our money. Beaver- brook seems to have regarded this as quite a large sum even by his lights because he thought fit to mention it to Kingsley Martin, editor of the New Statesman.
Until recently, though, editors and senior journalists on most broadsheet newspapers were paid much less than their tabloid counterparts. This was certainly the case at the Daily Telegraph when I joined that paper 18 years ago. No journalist received a great deal of money, but nor were any paid veiy little. We all clustered in a rather narrow band. I recall learning with surprise that a very senior colleague, more than twice my age and ten times as eminent, got little more than I did. There was no chauffeur- driven car for the editor, Bill Deedes, and at the end of the evening he would sometimes take the bus to Charing Cross station. These days many editors would not even know how to get on a bus.
There is now little difference between the salaries paid to senior journalists on most broadsheets and those on tabloids. The gen- erally high pay reflects the greatly increased profitability of the newspaper industry since the the 'de-manning' of the middle Eighties. An editor and even a leading columnist can expect to enjoy the standard of living of an extremely successful businessman. Salaries range from about £150,000 a year for a comparatively lowly paid editor to some £500,000 for Mr Paul Dacre, editor of the very successful Daily Mail. His boss, Sir David English, chairman and editor-in-chief of Associated Newspapers, is paid more than £800,000 — but perhaps he is too grand to be classified as an editor.
My point is that most editors and a few favoured journalists working for national titles are now considerably better paid than members of their tribe have ever been. By contrast, the salaries of ordinary journalists have scarcely advanced in real terms — i.e. discounting inflation. According to the National Union of Journalists, the average annual pay for a reporter or sub-editor on a tabloid newspaper is about £40,000, in com- parison with £20,000 ten or so years ago. Many people would say that such a figure — the top range of Tony Blair's middle- income earners — does not at all sound a bad whack. But these engine-room journal- ists enjoy less job security than they once did, and more and more of them are employed on short-term contracts. Meanwhile the chaps at the top continue to do very well. In many cases I certainly do not begrudge them. How could I, having made some money out of journalism? If an editor turns a loss-making paper into a profit-making one, or reverses a long-term circulation decline, or simply increases profits, there is every justification for pay- ing him or her a lot of money. I would rejoice to see Mr Richard Addis become a millionaire if he succeeded in rescuing the Daily Express. It seems perfectly reasonable that Mr Dacre and his senior colleagues at the Daily Mail should be as well rewarded as they are. But not all editors are so plain- ly worthy of their hire.
I was surprised to learn about the remu- neration last year of Charlie Wilson, acting editor of the loss-making Independent and a director of Mirror Group Newspapers. Mr Wilson received £693,000 in 1995, which was more than double his earnings for 1994. He was paid a basic salary of £211,000 plus a bonus of £47,000 and £13,000 towards his pension, and made a further £413,000 from selling shares which had been allocated under a share option scheme. This does seem a mind-boggling sum of money, taking into account Mr Wilson's contributions to the Mirror titles and the Independent, whose sales have slipped somewhat since he took over last November. If the Daily Mirror dis- covered some City 'fat cat' whose pay packet had more than doubled, its leader writer would bubble over with righteous indignation.
I also note my old friend Max Hastings received £533,000 in his last year as editor of the Daily Telegraph, a large part of which was also accounted for by the exercise of share options. Now that he is editing the Evening Standard he will have to subsist on an annual salary of some £300,000 unless Sir David English — his boss, as well as Mr Dacre's — should consider topping it up with share options in view of his exceptional performance. Some readers may have missed Mr Hastings' apology for his paper's recent publication of a photograph of John Prescott in which a bottle of beer was 'air- brushed' out and the, caption 'champagne socialist' misleadingly added. If Mr Prescott got rather too worked up about this jape, Mr Hastings did not quite behave as an offi- cer and a gentleman in publicly citing 'an error of judgment by a member of the Evening Standard staff. Such a highly paid editor should surely take the flak himself.
Everyone agrees that the launch of Sun- day Business is one of the biggest journalis- tic cock-ups of all time. The paper is not too bad but Tom Rubython, its founding editor, seems never to have had the financial back- ing to launch it. His chosen printers pulled out, as did his advertising agency, so there was no launch promotion. Contributors have not yet been paid — I include myself, who foolishly submitted a restaurant review. At the time of writing, it seems possible that there will not even be a second issue. Mr Rubython looks a bit of a chump. And yet in her book Sally Taylor tells us how North- cliffe got his first magazine printed on credit and how Fleet Street mocked him when he launched the Daily Mail. Little sometimes separates the genius from the chump.
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