MEDIA STUDIES
Beware front-page hype — it won't be cheerfully tolerated in our daily broadsheets
STEPHEN GLOVER
The appearance of our broadsheet newspapers has changed more over the last five years than during the preceding 50. If you have an old copy of the Daily Telegraph, the Times or the Guardian from as recently as 1990, you will see what I mean. These newspapers didn't use colour in those days. They didn't advertise their wares in garish boxes on the front. And they evinced a typographical restraint that is scarcely observed today.
It is on the front page that these changes are most obvious. In the late Eighties, the newspapers I have mentioned never, or almost never, used banner headlines run- ning across all eight columns at the top of the page. The 'splash' —i.e. lead — story generally covered two or three columns on the top left of the page. Occasionally, if there were a big story, the night editor might take the headline across four columns, as for example the Daily Telegraph did when Jeffrey Archer resigned as deputy chairman of the Conservative Party in October 1986 after a Sunday newspaper had alleged that he had tried to pay a pros- titute to go abroad to avoid a scandal. Even when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, the Times led across only three columns. Nowadays in most daily broadsheets, though possibly not the Times, there would be two lines of 72-point type across the top of the page.
What has led to this extraordinary revo- lution? Some people will point the finger at computers, which enable sub-editors to draw on a whole repertoire of typographi- cal tricks unavailable in the old 'hot metal' days. These front-page developments would probably not have happened without computers, but the explanation goes fur- ther. Marketing men have a much stronger hold on newspapers than they used to. Edi- tors have been affected by their insistence that newspapers must promote their wares aggressively and that stories must loudly declare themselves through the use of strik- ing headlines and other typographical devices.
Even so, this interpretation does not explain how these changes came about. My belief is that it was in part owing to the influence of the Independent. When the paper was launched in October 1986, the other broadsheets, as I say, eschewed ban- ner headlines. Though it did not use them immediately, the newly launched title was soon quite often taking the splash across the top of the page. So far as I can recall, this happened without much thought. My tentative theory is that the Independent modified the Times's occasional practice of running what is called a 'hamper' across the top of the page as the second most impor- tant story. Many of the young paper's sub- editors came from the Times, and it seems likely that they began to use the hamper as a splash. As the Independent grew in suc- cess, other broadsheet papers started to fol- low this practice, though only gradually, and until 1990 or 1991 they remained typo- graphically conservative.
In many ways the Independent's innova- tion was a useful one When the big story came along broadsheets were able to respond in a much more dramatic fashion than previously. Unfortunately, the new techniques have been debased. The big guns of arresting typography are now fre- quently rolled out even for the relatively unimportant splash. Of course, newspapers have reacted differently. The Financial Times and, perhaps surprisingly, the Times have the most restrained and classical front pages. The Daily Telegraph and the Guardian are apt to use bold typography a little indiscriminately . But their errors pale into insignificance alongside those of the Independent.
When Andrew Marr became editor of the Independent four months ago he imme- diately began to shake up its front page. I admired his chutzpah, as I still do, but he is breaking too many conventions in his almost desperate attempt to make a splash. It is not just a question of wild typography, though there are plenty of instances of that: on Tuesday, the Independent was the only broadsheet to run two decks of head- line across the front page proclaiming the evil intentions of the five IRA suspects arrested by the police. There are also countless examples of presentational tricks being employed to grab the reader's atten- tion, the most egregious being a montage of John Birt tearing up the BBC, which accompanied a story last month about changes allegedly proposed by the director- general. Last week a chance remark by Norma Major was blown up into a splash plus photograph (occupying the top half of Classifieds — pages 76, 77 and 78 the front page) suggesting that she expects the Tories to lose the election.
Broadsheets in financial peril are apt to scream more loudly than stronger ones. The Observer is as much at fault as the Independent. (The Independent on Sunday, by contrast, is more balanced, though God knows it is not financially strong.) One understands how hard-pressed editors may be driven to extremes, but they are likely to lose the confidence of readers if they abuse the hierarchy of presentational devices which help us to judge the true importance of a story. Blatant manipulation will make the reader feel uneasy or even resentful. The hype we may accept on the front page of our Sunday newspapers we will not so cheerfully tolerate in our daily broadsheets.
Loyal readers may remember my writ- ing that in a fit of lunacy I agreed to do two restaurant reviews for the first two issues of Sunday Business. I haven't been paid, and the cost of the meals hasn't been reim- bursed. Now it emerges that, along with other creditors, many of whom are owed much more money, I am most unlikely to receive a penny. And yet Sunday Business is still being published, selling, according to whom you believe, between 20,000 and 50,000 copies a week. The explanation is that the title has been sold by its adminis- trators for £400,000 to a businessman called Gordon Brown who is not anxious to settle the paper's former debts, which run to several million pounds. The proceeds of the sale will do little more than cover the administrator's costs.
The editor of Sunday Business remains Tom Rubython. This is the same Tom Rubython who launched the paper five months ago without sufficient financial backing. He appears to have deluded him- self into believing that its sales would gen- erate enough revenue for it to meet its lia- bilities. Alas, Sunday Business was not very good, and circulation plummeted. The title could only be kept alive by getting rid of most of the staff and not paying the bills a rum way of doing business. Mr Rubython may have the instincts of an escapologist but he has presided over a spectacular cock-up, and I am at a loss to understand, given his record, why readers should place any faith in the financial judgment of the newspaper over which he still reigns.
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