Press
Change and decay
Bill Grundy
"Change arid decay/In all around I see/0 Thou, who changest not/Abide with me". This jolly little hymn, sung yearly at every Cup Final until this last one, is sung daily by every circulation manager in Fleet Street. I have on many occasions echoed the sentiment myself. So much so that it has occurred to me that anybody who reads this column regularly, if such there be, must have been conditioned into thinking that the newspaper industry is in a bad way. To think that, however, is to Confuse Fleet Street with the newspaper industry. There are, although you'd be hard-pushed to find anyone in the well-known watering holes of EC4 to admit as much, many very successful Papers in this country. Those who doubt me had better get hold of a copy of the annual report of United Newspapers. This organisation, Which has Sir William Barnetson as its chairman, is showing the second highest profit in its history. Before taxation, United were £51/4 million in the black. And even after Mr Healey's greedy claw had been at the till there was still just over £3 million to play around with, Which is enough to keep a positive pack of wolves from the door.
And who might United Newspapers be? I hear you mutter tetchily. They are a chain, centred Just off Fleet Street, of the only sort of newspaper that is making reaj money these days — provincial Papers. For example, do you live in Sheffield? Then every day you may conceivably read the Morning Telegraph. It's a United newspaper. Anywhere else in the county of broad acres you could be reading the Yorkshire Post. That's United, too. Or perhaps pigs are Your hang-up? In that case, you'll be an avid reader of Pig Farming. Every copy you buy contributes to the financial welfare of United Newspapers. Do you like to sit in Your poky, smoky town house reading The Countryman? Go ahead, and the blessings of Sir William Barnetson go with you, because his lot own that one too. Are you a fan of the Wigan Observer? Do you like to be led by the Leeds Leader? Are you in the habit of improving each shining hour with the Pocklington Times? Is it your weekly wish that your interests should be looked after by the Morecambe Guardian? Do you Wish to sell your heritage by means of the Maghulf and Aintree Advertiser? Or do you merely keep abreast of the times through the Lytham St Annes Express? Whichsoevertl.of these things is thine, you're doing it through the
courtesy a United Newspapers, because they own them all, and a lot more. In fact, they own thirty-two weeklies, nine dailies, four farming journals, and four periodicals, including Punch.
One of the things that makes provincial journalism profitable is, of course, the monopoly position of most of its papers. By fair means or foul, and I'm not saying which method is the more frequent, one provincial newspaper after another has fallen by the wayside, leaving a sole survivor. Whether you think this proves Darwin's theory about the survival of the fittest depends on what you know about Darwinism, or newspaper economics, or both.
But it has meant that the provincial press, in general, has been far more able to withstand the storms that have been blowing up and down Fleet Street over the last few years. Furthermore, the provincial press has not been much at the mercy of the Mafia, which is how one disillusioned London newspaperman describes the print unions there. In the provinces, papers are smaller; it is easier to talk things out, man to man; and -shorter print runs have made it much easier to introduce the new technology that is waiting around, crying out to be used.
And with reserves of £23 million, which is what United Newspapers have got, you can contemplate expansion and development without much worry. Take this paragraph from the report: "A capital project of somewhat greater magnitude than the quite large redevelopment that has taken place at Sheffield and Blackpool is now in hand for the company's evening paper centre at Northampton, where the town and its environs are being redeveloped and expanded to deal with incoming 'overspill' population on a considerable scale. Indeed, the expectation is that by 1981 the number of households will have gone up by over 50 per cent, with a corresponding growth in industrial activity and related services . . . We are, therefore, building a new works, with upto-date plant, and expect to be operational there towards the end of 1977. The cost of the project is estimated at £.5 million." Just like that Since the report reveals that United Newspapers spent another El 1/4 million in 1974 on up-dating equipment at other plants, with photo-polymer printing plates and computerised photo-setting, and similar modern marvels, everything in the United garden is lovely, despite the rise in costs of labour,
material and support services, rises affecting every newspaper in the country. Broadly speaking, this pattern is visble everywhere in the provinces. In Manchester, since the old Evening Chroniple was swallowed up by the Evening News, the News has been able to make enough money each year to keep the Guardian's gasps from being its last. Without the News, the Grauniad would have died years ago. Or to put it slighly heretically, without the Guardian, the Manchester Evening News would be making a bomb.
There's not much of a moral to be drawn from all this, except to say that if Fleet' Street had been able to introduce modern methods years ago, if it had been able thereby to get manning down to a realistic 'level, and if it had been able to foster the reader loyalty that the provincial paper can — only the Mirror, of the nationals, has anything comparable — then the Street of Adventure wouldn't look as lively as it does now to be about to die from misadventure. And of course if pigs were equipped with wings, no doubt they would all be intrepid aviators.
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