MEDIA STUDIES
Max must wait again; the Observer's editor is in trouble with Mr Preston and mates
STEPHEN GLOVER
My plans to write about Max Hastings, the newly appointed editor of the Evening Standard, have again been con- founded by events. There are pressing rumours that Andrew Jaspan, editor of the Observer since last March, is about to be thrown to the wolves. Some say that the entire future of a once great newspaper may be in jeopardy. In these circumstances it would be foolish to rush into a piece about Mr Hastings.
After an expensive relaunch last Septem- ber, the sales of the Observer have been slipping again. In fact the relaunch appears to have been a waste of time and money. The paper is losing some £10 million a year. No longer is it simply the title's own survival which is in question. The losses are so painful that they threaten the Guardian, the Observer's sister paper. Alan Rusbridger, editor of the daily title, and some senior colleagues are believed to be more than fed up with their Sunday stablemate.
To understand the newspaper's dreadful predicament we must peer into the inscrutable heart of Mr Peter Preston, edi- tor-in-chief of the Guardian and the Observer. For 20 years Mr Preston edited the Guardian, and although he had his ups and downs he was judged by the world to have been a success when he vacated his editorial chair early last year. He then took to writing a weekly column for his old paper and to overseeing the Pendennis diary in the Observer. The day-to-day edit- ing of both papers was undertaken by other hands, and it seemed that all was set fair for Mr Preston in his editorial dotage.
And so it might have been had it not been for the Observer. The Guardian had bought that paper for £27 million in April 1993, snatching it at the last moment from the predatory grasp of the Independent. It was the fulfilment of Mr Preston's long- held dream to run a Sunday newspaper. To that end many millions of pounds had been ploughed into the Sunday Correspondent by the Guardian even when it was clear to everyone else that the paper was past sav- ing. It seemed that Mr Preston had at last found a safer bet in the Observer. With little reference to the Scott Trust, which owns all the shares in the Guardian group, Mr Preston and his mates appointed Jonathan Fenby editor of their new title.
Alas, under Mr Fenby's stewardship sales did not go up, and cost savings made surprisingly few inroads into the Observer's enormous losses. After some 18 months Mr Fenby was removed from his post. In his place Mr Preston and his mates appointed one Andrew Jaspan, who was reputed to have achieved wondrous things as editor of Scotland on Sunday, most notably in the field of cost-cutting. Mr Andrew Neil, for- mer editor of the Sunday Times, claimed Mr Jaspan as his protégé. It was at this point that some of us began to smell a rat. I suggested in my Evening Standard press column that Mr Jaspan did not have a his- tory as a liberal intellectual that inspired confidence in his ability to revive the Observer. It was possible that his exploits north of the border had been overrated by people who had barely set an eye on Scotland on Sunday.
Mr Jaspan waited until September for his great relaunch, which was accompanied by promotion costing some £2 million. I would like to claim occult powers for what I wrote then (It is simply bad and wrong, and the only way to deal with it is to throw it away and start again, which will eventually hap- pen when it becomes clear that the long decline of the Observer has not been stopped') but in truth a cub reporter could have foretold what has ensued. Mr Jaspan transformed the newspaper's appearance, throwing out old sections and introducing new ones, and letting loose a wild typogra- pher with a passion for bold type, a brutal `sans' headline face and ubiquitous rules surrounding every byline. But in a way the execrable re-design was beside the point. Underneath it all lay the same old paper, save for the addition of a columnist or two, with the same old shortcomings.
We must not exaggerate. The Observer has its virtues. Much has been lost, of course. The once outstanding foreign cov- erage has been cut back horribly. On the other hand, there have been one or two improvements. The news coverage has been sharpened up (part of Mr Fenby's The Duchess of York's new book. legacy, this) and the paper regularly pro- duces scoops. Last Sunday, for example, it got advance word of the Commons motion revealing that Sarah Keays was the mother prevented by a High Court order from talk- ing publicly about her child. But a broad- sheet Sunday newspaper needs very much more than a sharp news sense. The Observ- er is deficient at its heart — its physical and its metaphysical one. Few if any of its writ- ers or columnists have an authoritative lib- eral or left-wing voice. The leaders are laughably commonplace, written by some- one recently arrived on this planet who has not had more than a week or two to bone up on the intricacies of British politics.
The loss of voice can by no means be blamed entirely upon Mr Jaspan. The pro- cess began during the long editorship of Donald Trelford, hindered as he was by Tiny Rowland's proprietorship. It contin- ued during Mr Fenby's stewardship and has now almost run its course. Though this would seem the most propitious of times for a leftward-leaning title, Mr Jaspan is not the man to find a new voice for the paper. Even by his own lights he has failed. The expensive relaunch provided only a temporary blip in sales, and the Observer's circulation is a little lower than it was this time last year when Mr Fenby was sacked. Mr Jaspan's long-term job prospects do not appear to be very bright, though Mr Pre- ston cannot be anxious to get rid of a sec- ond editor within a year.
Mr Preston is a sensitive man, and he reacts to criticism by attempting to lam- poon his critics in his Pendennis diary. Alas, he cannot conceal his complicity. Others, of course, have gone along with him. One such is the Guardian columnist Hugo Young, who is chairman of the Scott Trust. It is all delightfully cosy. Mr Preston and his friends have made two foolish appointments, and far from turning the Observer around they have watched its cir- culation slip. The Scott Trust, which is not at all rich, has sunk perhaps £50 million into this venture and now finds that its flag- ship, the Guardian, is beginning to take on water. If these people were working for a commercially orientated company such as Associated Newspapers, or even if they were a group of politicians trying to run the country, heads would roll. Their best hope for salvaging their reputations probably lies in an eventual merger with the Independent on Sunday, if that can be arranged.
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