MEDIA STUDIES
Another editor bites the dust, another cunning wheeze is tried. But two into one won't go
STEPHEN GLOVER
Sue Douglas, editor of the Sunday Express for nine months, was on a Hebridean island with her husband and two young children when the world learnt she had lost her job. Her employers, United News and Media, wanted to fly her out in a helicopter, but Ms Douglas wondered Whether her husband would be able to cope with the children. It would be useless to enquire why United chose to wait until she was in the middle of nowhere before cast- ing her in this melodrama. That's Fleet Street.
This is an old story — editors are as expendable as football managers — with a new and worrying message. It has to do with who runs newspapers. Editors have always been sacked and replaced by other editors, the assumption being that the replacement may have a talent, or at any rate a lucky break, which his or her prede- cessor did not have. Under these conven- tions it was accepted by management that in the end journalists were the best people to sort out journalistic problems. At United a management solution has now been imposed that makes no journalistic sense. Both the Sunday and Daily Express have been losing sales for more than 30 years. They have suffered from poor management and, it must be said, from poor journalism. At the beginning of the year, Sue Douglas was appointed editor of the Sunday title and Richard Addis became editor of the daily. The two of them have done a compe- tent job, though the circulation of each paper has continued to fall, as was pre- dictable. You cannot reverse so old a trend in nine months. But United's new manage- ment (in April, Lord Hollick's MAI merged with United, and he began to rule the roost) quickly grew impatient with Ms Douglas, believing that she was being too radical in her approach, and that her paper, With its appeal to younger readers, was veering too far from the Daily Express. They came up with the idea of subsum- ing the Sunday Express into a seven-day operation masterminded by Mr Addis. Ms Douglas's job has been abolished. By com- bining both papers they will be able to get rid of some 85 journalists, nearly 20 per cent of the overall editorial staff — a very considerable saving, which, it is claimed, will be ploughed back into editorial invest- ment. The strategy appears to be unaffect- ed by the failure of previous attempts to integrate daily and Sunday papers within the same group. United's new managing director is Stephen Grabiner who was mar- keting director of the Telegraph plc in 1989 when the Daily and Sunday Telegraph were integrated — a disastrous experiment that was later reversed.
Lord Hollick planted the seed of a seven- day operation, and Mr Grabiner and Mr Addis have developed it. I can understand their point of view. As I say, the long-term decline of the Express titles does represent a failure of journalism. Editors have come and gone with their retinues of highly paid editorial hangers-on, and none of them has made much difference. But the greater fail- ure over the years has been one of manage- ment. Too often the wrong editors have been appointed. Even when the right ones were chosen they weren't given enough money to improve and promote their news- papers. Now an idea has been cooked up (backed up by market research, of course, as bad ideas usually are, and blessed by a company of management consultants) which is almost bound to further weaken the Express titles.
People may ask what is wrong with seven-day operations, given that they are the norm in North America and on the Continent. The answer is that in this coun- try Sunday newspapers are more differenti- ated from daily ones than they are almost anywhere else. It is true that in some respects they have grown more alike in recent years, as dailies have started to carry more and more features, but they still remain fundamentally different. One single operation such as is envisaged at the Express cannot produce high quality daily and Sunday journalism. The Mail on Sun- day, the Sunday Express's much more suc- cessful rival, has a separate editorial staff from the Daily Mail. It is barmy to suppose that a Sunday Express produced as a sev- enth-day paper will be able to compete bet- ter with its powerful competitor.
Mr Addis, having worked on the Sunday Telegraph after its idiotic merger with the Daily, should know better than to champion this plan. He seems to have convinced him- self that it can be made to work, so long as he acts as overlord of both papers. I don't see how one man can be expected to edit two titles. I expect that executive editors will soon be appointed to the Daily and Sunday Express. Before very long they will be called editors, and we will be back almost where we started, the only differ- ence being that after this has happened the papers will be even weaker than they are now.
Lord Hollick and Mr Grabiner wrongly believe that their plan will save money which can be redirected elsewhere. In fact, if the papers go on declining they will pro- duce less revenue. Neither man seems to have a natural feel for journalism. Lord Hollick is an able financier who had noth- ing to do with newspapers until MAI merged with United. Mr Grabiner worked in the 'corporate care' unit of Coopers & Lybrand until 'sent to the Telegraph in 1986. One measure of their miscasting is their appointment of Mr Addis as editor of both newspapers. Let us pretend it might be possible to run them as a seven-day operation. If that were so, Mr Addis would not be your natural choice. I say this as someone who likes and admires him, who always enjoys hearing about the japes into which he has got himself. But he is an edi- tor of nine months' standing surrounded by inexperienced senior editors. Arthur Chris- tiansen or David English in their heyday could not have got both titles out of their awful predicament. The idea that Mr Addis might be able to do so is delightfully absurd.
Perhaps this thought will console Ms Douglas. She has been shabbily treated. (I am especially sympathetic, having resigned five years ago as editor of the Independent on Sunday when editorial integration with the Independent was foisted upon me. That experiment was also soon reversed.) Her paper was lively and broke many stories; I was beginning to pick it up with something approaching excitement. The worst that could be said of her is that she alienated some older readers in her quest for younger ones. What has happened may seem a considerable personal calamity, but she will bounce back. It is a much greater calamity for the Express titles, which may not.
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