Cheques and Balances

I read some while ago in The Guardian that Denis O’Brien had launched a verbal attack on the company that owns and publishes The Independent and it’s Sunday stable mate. He is reported to be the second biggest shareholder in that company and he reckons it’ll close or be sold by Christmas. Seems a curious way of motivating those who work for him, but perhaps they are not his most pressing concern. The comments, not unnaturally, caused a flutter of comments in the trade press who posed the question, “Does the paper have a future or is it done and ready to join the likes of The London Paper and Today?” It’s a fair question, for after all, if an owner has no confidence in a title and says so publicly why should anyone else take an interest in it, financially or any other way? Both Independent papers are losing circulation but there’s nothing shocking about that, as far as I can see all newspapers are doing the same, it’s a question of degrees. The problem of selling copies isn’t just with one title but with the entire press media spectrum it seems to me.

The owners of newspapers shouldn’t be allowed to make comments like that and behave as if they have no responsibility in the matter without being called to account by those who care about newspapers. If a business isn’t performing well, the shareholders should surely be asking questions of their board of directors; if the incumbents can’t improve the situation they should be replaced by people who can. In the days when big men ran newspapers, they had something to say, a point of view they wanted to communicate and they did it with a passion, energy and belief that is missing in most daily papers now. I knew, worked with and respected some of those who launched The Independent, they had a strong belief in what they were doing, they had a love of newspapers, they thought them an important part of the freedom of speech; a cornerstone of the democratic way of life. They saw newspapers as important journals of record, not just commodities to be bought and sold.

These days, with a couple of notable exceptions, corporations run the presses, the whole mission and reason to exist revolves around money not around content. So, when I see such a report as the one concerning the future of yet another newspaper, I can’t help wondering why Mr O’Brien and others like him wanted to be in the newspaper business in the first place. Was it simply the glamour of owning a newspaper that attracted them? What passionate beliefs did they want to communicate to the world? What did they do to help the titles gain new readers? The answer I guess is that they put money into the company. Well that’s not enough! The owners of newspapers have a responsibility to maintain a free and responsible press and pass it on to future generations; if that task is beyond them they should make way for those that can. I have no doubt that the newspaper business has a hard road ahead and that they must re-think their whole position and function for the future. They are not the only industry facing that problem, but if they produce the right papers for the modern markets, people will buy them. Ask anyone what they think of what’s in the papers these days, generally, the answers will not be complimentary.

The days of huge circulations are behind us. The market for news is fragmenting all the time. So much so that someone will be asking before long if there is too much media. Take TV for instance, now there are so many channels on offer you could spend all night trying to decide which one to watch. The magazine racks have so many titles on them that it takes an age to fill or restock them and it’s not unusual to see people staring at the mass of front covers with a bemused look on their faces. The latest mobile phones seem to be an amalgam of all media, they can do everything except play Rule Britannia or fly…and even they are optional extras, the internet offers possibilities that defy description. 

I can’t help wondering how advertisers decide which medium to use now. In the past it was possible to reach a third of almost any target audience using just one title or station, but currently those audiences have shrunk dramatically. So, to reach a large audience today must require the use of a mixture of media. Over the same period advertising and marketing costs have risen steeply, since the costs of marketing anything represent a significant percentage of the unit cost, it must mean that prices to the consumer have risen as direct result of the proliferation of media….or does it mean that costs are lower because the smaller and more precise audiences delivered mean less wastage?…. perhaps the answer to that depends on whether you are buying or selling. I’m almost glad I don’t have to work that one out any more!