Dinosaurs, past, present and future.

 A year ago I wrote in my very first blog that. “As a general rule I believe dinosaurs should remain a part of their own time frame. There they have a relevance to each other and to their environment.” I was reminded of that thought yesterday when I visited one of the finest old estates in the South of England, owned by The National Trust. I could see very clearly the link between the social dinosaurs that ran the country when the house was being built and those who have inherited their legacy. The lovely old house is set in the middle of a five hundred acre estate in the middle of nowhere, and after much restoration and refurbishment offers an insight into lifestyles that span five centuries. The original house stands much as it has since it was built, but modern techniques have restored and preserved the structure for future generations and it mostly looks as good as new. I formed the impression that the building will still be there in another five hundred years time. The dinosaurs that laid the foundations for that and other places like it would be well pleased to see how those who will be regarded as dinosaurs in the future have protected and built upon their plans and ambitions. I was amused to hear that the house stands as a testament to the importance and social position of its owner. How? By having the family Coat of Arms set into the stonework over the entrance and enhanced by having a moat around the house, apparently that was the ultimate in PR terms in those days. If you had a moat, you had arrived! 

There were a great many visitors and they came from all over the world. How did they know the place was there? Someone had done a great marketing job and all that the brochures promised was delivered including an excellent modern restaurant. I noticed also that many of the items in the shop had their instruction leaflets written in several languages; another thoughtful touch. The National Trust is a classic example of an organisation with its roots in the past, its actions in the present and its mind on the future. Dinosaurs and moon rockets sit comfortably together in their properties and relate to each other, each drawing the best from the other and pleasing all who visit their estates.

 The enduring nature of the properties owned and administered by The National Trust and English Heritage contrast starkly with the industrial scene. There time has rendered many of the industries with which those who laid the foundations of those old estates would have been familiar, wholly redundant. Wool, cotton, shipbuilding, steel, coal, and a whole raft of other industries have gone or become insignificant. Now technology based companies have taken their place and new skills have been invented or discovered, that are changing the way we work and live. One of the most dramatic of those changes must surely be the communications industry. Once it would take weeks to send news around the world, now it takes less than seconds. Virtually any information can be accessed online and ‘The Media’ is treated like royalty by everyone. The boundaries to what can be done by ‘The Media’ electronically, widen almost on a daily basis. Nonentities appear as stars, shoot across the media spectrum and vanish as quickly as they came.

 Only one area in the media spectrum seems to be the same as it was forty years ago, newspapers. Apart from the changes that began in the seventies, when The Gallup Organisation commissioned by Mirror Group Newspapers published the results of a research programme comparing the readership between tabloid and broadsheet newspapers, there seems to have been hardly any significant changes in the appearance of any of the titles. The effects of that research caused papers like the Daily Express and the Daily Mail, The Times and the Sunday papers to alter their shape from broadsheet to tabloid. That was followed later by the introduction of colour, a innovation also initiated my MGN. Since then, with exception of the inclusion of weekend supplements, it would be hard for the reader to detect any difference in the appearance of daily newspapers. They have all retained the same layout, the same typefaces, even, in most cases what seems like the same stories, but with the names or dates changed. Yes, Yes, I know they have more pages and I know too all about the new methods of production but the reader isn’t concerned or aware of that area of the business. The front page is what attracts attention and that hasn’t noticeably changed in any of them for donkey’s years.  The newspapers’ equivalent of the family crest has crumbled and their moats filled with rubble, no longer is either good PR.

 As I sat in the sunshine in the garden of that beautiful old house I couldn’t help wondering what I would be doing if I were still involved with newspapers. Would I be using all the new printing technologies to combine regional and local press with my national titles? It must be possible to construct, control and simultaneously print in several regions at once, cutting distribution costs and attracting more local readers? Would I be trying to attract the readership of the ethnic minorities by speaking to them in their own language? Would I use colour as an everyday part of the paper or reserve it for special issues only? Would I try to involve my readers more by establishing a regular page as a forum for them, like they do on the internet? Would I be launching new titles? Recognising that even the title of a newspaper can grow old too. Maybe even launch a free national title? Should I have a students’ editor, to convince their age group to read more and become engaged in the national debate? Should my titles be giving space to religious leaders so that they explain their point of view and so show good faith to other  denominations? On balance I think I would probably be considering all these actions and I have no doubt that greater brains than mine are already doing so. One thing is certain though, a whole lot of new thinking is required into the very reason for a newspaper’s existence and if the publishers are to attract new readers they must do something brand new and radical and do it soon or the dinosaurs of the future will be looked at in a very different light to of those of the past.