The Big Smoke

Having had the weekend to digest the news that the Evening Standard will be going free from next Monday my reaction is pretty much the same as when I first heard the news: nobody in the media has a clue what they are doing.

As Rupert erects a paywall; Lebedev tears one down. thelondonpaper goes pop, so the Standard adopts their model. Everybody else is holding fire, waiting to see what will happen, hoping somebody flukes upon salvation. One thing you can guarantee is that if deliverance does arrive, it will come from a source outside the industry, because the movers and shakers are lost without a map.

Sniff the air and what’s that you can smell? It’s the aroma of utter desperation as the tide rises over the heads of the moguls managing our media. But even with my livelihood is on the line, it’s difficult to feel sympathy for any of them after the ridiculously self-destructive war pursued by the freesheets in the past three years, suicidal behaviour for an industry on the brink of collapse.

I’m currently reading Harry Evan’s autobiography, 'My Paper Chase', and it draws me cosily back to a very different era for newspapers. Evans was the editor of the Sunday Times in the 1960s and 1970s and for him, the job was simple: he broke news. That’s it. No building the brand. No selling lifestyle options. No cross-platform profiteering. No web-print synergy. His first book was called 'Good Times, Bad Times'. This one should be called 'Different Times'.

But one thing hasn’t changed. People still want news. Quality news. Well researched, tightly written, relevant and groundbreaking news. You only have to look at the popularity of the BBC, Telegraph and Guardian websites to see that. Newspapers can still change things, they can still matter.

So people want news, but they don’t want to pay for it. This is the paradox we're facing and the circle won’t be squared by any number of new models until the public realise that real news doesn’t come for free, and managers realise you can’t publish a newspaper without news. At that point, something will give. But there’s going to be a lot more frantic flailing and desperate guesswork until that happens.

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