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The
Independent gave me some of the most exciting times of my career
Andrew Marr
The
online Indie must not forget its roots as a vigorous daily
conversation between people who only quite liked one another
Saturday 13 February
2016 06.00 GMT
What happened to the
Independent this week is a footnote in a huge story – the wave of
creative destruction overturning all traditional media – and a very
important local political and cultural story.
The big story is
well understood. Digital is much cheaper than analogue, or Gutenberg
technology. The cumbersome is collapsing, outpaced by the nimble.
That allows new voices into an old debate-cartel. But it’s not all
genteel and attractive.
A lot of the capital
cost is actually passed to the consumer. Under the old model, large
industrial corporations used capital-heavy technology to make and
then distribute information to individuals. In the new model we –
you and me – purchase the computers, Wi-Fi accounts, apps, mobile
phones and sometimes subscriptions, which allow corporations to pass
the information to us more cheaply. For media companies, it’s a
great gig. If you are poor, don’t have the connections or the gear
or the bank accounts, perhaps less so.
BBC3 is now going
online. Everywhere, newspapers are toppling. The Independent’s move
is only a first. The Guardian has invested hugely in online and one
day will have to contemplate the price of the remaining
flattened-forest model; the Times and the Telegraph are both having a
torrid time, and most of the tabloids are struggling horribly. The
Daily Mail stands out – partly because of the huge success of its
online publication, uncomfortably different from the printed version.
So, up to a point,
this is a modest example of a much wider disruption. Just as new
technologies are churning the advertising, music and movie
businesses, and soon the car industry, too, they are causing cheerful
havoc in news. It’s bad for those directly involved – but does it
really matter? In the end, whether you get the material in an RSS
feed, through a Twitter link, or on a piece of yellowing,
coffee-stained newsprint … What’s the difference?
This takes us to the
smaller story, of the Independent itself. Because it isn’t an
example, or a footnote: it was and is a unique culture which, albeit
in a small way, has been part of British life for much of my
adulthood.
In the roll call of
its editors, I was the most radical and probably the least
distinguished. It’s very first front page carries my byline as a
young and desperately keen political reporter. For years, I wrote
three political columns every week there. I have read almost every
edition since it was published and in recent years find myself
turning to it more and more: I think it’s current editor, Amol
Rajan, has been utterly superb.
It occupies a unique
place in the British political spectrum. Other than the Guardian, it
has been the most liberal national newspaper voice but, unlike the
Guardian, it was always unequivocally pro-free market. Politically,
it seemed to fit the less extreme 90s than it does the more angry and
polarised 2010s.
At least for a time,
it had a remarkably open journalistic culture. I think the most
exciting weeks I have spent as a journalist were in the very early
days of the Independent: we had open, argumentative and serious
debates about issues such as our position on the Israel-Palestine
war; we fought the closed parliamentary lobby system, and everyone
hated us. It felt like journalism had suddenly become a democracy.
It hadn’t, of
course. The pro-free-market newspaper soon fell victim to brutal
market forces. During my time as editor, we were almost put out of
business by News International’s predatory pricing. Later on, the
brilliant cut-price i probably convinced too many readers that it was
the real thing. Oops.
But the old question
– what, really, is a newspaper? – remains key. If the answer is
simply a means of transmitting information, titles are merely
nostalgia. No, the proper answer is that a decent newspaper is a
platoon of similarly minded, but not identically minded, people who
argue, debate and together fashion a view of the world which is
distinctive. A newspaper, properly understood, is the space between
what editors and senior correspondents think, and how that space is
challenged by reporters bringing in unexpected information; and the
static energy all that produces.
There has never been
a successful media outfit, from Newsnight to the London Review of
Books, Private Eye or the Observer’s review section, which didn’t
have at its heart a vigorous daily conversation between people who
only quite liked one another. Each of these small cultural colonies,
using the replication of traditional media, then affected the
national conversation.
The Independent, in
this company, has played an honourable and valuable role. It hasn’t
been like, or the same as, anything else. In recent years, I have
found myself turning to it more than ever. I need Patrick Cockburn
and Robert Fisk and Kim Sengupta to try to understand the Middle
East. There is a score of other correspondents I could mention.
Yes, it remains
online. Journalistic communities exist there, too. I find the same
energy in Bella Caledonia (on the Scottish left) and CapX (on the
British right) that I find anywhere in print. The danger of going
global/online, however, is that you lose your roots in a real
community of real people; that you become disconnected.
People who say
“there are enough newspapers”, are like people who say there are
enough public parks or libraries, or piano concertos: always and
forever wrong.
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The
Independent dream that lasted for 30 years
Roy Greenslade
It
was the newspaper phenomenon of its age, but now, given the
inexorable overall decline in sales, the Independent’s days seem
numbered
Thursday 11 February
2016 14.33 GMT
If we are to mourn
the passing of the Independent, let’s pay tribute to those who
founded it and those who sustained it through many years of
unprofitability.
The newspaper was
born 30 years ago as a dream by idealist journalists who enjoyed
virtually instantaneous success until they awoke to business reality.
After a period of
uncomfortable joint ownerships, the Independent then benefited from
the charity of two successive owners, Ireland’s Tony O’Reilly,
and Russia’s Lebedevs, Alexander and son Evgeny, who sacrificed
millions in order to keep the dream alive.
In order to survive,
the Independent was responsible for surprising innovations that
affected the entire newspaper publishing industry, and not just in
Britain.
It was the first to
switch format from broadsheet to compact, an initiative that led to
similar changes elsewhere. It pioneered distinctive poster-style
front pages. It promoted itself as a “viewspaper”. Finally, it
spawned a spin-off publication, the i, which secured a new, younger
audience.
None of these
enterprising experiments made a real difference however because the
Independent was unable to retain readers during a cataclysmic period
of media history.
In national
newspaper terms, it looks set to be the first casualty of the digital
revolution. Once its print sales started to decline they just went on
falling to a level that made the paper’s daily appearance a triumph
of hope over economic reality.
It had not always
been like that. After its launch in October 1986, in the wake of
Rupert Murdoch’s union-busting move to Wapping, the paper rapidly
built an audience.
Although its
founders – Andreas Whittam Smith, Stephen Glover and Matthew
Symonds – were disaffected Daily Telegraph staffers, their paper
was soon viewed as having a liberal editorial stance, partly by
virtue of its title, partly by the choice of senior executives and
partly due to a clever promotional slogan: “The Independent: It is,
are you?”
The new smaller
version of the Independent newspaper, which was published for the
first time on 30 September 2003, alongside the regular broadsheet
which was launched in 1986 .
By describing itself
as “free from party political bias” and “free from
proprietorial influence”, the Indy – as it became known –
quickly attracted readers. Thousands deserted the Times and the
Guardian, while a few arrived from the Telegraph along with young
people yet to adopt a daily paper habit.
Within three years,
the Independent managed to achieve a regular daily sale of more than
400,000. It was the newspaper phenomenon of the age.
But success went to
the founders’ heads. They were determined to publish a Sunday
equivalent, and by unhappy chance the Independent on Sunday’s 1990
launch occurred at the beginning of a dramatic recession.
The prior launch of
a short-lived rival, the Sunday Correspondent, also muddied the
waters a little and the “Sindy” struggled to gain a foothold.
The company created
by the founders, Newspaper Publishing, ran into liquidity problems
and sought help, originally forming partnerships with European press
owners. Then it was hit by Rupert Murdoch’s price war. He cut the
cover price of the Times and the Independent found itself unable to
compete.
In 1994, two media
companies – Mirror Group led by chief executive David Montgomery,
and Ireland’s Independent News & Media (INM) – chaired by
Tony O’Reilly, attempted to acquire the Independent and after a
share-buying contest had to agree on a joint ownership.
It proved to be
anything but ideal. Editors came and went while the rival proprietors
argued over how to run the company. After a lengthy period of
unhappiness, O’Reilly’s company spent £30m to obtain full
ownership in March 1998.
With circulation
having halved since its high point, Andrew Marr was appointed as the
Indy’s editor – but he didn’t last long. His chair was taken by
Simon Kelner and he was to spend 13 years as editor, enjoying
occasional moments of sales peaks despite an inexorable, gradual
overall decline.
O’Reilly accepted
that the paper would never be profitable, regarding it as his calling
card across the world where his Irish-based company was expanding by
acquiring papers in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
But O’Reilly was
not prepared to spend unlimited sums on the Independent and
cost-cutting was regularly imposed. In September 2003, he oversaw the
launch of a compact Indy to run alongside the broadsheet.
Its smaller format
attracted a new audience and sales rose by more than 15%, to about
250,000. In May 2004, the broadsheet version was dropped altogether.
By that time, the Times had also given up publishing in broadsheet
size and the Guardian had adopted its Berliner format.
Around the world,
various newspapers also adopted the compact form. The Independent had
started a small revolution.
For O’Reilly,
however, the gloss had come off Independent ownership. His company
was beset with troubles in Ireland and he found himself under
pressure from a director, Denis O’Brien, to reduce his loss-making
assets.
In a last throw of
the dice, O’Reilly made a deal in 2008 with the Daily Mail’s
publishers, Associated Newspapers, to move into its Kensington
headquarters and share services and overheads.
It was far too
little too late, and with sales slumping once more, he agreed to sell
the titles in March 2010 to Alexander Lebedev for a nominal £1 fee
plus several millions to cover outstanding contractual costs. Lebedev
had already acquired a controlling stake in the London Evening
Standard.
Alexander, a former
member of the KGB and widely regarded as an oligarch, passed over
responsibility for the papers to his son, Evgeny.
Under his
stewardship, the Indy’s colourful compact sister, i, was launched
in October 2010. Initially priced at 20p, it soon secured an audience
far larger than that of the Independent, which saw its sales fall
away until they reached barely 60,000 despite the vigorous editing of
Amol Rajan.
At that level, the
paper could not hope to turn a profit. The on-cost was punishing and
Lebedev, having lost so much money, had no alternative but to say
enough is enough. After 30 years, the dream appears all but over.
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