Feature: Media: Former Star newspaper journalist, Sydney Rennert, on the decline of London's own papers
Published: 28 October 2010
by SYDNEY RENNERT
FIFTY years is a long time – particularly in the communications field. Just think what has happened in the past half-century: mobile phones and the internet, computer typesetting and web-offset printing – not to mention Facebook and Twitter.
Particularly affected have been the country’s newspapers. Any journalist who has been away during that time would be completely lost if he entered today’s newsrooms. And it is not just the technology that has changed: the ownership and control of the Press has also undergone major upheavals.
These issues are particularly topical this month which saw the demise, exactly 50 years ago, of three respected papers, the News Chronicle and Star in London and the northern Sunday paper, the Empire News. Since then the Daily Sketch, the Sunday Dispatch, Reynolds News and a host of provincial papers have all ceased publication.
The history of London’s evening papers is a stark example of the changed times. Fifty years ago there were three of them and in their heyday they managed to sell four million copies a day between them. The demise of the radical Star, which began life in 1888 under its founder/ editor TP O’Connor, was a particularly hard blow as it was profitable but was sold off as a package with the News Chronicle to be merged, respectively, into the Evening News and Daily Mail.
Perhaps its greatest scoop was the contents of Hugh Dalton’s budget, the result of a quick word by the paper’s political correspondent John Carvel with Labour’s first post-war Chancellor as he entered the Chamber. Ironically, it only made the paper because the last edition was held for a racing result. However, it led to a sour grapes complaint from the Evening Standard, an appearance at the Bar of the Commons for Carvel and the resignation of Dalton – a prime example of how in these days of leaks, official and unofficial, the ethics of politicians have deteriorated.
The end of the Star shocked Fleet Street and also its readers. But worse was to come: 20 years and two weeks later the Evening News also folded and, even with its monopoly position, the Evening Standard still failed to break even. In May last year it was sold to former KGB agent Alexander Lebedev for a token £1 – he later bought the Independent for the same amount – and for the past year has been given away free in central London. Quite a come-down for a paper which in its 180-year history was led by a number of distinguished editors, including for a short time by Michael Foot. Instead of seven editions a day, there is now just one, and the consequences of a lack of competition are only too plain to see.
There were a number of reasons for the papers’ decline. The popularity of television with its up-to-date news bulletins reduced the habit of picking up a paper on the way home from work. And when commercial TV arrived, that hit the profitable advertising revenue on which the papers depended, as the big spenders divided similar-sized budgets among more outlets.
• Sydney Rennert is a former Star journalist, who lives in Somers Town