Teenage
Times
"It is necessary to the happiness of
man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity
does not consistent of believing, or in disbelieving;
it consists of professing to believe what he does
not believe." Thomas Paine
It is Sunday morning. James and I sit in the
kitchen. I skim the pages of a broadsheet, while
my 14 year-old son reads one of yesterday's supplements;
he's found a review of a new Playstation game
that, at a guess, involves disembowelling vampires.
JAMES: That’s really cool.
ME (not looking up from the Motoring section):
Have you played it?
JAMES: No. But it's got 5 stars in here.
ME (wondering about the trade-in value of my car):
And that makes it 'cool' does it, because it says
so in there?
JAMES: Well, it's why we buy the big papers, isn't
it?
And I realise that I am at one of life's key
parental conversations. We've talked about sex,
about bullying, about drugs. Now it's 'truth'
in the press.
M: How do you think a newspaper makes money,
James? Where does my £1.50 for 'The Sunday
Times' actually go?
J: The paper shop?
M: Yes – to Mr Tiwana, and to the distributor
who delivers the papers to the shop each morning.
By the time they've taken their cut, it doesn't
leave very much for the people who make the papers.
So how does a newspaper make its money?
We pause. James flicks a page or two, looking
for a picture of a hole to crawl into.
All he can find is listings for London cinemas.
J: Advertising.
M: Spot on. The newspapers sell space to companies
who want to sell things to their readers. No advertising,
no newspapers. So the first thing to remember
about newspapers is that their business purpose
isn't to print news. It's to generate advertising
revenue.
J: Cool. So why do newspapers write all this sort
of stuff? (He points at a feature on actress Billie
Whitelaw in the 'Property' section.) Why not just
run ads?
M: Because too much advertising wouldn't be very
interesting, then no one would buy the paper.
That's the publisher's dilemma. It's a question
of balance.
J: So get more journalists writing more stories.
M: Well, that’s good for you as a reader,
but not good for the publisher as a business.
That's more cost.
J: But there's loads of writing in these papers,
pages and pages of news.
M: Is there? What is 'news', James?
J: Um…Stories about things that happen in
the world. Politics and the London bombs and things
like that.
M: And all the sections of this newspaper are
full of that, are they?
J: Well, no. Looking at this part (the listings
insert he has in front of him), it's got records
and dvds and films and that sort of thing.
M: A famous newspaper publisher called Randolph
Hearst once said: "News is something that
somebody, somewhere doesn't want to see in print.
Everything else is publicity."
J: So what's this? (He points to the Billie Whitelaw
interview).
M: Read the final paragraph – the bit in
italics.
J: "Billie Whitelaw's flat is on the market
for £635,000…"
He stops and smiles. A penny drops, and for the
next few minutes he's ploughing through pages
of newsprint, looking for publicity stories: a
disgraced Tory MP and his daughter discuss their
feelings for each other, while mentioning that
he has a new book out; the profile of the FBI
undercover agent who happens to be in a TV series
on the National Geographic Channel.
J: It's all Publicity! All of it! Why?
M: Well, not quite ALL. But most of it is. And
the reason is simple - it's cheaper than news.
News takes time to research, time to collate,
time to write, time to check. And as the businessman
running the newspaper, you want to cut your costs
– but you need to keep the amount of editorial
content, because your readers demand it.
J: So make the journalists work harder.
M: The vast majority do. Despite the stereotype,
most journalists and editors are incredibly productive.
But when the advertising people sell more space,
it creates a need for more editorial to keep that
balance. So it becomes very tempting to use packaged
material from publicists and agents and PRs, who
are being paid for by someone else.
J: So the editor can fill more space, while the
publisher keeps his costs down. Cool. So is this
publicity?
He has found a 'how-I-cope-with-my-bad-back'
piece by Jeremy Clarkson. To a teenage petrol-head,
Clarkson is a god.
M: Well, it has no news value, but it isn't promoting
anything in particular. So we'll call it Entertainment
– one of the main reasons people chose their
Sunday paper.
J: So what about all this (he points back at the
cinema listings).
M: That's the fifth type on content. That's Information;
helpful facts to help you make decisions. You'll
find a lot of those in the Sundays, especially
in the Travel sections.
J: News. Advertising. Publicity. Entertainment.
Information. Is that it?
M: Pretty much. It's a good filter to apply each
time you read the paper – especially to
weed out the PR man's dream - Publicity that's
being presented as News. Put it in another order,
and it spells PAINE.
J: ??
M: Thomas Paine was a man who lived round the
time of the American and French Revolutions. He
wrote a couple of very famous books, The Rights
of Man and The Age of Reason. His basic philosophy
was that we should each think for ourselves. So
when you read the paper, and to make sure you
read with a questioning mind, remember PAINE.
Think for yourself, not the way that others want
you to think.
Fatherly advice duly dispensed, I head for a
morning shower. Twenty minutes later, James is
standing in the bedroom door.
J: I looked up Paine on the Internet. He might
have written those books, but he died in poverty
and no one went to his funeral.
M: Yes, well, ermmm.....
J: I bet the man who publishes 'The Sunday Times'
won't die poor.
M: Probably not. |
