A new year seems to mean that every newspaper worth its salt has to run some kind of promotion, and this Saturday’s Independent had a very good offer: a free DVD of David Frost interviewing Richard Nixon about Watergate ahead of the release of Frost/Nixon in a week’s time.
That was enough for me to pick up the paper for the first time in a while. You should know that somewhere in my loft I have issue No. 1 of The Independent and always feel very loyal to the paper even if I don’t show my loyalty in always buying it. Perverse, I know.
While I think the paper was foolhardy to jump to a pound before anyone else had done – save the FT (granted, everyone else is around 90p – or will be from Monday) – I know that they struggle and yet they do some things well.
But a couple of real disappointments were to be found over the weekend. And they seem to come from making too many cost savings.
Saturday’s paper had the results of an “Investigation” that showed the – shock/horror – B&Q’s sale prices are not much better than a previous sale that had been held in October. They spelt out the fact that B&Q had sold products at higher prices for 28 days as required by law, but that having put the prices up for November and December, they’d dropped in January to similar levels.
Except that even this non-story didn’t hang together. They highlighted a shower bath panel that had cost £100.56 in October, £169 in December and was now £84.49. Well to me, despite the price having increased in December, the price is now significantly lower than it had been in October. If I bought it today, I’d save fifteen quid on the October price. That’s substantial on a hundred pound item.
This is not a story. It’s as though someone in the newsroom evidently bought that panel in October and thought they’d got a deal. Then they’d noticed the price increase in December before dropping to a new lower price in January.
Guess what? Retailers change their prices a lot!
I can only assume that somebody in the Indie’s advertising department has fallen out with B&Q too.
This story took up a full page.
Otherwise, Saturday’s paper was OK. John Walsh’s tribute to John Mortimer was fine (although a side panel repeated the notion that he’d written the screenplay for Brideshead Revisited – he did write a script, and was credited, but he others wrote the one used), and it was unfortunate that events had overtaken a story about the creator of Mad Men demanding more cash before he signed on for a third season (he now has).
But if anything, I was more disappointed by Sunday’s paper. A page three story about the Prime Minister of the Turks & Caicos Islands told us little to nothing about exactly what he was accused of having done wrong. The story just stopped. It had so little detail I thought that I must have picked up Metro by mistake. If there’s one thing I want in a Sunday paper, it’s detail.
The safety net scheme being devised for UK banks got just a hundred words on page 4. But worst of all was an otherwise excellent article on inauguration of Obama. It started on page 8 where it was accompanied by a photo of his train journey yesterday; it continued on page 10, where it was the second lead after a sister Obama story; and it concluded on page 13. Other stories about Obama were on page 9 and page 11.
The layout was utterly atrocious. If the entire piece could not have been contained on a single page, or double page spread, which it easily could have been, it should certainly have demanded no more than one page turn. I wouldn’t expect a student magazine to have design as bad as that. Is there anyone left at the Independent working on page layout?
Elsewhere, a weak story noted that lots of films were being made based around toys, and was given a double page spread. Meanwhile, an interesting piece about an ancient Greek vessel being reassembled was given a half page, of which only around a hundred words were devoted to the story. The rest was an illustration and a curious map that showed both where the vessel was found off Sicily, and the location of Portsmouth where the restoration work is taking place. Why did we need a map of Portsmouth? We know where that is. Indeed, to anyone who didn’t read the story, you’d have thought that the boat had sailed from Sicily to Portsmouth in ancient times.
Again, that’s not to say that there aren’t good stories to be found in the paper. And I much prefer reaching international news before I reach the comment section. In too many Sundays – take a bow The Observer and the Sunday Times, international news is hidden away towards the back.
I fear that the real reason for all of this is cost-cutting.
I noted a suggestion earlier this week that the Russian oligarch and ex-KGB member Alexander Lebedev who’s thought to be buying the Evening Standard might also want The Independent. Maggie Brown, on the Media Guardian podcast, thought that it was an appalling notion that Lebedev should own even the Standard. She’d be apoplectic ifhe bought the Indie too – a paper she was at launch with. I must admit that instinctively I’m uncomfortable with the notion too, but I’m also aware that the long term prospects for The Independent are not good.