The Daily Novel

It is one of those elusive dreams which you cannot remember. I am trying to set up a meeting with Kelvin McKenzie, because I want to get him to see the error of his ways. McKenzie is the former Sun editor who gave us those front page headlines like GOTCHA, when the British task force sank the Belgrano, and Freddie Starr ate my hamster, on a particularly bad day for real news. Last night I watched his television programme on BBC Four, Birth of a Tabloid, about the launch of the Daily Mail in 1896.I know it is not going to be easy but I have a glimmer of hope. This is not McKenzie the confident tabloid editor of the Thatcher years. This is McKenzie the student, who has pondered a bit on life. He has discovered that there was not quite so much new in his Sun than he had thought. The programme shows him looking through the first edition of the Mail which, though broadsheet in shape, introduced the language and spirit of the tabloid to the British public. ‘You might think tabloids started recently. You would be wrong.’, he told viewers last night.Before 1896 the newspapers were ‘Boring, boring, boring.’ They were written for gentlemen interested just in politics. Not the newly educated classes who wanted news to read on trains and buses.  He paid homage to the man who understood this and gave the readers what they wanted; Alfred Harmsworth, later Lord Northcliffe. And on his programme McKenzie had wheeled in two of today’s Harmsworth to tell us how great their ancestor was, including Lord Rothermere the present boss of the Mail.Northcliffe was portrayed as a genius far ahead of his time. He was praised for his instruction to his reporters to ‘Explain, clarify, simplify.’ For realizing that ‘man bites dog’ is what news is about. For recognizing that readers wanted newspapers that were entertaining, that gave them some fun.Now I have no quarrel with a lot of this. Northcliffe was undoubtedly a most talented newspaperman and one with vision. The Daily Mail today is recognizably the same kind of newspaper as the 1896 edition. It has many imitators, not least the newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch.  The fault is not so much with Northcliffe it is with the rest of us who accept the Northcliffe model as the benchmark for journalism.As McKenzie said, ‘Alfred Harmsworth did not want revolution. He wanted mass circulation.’  And so do his imitators. Even the BBC, the world’s leading public service broadcaster, is chasing the ratings. Even The Guardian, devotes many column inches to funnies. Much as I enjoy some of their wit and humour, I cannot help but think there is too much of it. I am reminded of a conversation I had in the late 1960s, when I was an enthusiastic member of William Rees Mogg’s team, which was transforming The Times into a less fuddy duddy paper.In the pub at a party political conference I was taken to task by one of The Guardian’s leading political commentators, Francis Boyd. There is nothing wrong with being boring, Francis told me. Serious matters require serious treatment. I can hear his voice now urging me to take the risk of making this blog one of the ‘unpopulars’. And bloggers have an even more awesome job than newspapers and broadcasters in the digital age. There are allegedly four million of us all hoping to get a few readers. And how will we do that if we don’t grab them in the first paragraph, give them a few surprises and some laughs.There must be an easier way of earning a living.