The demise of the News of the World need not, and should not, spell the end of Sunday red-top tabloid journalism. It has a fine tradition, stretching back into the 19th century, and reached its zenith in the 1950s. Even though it became warped from the 1990s onwards, that does not mean it has no place in modern Britain. It's also fair to say that amid the muck that has passed for journalism in the contemporary News of the World , there have been occasional stories of genuine public interest.
One obvious example was the revelation that members of Pakistan's test match cricket team were involved in a betting fraud, a story that won the paper the 2010 scoop of the year award. It was mentioned by David Wooding, the paper's associate editor, during his passionate defence of the current News of the World staff in various TV interviews within hours of News International's announcement that it was closing the title. It's a great campaigning paper, he said several times over. Like others who have spoken up for the paper in recent days, he affected to overlook the kiss‘n'tell vulgarity, acres of female flesh and celebrity tittle—tattle that have formed the bulk of the paper's content by pointing instead to the odd moment of genuine journalistic initiative.
In reality, the NoW — in company, it should be said, with other tabloids — lost the plot. There may yet be a way to rebuild a worthwhile form of tabloid journalism that serves the public interest rather than merely playing to the lowest common denominator.
But it's going to be a very difficult exercise in current circumstances, requiring a skilful editor and a committed owner who both understand where things went wrong and why. In order to move forwards, to explore the possibilities of a red-top renaissance, it is necessary to go backwards by taking a trip into a glorious tabloid past.
The classic mission statement in defence of the sensationalist popular paper approach as “a necessary and valuable public service” was made in 1949 by the then Daily Mirror editor, Sylvester Bolam.
It “does not mean distorting the truth,” he wrote. “It means the vivid and dramatic presentation of events so as to give them a forceful impact on the mind of the reader. It means big headlines, vigorous writing, simplification into familiar everyday language.” By the time Bolam spelled out that formula, which was so successfully employed by the Mirror in the following two decades, it was already the watchword of a campaigning Sunday title, the People.
Though the NoW of that period was far and away the biggest-selling national paper with more than 8 million buyers an issue, it was the Sunday People that pioneered a form of investigative and campaigning journalism that was to influence its rival.
Both papers were broadsheet-shaped in those days, but it would be fair to say that the People adopted what we would recognise today as a tabloid style under the editorship of a colourful character called Sam Campbell.
He oversaw a prolonged period of groundbreaking investigative endeavour and enterprise that was to influence the following generations. He transformed reporters into quasi-detectives who set out to expose black marketeers, evil landlords and petrol thieves.
One of Campbell's reporters, the flamboyant and eccentric Duncan Webb, became the most famous popular journalist of the period, dubbed by Time magazine in 1955 as “the greatest crime reporter of our time”. In a series of increasingly hysterical front-page stories, he exposed the brothers behind a prostitution racket in London's Soho.
By the end of the 1950s, circulation of the People — with its brash slogan “Frank, fearless and free” — had risen beyond 5m, while its once dominant rival the NoW — slogan: “All human life is there” — saw its sales start to slip away. Sensationalist campaigning was winning readers by the week.
By common consent, the man who best grasped Campbell's theory and practice was Laurie Manifold, who had joined the paper out of an unashamed admiration for Duncan Webb.
It is no exaggeration to describe Manifold as the father of modern popular paper investigative journalism. He trained a legion of journalists in a range of investigatory techniques, which they went on to practise in the NoW (notably, Trevor Kempson, Mike Gabbert and the “fake sheikh” himself, Mazher Mahmood).
Manifold initiated the use of subterfuge, covert tape recording and even the setting up of fake companies. But he was scrupulous. He drew up sets of rules for reporters on how they should behave. Though he was not above breaking the law on special occasions, he refused to take short-cuts and demanded complete honesty from his reporters. His former staff still venerate him. A former editor of the People , Bob Edwards, called him “a remarkable figure ... who would have made an inspired and incorruptible police chief.”
Manifold was responsible for a series of successes. In 1964, the People exposed a high-profile football betting scandal that ended with players being jailed. Far and away, the most remarkable scoop was the revelation of widespread corruption within the Metropolitan police that resulted in the conviction of 13 officers and the suspension and early retirement of 90 other policemen. One of his best remembered investigations, in 1975, revealed cruelty at a vivisection laboratory in which dogs were hooked up to machines that forced them to inhale cigarettes. The “smoking beagles” image is one of the most memorable ever published by a newspaper.
By that time the People had switched to tabloid format and in the ensuing years, its public interest investigations gave way to series about sex and celebrity stories. Sales have fallen away ever since.
Well before that, many of Manifold's techniques had been carried across to the News of the World by defecting People staff. During the newspaper feeding frenzy surrounding the scandal that led to the resignation of war minister John Profumo in 1963, the NoW began to use subterfuge on a regular basis.
The paper's stock-in-trade became the exposure of the sexual peccadilloes of various pillars of supposed moral authority — vicars, scout leaders, politicians and peers. Running in parallel were kiss‘n'tell stories about TV and movie celebrities. Initially, they were not so hard-edged as they became from the late 1980s onwards. But there was no genuine public interest reason for many of them.
Most importantly, however, there was a sense of proportion in the paper's overall content, what was then known in the tabloid trade as “balance.” And this is the key to understanding where the News of the World went wrong and, therefore, where it might just be possible to put popular journalism right.
The editors of tabloids in their heyday sought to maintain a subtle balance between serious and sexy content, between significant public interest stories and sensational ones that interested the public.
When the London Evening Standard reported the NoW 's closure last week, it illustrated its story with a picture of a subeditor checking the front page proof of a November 1953 issue of the paper with the splash headline “Five weeks change the face of Sudan.” That was the serious face of a paper with plenty of court reports inside to titillate its vast audience of readers. Balance.
At about the same time, a Daily Mirror editor famously shouted to his picture editor “Have you got any tits to go with the rail strike?” Balance.
The NoW , and in this sense the paper is little different from several other red-tops, gradually eschewed any attempt at providing anything other than celebrity-based material.
Worse than that. In order to fulfil the remit, its reporters were encouraged to use any means necessary to obtain it. That led to an increasing use of suspect methods. For example, instead of using subterfuge sparingly, it became a matter of routine. Similarly, it has now become clear that the interception of voicemail messages was also a matter of habit.
There would be no point in producing a new red-top that purveys only salacious content relying on intruding into the privacy of the rich and famous. The kiss‘n'tell game is up.
But there remains a need for a paper that can balance the heavy and the light, that can both entertain and inform and, most importantly, does investigate and campaign on matters of genuine public interest.
It is a tough call. The NoW 's main rivals, the Sunday Mirror and the People , have seen their sales slip away despite being altogether less aggressive in their methods and somewhat more balanced in their journalistic output. But they have also been notably less successful as campaigning papers.
And that brings us to an uncomfortable truth that needs to be understood by those who scorn modern tabloids and what they represent. The changes in newspapers have, to an extent, mirrored changes in society.
The News of the World , which laid claim to 7 million readers with its 2.6m regular sale, published increasingly sordid stories about sexual shenanigans, replete with intimate details, because people clearly wished to read them. Though its sales did slide, they did so roughly in line with the overall decline of print. In other words, there was a viable market for its style of journalism.
Despite that, in creating a new tabloid, it would, paradoxically, be a breath of fresh air to see a reborn paper return to the virtues of the past. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2011
