By Rob Duffield, The Guardian, Swan Hill, Victoria
Did anyone catch Lateline – ABC 1 on Thursday night (19/2)?
ANDREW NEIL: the former editor of the London Sunday Times and now publisher of the Spectator magazine was interviewed by Lateline’s Leigh Sales. This was a fabulous late night interview in the finest Lateline traditions. Neil was questioned on politics, the global economic crisis and the future of the embattled Newspaper industry. The interview was extremely entertaining and most educational.
Neil was asked the perennial question: Are Newspapers Dying? He said: “No, they are not. Some are, some deserve to die. The trend is most pronounced in the United States because the United States is dominated by inefficient high cost big city monopoly newspapers that are not used to competing.
“So, they’re really taking a hit because they’ve been fat cats they can’t handle the revolution that is the Internet and multichannel TV. I don’t think that’s true of British or Australian newspapers.
“We’re much more competitive. Yes, some of the weaker brethren will go; they deserve to. Will there be a move to the web? Yes.
“But I think the strong newspaper brands in Britain and Australia will survive and they will have very strong websites as well.
“Our strongest brands also have strong web plays, and we’ve stopped thinking it’s an either/or proposition. Indeed we know you can’t have one without the other, and the opportunities are great.
“You think of famous British brands that went global before the internet age. ‘The Financial Times’, ‘The Economist’.
“Well, there’s a third called the ‘Guardian’, because the Guardian web site is now the third biggest website in American newspapers. It’s bigger than the ‘LA Times’ or the ‘Washington Post’.”
Neil also talked about the technological challenges and differences between now and his time working at the Sunday Times in 1983. He said: “But the difference with the Sunday Times in ‘83 was that is we knew the technological change was there, we wanted to take advantage it but the unions wouldn’t let us. That’s gone now.
“No management can use the excuse of unions now stopping technological change. If you were running a newspaper now it has to be lean and mean.
“The days of having 10 people cover a story are gone; you’ve got to be more efficient. You have got to build a strong web presence, and you’ve got to extend your brand into that web.
“And you’ve got to not just think, as we did in the early days, post the paper on the web and that’s your website. A website has to take on a life of its own, and you’ve got to let people post the stories and not wait until the following morning. And then you build a community.
“For example, ‘Telegraph’ newspapers in London, which is part of our group, we find most of the people using the web are people who also buy the paper, and you’ve a community going there.”
Andrew Neil also discussed Rupert Murdoch and then went into advertising mode to promote the Spectator’s new Aussie edition, which he is in Australia to launch. His views on British politics and the global economic crisis are certainly worth consuming.
