Richard Burton, managing director of the Jewish Chronicle and former editor of the Telegraph online, believes that print is not dead. Is it just me or is this statement less groundbreaking than it sounds? I think the online module has (unintentionally?) given us an exaggerated faith in the omnipotence of web-based news, and Burton’s assertion only reinforced my print-shaped question mark. Sure, newspaper circulation’s decreasing, but the UK’s 17 million non-liners would be pretty unimpressed if their paper boy no longer had anything to deliver.
But of course, the web is generally speaking the way forward, and Burton of all people is perfectly aware of that (just check his CV).
Print/online debate aside, something didn’t sit right for me with this lecture. Burton was at pains to state that he wasn’t a businessman, yet his job is undeniably business-oriented. In a marked contrast to the ‘accuracy over exclusivity’ mantra of the BBC, Burton’s priority while at the Telegraph was breaking news first.
Two examples he offered particularly struck me. Apparently, when 9/11 happened, his team were “literally changing facts as [they] knew them.” And even worse (particularly for a ‘serious’ paper) was the Kylie story: when it was announced that Minogue would begin chemotherapy, he knew that this wasn’t big news (“Well of course she’s being treated, they’re not just going to leave her to die,”) so they ran the story with a ‘career in pictures’ add-on. Why? Because most of their readers are 35-year-old male office workers.
Is such cynical decision-making really the only option for commercially successful journalism?
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