The Herald's Birthday

Britain's Laborites beamed and patted backs last week on the 21st birthday of the London Daily Herald, the Labor Party's official newspaper. First started as a four-page pleader for striking printers in 1911 and reborn as a general newspaper in 1930, the moneymaking Herald is now Britain's fourth largest daily (circ. 2,000,000), and in its way, a publishing success. Wrote Prime Minister Clement Attlee: "The Labor movement owes it a debt that can never be estimated." Sir Vincent Tewson, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, added: "May our Herald continue to bring national and world events within our ken and so help to a wider understanding of the problems of the day."

Was the Herald really doing that? Last week, while staffers were at work on their birthday special, 48-year-old Herald Managing Editor Brian Chapman gave his own answer: he quit. Chapman, a regular Socialist and a good newsman who had come over from Lord Beaverbrook's Daily Express, was fed up with the Herald's failure to keep its readers informed on the problems of the day. He had been forced to cut down on the paper's foreign and cultural coverage and its play of international news while devoting up to one-third of its space to sports.

"Dreadful Hodgepodge." The first blow fell on Newsman Chapman a year ago when the job of foreign editor was abolished. Last summer, the Herald achieved the doubtful honor of being the only big British daily without a correspondent in Korea. (To cover the Far East, the Herald has one string correspondent in Tokyo.) In Europe, the Herald recently dropped its oldtime Central European expert, G.E.R. Gedye, closed up its bureaus in Paris and Berlin. Fleet Street gossiped that the paper would soon abolish its only remaining overseas bureau, in Washington.

In London, half a dozen able staffers--most of them stout Socialists--have also quit, as fed up as Editor Chapman. Said Gordon Boshell, who had been hired to pep up the Herald's dreary feature page but left to freelance: "The paper doesn't want zip and it doesn't want brains. As a result, it's a dreadful hodgepodge of the mediocre."

The Choice. Newsmen suspect that most of the troubles stem directly from the Herald's strange ownership setup. Prosperous Odhams Press, a private publishing house which ballyhooed the Herald into big-time circulation in the early '30s, owns 51% of the stock. The Trades Union Congress owns the remaining 49%, but (together with the Labor Party) has absolute control over editorial policy. While papers like the London Times and Telegraph spend money to get news, the Herald thinks mostly of circulation: T.U.C. wants to spread the party message as widely as possible, and Odhams wants to make money. Thus, if the choice lies between the comparatively high expense of a foreign correspondent and the small cost (and big circulation pull) of a new football dopester, the Herald will take the dopester.

Said one Fleet Streeter last week: "To the Herald a red-hot tip on the third race at Newmarket is more important any day than a spread of Communism in Asia. No wonder British workers find it hard to get steamed up over Korea or Iran or the urgency for the West to rearm."

*Presumably meaning distillation, but unlisted in the current Oxford and Webster's unabridged.

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