Self-Medication

For the past four months, the British national press has been undergoing the most severe crisis of self-confidence in its history. First, an outsider--Canada's Lord Thomson--took over the London Times, symbol of Fleet Street stability. Then Harold Wilson's economic squeeze caused a drastic cutback in advertising. Finally, last week, a report confirmed the newspapers' worst fears: the industry is in dire trouble.

The papers were swallowing their own medicine; they commissioned the report themselves. Begun a year ago by a subsidiary of the London Economist, the analysis was supposed to have been quietly circulated among the sponsoring publishers and unions. But the Guardian, which was not a party to the agreement, got a copy of the report and leaked salient portions. The leak forced the publishers to release the entire 555-page report. It is now the talk of Fleet Street--much to its own discomfort. For the report lays the lion's share of the blame for the industry's decline on a "small number of highly individualistic proprietors," some of whom have "little interest in modern management methods and techniques, yet retain almost absolute authority over their organization."

Habit of Succumbing. Partly as a result of this old-fashioned management, said the report, four of the 18 nationally circulated newspapers are likely to close down by 1970. Only two--Lord Thomson's Sunday Times and Cecil King's Daily Mirror--can face the future with any kind of confidence. From 1957 to 1964, newspaper profits rose 29%, while editorial costs jumped 98% and production wages soared 130%. During this period, only seven papers succeeded in increasing their revenues more than their costs. Average circulation fell 6%, which was an indication that the rise in population is not enough to offset the "decreasing interest in buying newspapers."

The papers, noted the report, are overstaffed by some 4,000 men, many of whom do little to earn their pay. The cost to the industry of this featherbedding: a debilitating $13.6 million a year. Despite the waste, continued the report, management has too often shown little inclination to do battle with the unions. Instead, it makes a habit of "succumbing to extreme pressure." Sometimes it even succumbs in ad vance. It was long believed, for instance, that the Guardian was forced to print in both London and Manchester because of union insistence. In fact, the Guardian management never formally discussed with the unions the possibility of shutting down one of the printing plants.

After the report was released, some papers snappishly defended themselves, others owned up to the industry's inadequacies. Various rescue plans were proposed, ranging from government subsidies for newspaper production facilities to a more equitable distribution of advertising among the papers. But there were no easy panaceas. Wrote the London Economist in a harsh indictment of the industry: "Britain's national newspapers have got themselves into a mess and are pleading for sympathy. Most of them are so incompetently managed that they deserve nothing of the kind."

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