The historically mighty Mirror Group and the equally mighty Express Group announce that they’re in takeover-cum-merger talks. The shades of Cecil King and Lord Beaverbrook shimmer with portent. It would have been a big story 50 years ago.
Back then the Daily Mirror sold 5.1m copies a day. Now that’s 733,000. Back then the Daily Express sold 3.9m. That’s a mere 396,000 today. And the figures of Sunday declines are even more staggering. From 4.2m at the Sunday Express to 341,000. From 5.5m at The People to an ever-shrinking 248,000.
Such shrinkage, of course, is the driving force behind any deal. Richard Desmond, like other Express owners before him, has been content to squeeze every last sliver of profit out of accelerating decline. But all squeezed things finally die.
Meanwhile Trinity Mirror’s bosses – though more ambitious digitally – are following their well-trodden local newspaper route of buying up competitors and putting printing plants and newsrooms together. You can cut costs and increase revenue in annual reports this way. You also merely delay the inevitable.
Which is, perhaps, why more titans of yesteryear than King and the Beaver may be turning in their graves today. Think Hugh Cudlipp and Arthur Christiansen, most legendary of Mirror and Express editors.
Snakes alive! They don’t make ’em like Clare any more
I knew the late, great Clare Hollingworth when I was a young Guardian correspondent. We were a double act during the 1965 India-Pakistan war. (I drew Pakistan; she got India.) But Clare was an inspiration as well a terrific reporter. There was no more fearless coverage than her work from Algeria: a cauldron of danger she stirred alone. And, of course, that went with an almost heedless indifference to her personal safety (let alone comfort).
One summer she offered my wife and me a stay in her “little place” high on the hills above Nice. We arrived when it was dark, struggling to it across a steep vineyard. Rats scuttled across the roof throughout the night. When my wife went to the well to get water, she shrieked. It was full of snakes. And, reader, we fled – which is probably why, unlike Clare, we will never live to be 105.
