The decision to close the Evening Standard’s daily edition is heartbreaking, but its story proves the power of news | Business News

For anyone who cares about newspapers, the announcement that London’s Evening Standard will close its daily print edition and replace it with a free weekly publication is heartbreaking – and not just because half the editorial team looks set to leave. lose their jobs.

People outside of London might not care much.

But this supposed regional title goes far beyond its weight and, to this day, influences what people read.

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People think the term “continuous news” only applies to TV channels like Sky News.

At the height of its powers, however, the Standard published six daily editions – including the Metro and News Extra editions in the morning, the City Prices edition at lunchtime and the West End Final edition in the evening.

It is no exaggeration to say that by publishing so many editions – the title dropped to a single edition at the end of 2009 – the Standard would set the news agenda, whether in Westminster, the Square Mile or elsewhere.

That era was brought to mind in the recent obituaries of Charles Reiss, the Standard’s political editor from 1985 to 2004, which served to remind how the Standard’s view of a big story would often be the one that informed how Fleet Street covered it. the next morning.

In the pre-internet era, Reiss was, for example, the first journalist to inform readers that Margaret Thatcher was about to resign as prime minister.

Its exclusive in September 2002, titled “45 minutes of the attack”, also set the tone for national coverage as then-Prime Minister Tony Blair prepared to take the country to war in Iraq.

Influential in the business world and beyond

The Standard was no less influential in its coverage of business and the city.

Financial PR executives would make a point of ensuring that the Standard’s journalists could speak to the company’s chief executives on the day of a major announcement, and would probably care more about that specific meeting or phone call than any other.

They knew that the Standard’s coverage was likely to influence that of every other Fleet Street business bureau and especially if Anthony Hilton, one of the most influential City editors of the last 40 years, wrote something particularly bitter.

It was not just in the fields of politics and finance that the Standard had weight.

It also applied to fields such as arts and entertainment. The Evening Standard Theater Awards, launched in 1955, are the oldest awards in the UK theater industry and retain enormous influence and prestige.

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Annoying Dictators and Shaping National Dialogue

Although the title built a reputation in the 19th century for covering conflicts such as the American Civil War, it was the 1930s and 1940s that saw the national influence of the Standard – whose daily edition closes just three years before it is scheduled to celebrate its 200th anniversary. birthday – was probably forged.

Banned by Benito Mussolini in 1936 because of a cartoon by the legendary David Low that provoked the Italian dictator’s wrath, in 1940 it published a series of thunderous editorials by the future leader of the Labor Party, Michael Foot – who became editor of the Standard in 1942 – which devastated the slow pace of rearmament in the 1930s in the face of Hitler’s aggression.

This shaped the national debate.

More than 80 years later, the reputations of former prime ministers such as Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain have still not recovered.

A home for great writers

He has also long enjoyed a reputation for elegant writing.

The Standard was the title, for example, for which novelist George Orwell wrote his famous 1946 essay, ‘The Moon Under Water’, in which he described his perfect pub – which years later influenced businessman Tim Martin when he launched his JD Wetherspoon pub chain.

Other great writers who have graced its pages over the years include John Betjeman and Harold Nicolson.

The Standard was also where several future editors of national titles – among them Sir Simon Jenkins, Geordie Greig, Stewart Steven and, arguably the greatest of all, Paul Dacre – built their reputations.

His influence and prestige were such that it could attract someone of Sir Max Hastings’ caliber to the editor’s chair when he left the Daily Telegraph.

Incredibly profitable

It wasn’t that long ago that Standard was incredibly profitable.

These profits were defended when, for example, Robert Maxwell tried in 1987 to invade his territory with the London Daily News, recruiting journalists such as Alan Rusbridger, the future editor of the Guardian.

The Standard’s then-owners, Associated Newspapers, responded by exhuming the long-dead Evening News and selling it for just 5 cents a copy – half the price of Maxwell’s title. When Maxwell was forced to close the London Daily News five months later, the Evening News was quietly buried again.

A similar tactic was used when, in September 2006, Rupert Murdoch’s News International launched the London Paper, a color leaflet aimed at attracting younger readers for whom the Standard was too right-wing.

Associated responded with its own spreadsheet, London Lite, whose content was drawn mainly from the Standard. Both London Lite and London Paper closed in 2009.

The rise of online news

However, like all newspaper titles, the Standard saw its profitability weakened and then eliminated by the rise of online news.

The title responded to this in several ways. For example, dropping to a single edition and, in October 2009, becoming freesheet.

At that time, the title belonged to Russian businessman Evgeny Lebedev, whose management of the title is blamed by several Standard journalists, past and present, for its disappearance.

Its purchase of the Independent and Independent on Sunday in 2010, and the merger of those titles’ newsrooms with those of the Standard, were seen as particularly damaging to the latter.

Just as unpopular with Standard journalists was his frequent use of the Standard’s pages to promote his pet causes and, often, himself.

There was also discontent when, shortly after he bought the title, the Standard launched an advertising campaign in which they apologized to younger Londoners in particular for being out of step with their views – one of the main reasons why the News International launched London Papel.

Mainstream journalists considered the campaign a denigration of their work. Ironically, the paper was still making similar mistakes years later, such as supporting the unpopular Zac Goldsmith and, later, Shaun Bailey, in the London mayoral election.

To be fair to Lebedev, his willingness to withstand losses probably kept the title alive longer than it might have otherwise.

Since acquiring it, Standard has only been profitable for four years, from 2013 to 2016.

These losses increased when, in 2020, most people were prevented from traveling to London due to COVID-19 lockdowns and forced them to resort to home delivery.

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A well-trodden path for online only

These losses have now forced Standard to follow the path announced today. Even this may not be enough.

Time Out, for decades London’s leading weekly ‘what’s going on?’ magazine, became free in 2012, but was forced to go online-only in 2022.

Padrão management today told employees that going online-only in 2016 helped Independent trade profitably and that this was Padrão’s aspiration.

Many newspapers used online access to their advantage.

The launch of a paywall and subscription services has helped titles that have sometimes been loss-making in the recent past, such as The Times and Daily Telegraph, turn consistent profits.

Print Still Packing a Punch

But it is instructive that even as print circulation fluctuates and online audiences grow, Fleet Street’s print editions still have a huge impact.

The current election campaign has seen eye-catching announcements made by parties not at 10pm for the main evening television bulletins, but at 10.30pm for the Fleet Street print deadlines. The print format retains its power.

This is probably why, even with the vast majority of its output online, the Standard tries to maintain the format at least once a week.