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- The Guardian, Monday October 30 2000
If anyone can save the Daily Express, it's the Daily Mail. This has long been the view of the wiser press commentators, but it has usually been accompanied by shrugs and the shaking of heads. After all, it just wouldn't be plausible, would it?
The government would never wear it. The competition commission would outlaw it. The media ownership rules could not be stretched to accommodate it. The idea was out of the question. Now the Daily Mail & General Trust (DMGT) has turned the notion from a hypothetical dream into reality. Its bid for its century-old rival is very serious indeed, and it has not allowed the news to slip into the public domain without having a strategy to overcome both the political and commercial hurdles.
Let's consider how Lord Rothermere's team will jump them, with a little help from a usually reliable DMGT source. First, the problem probably uppermost in the mind of Tony Blair and his press secretary, Alastair Campbell, not to mention Labour politicians up and down the land, is the danger of the Express adopting an aggressive rightwing stance similar to the Mail's.
It would, of course, be foolish for the Mail to publish a quasi-Mail. I understand that DMGT has been impressed with the response to its apolitical, non-ideological morning giveaway paper, the Metro, and would seek to transform the Express into a more neutral, less politically committed, paper.
Some Mail executives believe this reflects the times in which we live. The central argument over the economy has been settled in favour of free-market capitalism so the differences between parties are now largely matters of degree. Young readers, the ones most sought by all papers, are no longer interested in political arguments.
But the company would not change the Express instantly, giving a guarantee that its current political viewpoint, which is broadly pro-Labour, if occasionally critical, would be maintained up to at least the next general election. This would also mean that, if she wished, editor Rosie Boycott could remain in place with her senior team. She would therefore be in a position to assess whether she wished to stay on to oversee the paper's gradual transformation.
My DMGT source also stressed that, apart from the Daily Mail, the wider Associated Newspapers stable is not noted for running Tory-supporting, rightwing papers. Some of the provincial evenings, he suggested, even support Labour.
I raised my eyebrows at that, just as I did when he claimed that the Mail on Sunday "doesn't really have a rightwing agenda". In fairness, the London Evening Standard has often found itself lining up on the side of New Labour, and Metro has eschewed any political line. Associated's sprawling, pluralistic media operations also include Teletext which certainly has an ethos of impartiality.
It will be interesting to see whether Blair and Campbell accept this viewpoint, but it wouldn't surprise me if they did, because they will be pleased with the pledge about the Express's stance leading up to the election.
They will doubtless want to feel confident in the composition of the editorial board of independent directors which DMGT says it will appoint to ensure that its promises are kept. What then of the commercial argument? No one, even those of us who disparage the Daily Mail's social and political agenda, can deny that the paper is Fleet Street's most efficient and best-resourced editorial operation. Its investment in journalism and commitment to technical excellence have made it the best popular paper since Hugh Cudlipp's Daily Mirror of the 1950s and 60s.
So it comes as no surprise that DMGT will promise to invest £50m a year for five years in the Express titles. The company knows that ever since Lord Beaverbrook's demise in 1964 the titles have suffered from continual cuts which have eaten away at their ability to compete. Over the years I would estimate that DMGT spent £100m on the Mail on Sunday before it came into profit, and the Metro investment has been high too. It therefore has a track record of spending, it has the money and, more importantly, it has been given the will to succeed by the young Lord Rothermere and his editor-in-chief Paul Dacre.
Dacre - who joined the Express from university in the 70s and eventually became its US correspondent before the Mail poached him - has always believed that there is an audience for the paper and his sadness at its decline has been genuine. There is no question of the Mail doing to the Express what it did to the News Chronicle in 1960. In other words, this is not a ploy designed to kill off the Express by "merging" it with the Mail.
It would appear from its investment pledge that it is giving the Express at least five years to find its footing, which is about as good as it gets for a paper which is no longer turning a profit. Research by DMGT, especially among readers of the Metro, suggests there is a big untapped market among young people requiring crisp, impartial news. (I must register a cavil here since I don't believe any news is impartial, but it's their argument, not mine).
Then there is the Daily Star. Again, DMGT promises not to shut it but to expand and strengthen the paper. It is viewed as a fine platform from which to build a red-top targeted more purposefully at the Mirror and the Sun.
This, incidentally, is a very shrewd move for the Mail. The Star surprised its rivals by doing well in the first three years after its 1978 launch but lost its way. If it could be revived, the Sun and Mirror - which have both sought to move upmarket to confront the Mail - would have to watch their flanks.
There is, needless to say, a strong back-office argument in favour of the deal. Way back, when Lord Stevens was running the Express titles, his managing director, Andy Cameron, had a series of meetings with the then managing director of Associated Newspapers, Bert Hardy, to discuss ways of merging the titles' printing, distribution, newsprint-buying and, possibly, other facilities.
Both men realised there could be tremendous savings, but Rothermere and Stevens, for personal reasons which were never clear, eventually balked at the idea.
Since then, the Telegraph group has been running a 50-50 joint publishing operation with the Express's owners, United News & Media. That is just one of the many wrinkles DMGT would need to iron out before trade and industry secretary Stephen Byers is called on to make one of the most delicate political decisions of his career: should he allow the Daily Mail to own the Daily Express?
