Buying Newspapers

When was the last time you paid to read a newspaper? If you live in London, remember the Metro and The Evening Standard are both free and contain remarkably little that could be called journalism. What their readers are really doing is redistributing copies from stalls at tube stations to the interiors of bus and train carriages, where cleaners then put them into rubbish bins. These days I like to be efficient so I just put the newspaper straight into the bin, unread.

I've always had a love-hate relationship with The Evening Standard, with the balance being around ninety percent towards hate. When I used to work near Oxford Circus and took the tube home, from time to time I was foolish enough to buy a copy for 35 pence, thinking surely a newspaper that was as thick as a sandwich would last me journey home. Wrong. By about Paddington, I would be into the property section, where the Standard saw its role as cheerleader in chief for over-priced, nasty new build in areas devoid of transport links, character or even a recognised place name. Their other long-running campaign was a stream of misleading, mendacious articles about the congestion charge, driven solely by the fact that some senior journalists and the editor resented paying the toll on their way to work. These days, Alexander Lebedev has turned it into a free sheet and even then, it feels like a rip off.

By my reckoning, the last time I paid for newspaper content was nine months ago, when I bought a Sunday Times and almost immediately regretted the purchase. Like all Sunday papers, it has bloated to such a flabby, over-puffed size that the main challenge is to work out which bits to read and which bits to discard at once. Twenty frustrating minutes later, when I failed to commit to a viable reading strategy, my conscience came to rescue, reminding me that it was a Murdoch rag. The inky stains it leaves on your fingers, it leaves those on your immortal soul, the angel of my better nature whispered. Into the wheelie bin it went.

My wife had a subscription to Time Out and we both valued it as a comprehensive listings magazine, with excellent reviews of every conceivable cultural activity in the capital. It seemed cheap at the price as you could always find something interesting to do from its pages. But Time Out has mutated into a free sheet also and much like the Metro is worth as much as its cover price. I'm sure there was a powerful commercial logic to their decision, but I for one will not be reading it again. Not out of spite, but it's now just a collection of PR pieces and is woefully short on reviews and content, without proper listings. If I'm going to waste my life reading drivel, might as well do it on the Mail Online crack bar where the truth about Harry's night in Vegas is finally revealed.

Maybe the era of newsprint is dead. The Guardian loses money at a frightening rate, £40 million plus per annum, The Times bleeds cash as does The Telegraph.  The problem with modern newspapers is that they have embraced opinion pieces and editorialised content with gusto, to distinguish themselves from generic news content online. Unfortunately this has the potential to antagonise as many readers as it endears. For example, I might be reading The Guardian, appreciating their varied news coverage and championing of the underdog, all is well. Then entirely by accident I read an article by Polly Toynbee of such breathtaking self-righteousness and pomposity (especially when you consider her left wing credentials did not extend to educating her children in a state school) that it makes me want to buy a rifle and spend the afternoon shooting defenceless animals whilst wearing one of those T-shirts you can buy in Camden that says 'Hitler: European Tour 1939 -45'.

On the other side of the spectrum, I could be reading The Telegraph, enjoying their parliamentary pieces or cricket journalism and a gust of wind blows the pages over and my eyes alight on article by Christopher Booker about climate change. This piece is so filled with lies, distortions and deliberate falsehoods that in any other walk of life, the perpetrator would face criminal charges. Booker is in fairness merely a paid lackey of the tax-dodging Barclay brothers, owners of The Telegraph, who lurk like anthrax on the island of Sark. So to right this shameless abuse of journalist principles, I have to row a boat all the way that Channel Island and set fire to their castle.

Newspapers have created a zero sum game with the prevalence of opinion pieces. For every reader that enjoys Jeremy Clarkson ranting about speed cameras, there's another who wants to see him run over by a Prius Camper Van, ideally driven by a black lesbian in a wheelchair. The above is written by a recovering news junkie by the way, who used to watch C4 news, the news at 10 and then Newsnight all in the same day, to see the subtle differences in reporting. And I still won't pay for newspapers. Yes, I know The Guardian broke the phone-hacking scandal and The Telegraph the MPs expenses one, but I didn't buy a copy of either paper. Sorry.