6October
Earlier in the week, we mentioned The Independent's re-launch in September 1997. Roy Greenslade summarised the changes at the time,
Every aspect of the layout has changed, from masthead typeface to the amount of space between the lines of body type. Headlines are smaller, stories are introduced by an explanatory paragraph, and every page is labelled. Left-hand pages are devoted to small news items, while right-hand pages are given over to longer reads that are not written in the usual breathless style of news stories. Every section is similarly designed. The end result is clean, if a little grey, especially since there are no column rules. The front page takes the biggest risk of all. It contains one major story and one large picture, with a panel containing a digest of other important stories published inside.
Hmm. Briefs on the left of a broadsheet double-page, something substantive on the right. One big photo-story on the front page has become standard practice at the Independent papers. From our faint memories, the depth of the deep articles seems to have been diminished, but that could well be our memory playing tricks.
The editor in 1997, Andrew Marr, was right when he said that daily newspapers are there to analyse at least as much as they report. He was ahead of his time, and the Independent's joint ownership (Mirror Group and current owner Tony O'Reilly) ensured there wasn't the money to wait for fashion to catch up, especially when Mirror Group wanted the paper to slot in between the Times and Mail, a thin-enough gap then. The trend Mr. Marr spotted has only continued in the decade since, with the growth of the 24-hour news culture, and Sunday papers have always done far more analysis anyway. We said at the time that the Indy was a Sunday paper published in the week; it's a bit of a shame that the Sunday paper hasn't belatedly followed this lead.
Of course, the concept of a crisp and concise Sunday newspaper is nothing new. In 1988, The Times summarised the vision of the Sunday Correspondent, quoting editor Peter Cole:
People don't want this overwhelming bulk; they want a paper that is organized and selective. It'll be more entertaining, more lively, with softer features, more leisure reading, more analysis, more projection, more agenda-setting. He proposes a 50-page upmarket broadsheet newspaper in two sections News and Culture/Living with 27 to 30 pages of editorial, to be accompanied by a 62-page magazine with 30 pages of editorial.
Thirty pages of broadsheet editorial plus 30 pages of magazine editorial – almost exactly what the paper contained on launch in 1989 – translates to roughly ninety pages of tabloid and magazine space. In turn, and excluding those useless television listings, that's almost exactly what the New Sindytab contains. Any danger of bringing back Pass Notes, the Questionnaire, and that strange game involving coloured hexagons?
