Watching brief - Amanda Platell warns Telegraph staff about "Monty"
Published 23 February 2004
Telegraph journalists would do well to ditch their proposed strike over pay: if they're bought by David Montgomery's 3i group, the strike will be a red rag to a bullish new owner
Two things sent a shiver down my spine this week. First came the news that David Montgomery was at the head of a confirmed last-minute bid for the Telegraph Group. Then I learn that staff at the Daily and Sunday Telegraph plan a two-day strike over pay - the first strike in the industry since the Wapping dispute in 1986.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the pay claims by staff on the Telegraph papers, surely someone there must have the sense to say to them that there will come a day for strikes and pay claims, but it is not this day - not on the eve of the new ownership deal. It is not, in fact, any day until the newspaper group has been bought by an organisation that will put the quality of the journalism first.
If Montgomery's venture capital group 3i takes over the Telegraph Group, the journalists will have made a serious tactical error. City investors love nothing more than a cost-cutting, tough-guy management to protect and grow their millions. The strike will play right into the hands of any new owner who is not sympathetic to the real cost of quality journalism. Ironically, despite the animosity at Canary Wharf, the bidder that journalists need fear least is Associated Newspapers, owner of the Daily Mail. The one thing that can't be taken away from those managers is their belief in the need to invest in their journalists. If Montgomery's group is successful, however, the Telegraph papers would be subjected to ruthless cost-cutting. The planned strike would be a red rag to a bullish new owner.
Those who were at the Mirror post-Maxwell under Montgomery's management, as I was, will know that the place was rife with Spanish practices. Maxwell had stolen the pensioners' millions and it was rightly incumbent upon the new management to repay that money, which it duly did. The unions had a stranglehold over the operation and Montgomery broke that hold. But journalists would do well to remember that while some people did what they believed had to be done, others actually enjoyed it. If you want an idea of what a Montgomery-run Telegraph would be like, just ask anyone at the Independent who was there when Monty and the Mirror co-owned it. As people were fond of saying then, no one was ever sure whom he despised more, the journalists who produced the broadsheets or the people who read them.
Having used all legal means available to him, Sir Paul McCartney has now started calling up newspapers himself in an attempt to get them to be nice about his wife, 'Ever.
In classic Sun style, his call to that paper made the splash on a slow news day under the headline: "Macca: Lay off my wife". And I hear this has not been the only call he's made to a tabloid recently to try and set the record straight about his beloved.
The details of his call to the Sun do nothing to endear the reader to the couple: "All she does is good things" and "doesn't take one single penny". Most people married to multimillionaires don't expect payment for their charity work, Macca. "I'm not some stupid old man who fell for someone who looks good." Clearly, if you were, you wouldn't be married to her.
He writes that 'Ever gets on great with his daughter Stella: "She bought all her friends Stella's perfume as presents." Well, proof indeed: that's two gifts then. The truth about the public's disdain for Mrs Mills McCartney is simple, really. It has little to do with Heather and her colourful past and everything to do with the pompous Liverpudlian she's married to - and so quickly after the death of the love of his life, Linda.
Personally, I think you and 'Ever were made for each other, Macca.
Talk about dream tickets. Stephen Glover, Frank Johnson and Francis Wheen are poised to launch a new quality daily. Glover is behind the project, thought to be a British version of Le Monde. It is believed already to have financing, printing and distribution in place and a break- even target of 100,000 copies.
The Guardian is being accused variously of arrogance and complacency in not launching a tabloid to fight off the new compacts.
But I suspect one of the reasons the Guardian has been so slow to follow - despite the Indy's 14.39 per cent year-on-year increase - is that it already has a highly successful tabloid within its existing product, in the form of G2. The strength of this tabloid within the broadsheet was never better demonstrated than on Monday, with its market-leading media section, job adverts and a cover story that eclipsed anything the others had to offer on the day, and for some days before it.
It was the diary of Emma Candy, a woman who died of cancer this month, aged 35. It is impossible to imagine how this magnificent piece could have been given the space it deserved inside a compact.
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