A shaky state of independence

Can Roger Alton, now in his fourth month as editor, save the Independent? Anybody who expected him to reveal a dramatic new vision will be disappointed. There has been, as he puts it himself, what is better described as a tickle rather than a wholesale relaunch. "I've never been a vision man," Alton insists. "I try and put good stuff together and get it out." With full-colour printing and Alton's incomparable eye for presentational detail, the paper looks fresher and more energetic. Comment and analysis have more space, politics a higher profile.

Will that be enough? True, other papers, including this one, make financial losses and nearly all struggle in a steadily declining market. However, with full-rate UK sales, for both the daily and Sunday paper, not far above 100,000, the Independent's problems are in a league of their own. The last recession, in the early 1990s, eventually forced its founders to sacrifice their independence and sell to Tony O'Reilly and the Mirror Group (as it then was). With the economic outlook darkening by the day, they had launched a Sunday paper (with me as news editor), believing - or so Matthew Symonds, one of the founders, told me - that recessions meant more competition for shrinking markets and, therefore, more advertising. That did not turn out to be true then and it will not be true now.

So for Alton, the stakes are high. And I believe he is making one big strategic error. He would reject the term - "crackers", he says - but he appears to be going downmarket. That will not be evident to regular readers. To them, the paper probably seems as engaged with serious issues as it ever was. But I doubt if that is how it seems to casual buyers, which the paper must attract to survive. Even Stephen Glover, the paper's press commentator, acknowledges that "he has lifted the paper's hem an inch or two".

When it raised its weekday price to £1, it tried to woo readers with a series on love and sex. Last week, as the financial crisis mounted, much of its front page carried puffs for "the best bespoke perfumes", "Galliano's wonder show", "sex with teacher", "the Jamie challenge" and so on. On Wednesday, as Alistair Darling prepared his bailout, the Independent, above the fold, asked: "Should you hug after a goal?" By then, its rivals had largely dropped puffs in favour of bold banner headlines. Only on Thursday did the Independent present a front page that suggested we are living through once-in-a-lifetime events.

For all the talk of saturation 24-hour coverage, big news still sells, with readers looking for papers that can explain authoritatively what is going on. As the former Express editor Richard Addis blogs (www.shakeupmedia.com), the financial crisis is a rare example of an event that is electrifying and complex and, therefore, peculiarly suited to explanation in print. Expect sales of the Financial Times to rise sharply. But many find the FT too esoteric, creating an opportunity for a paper such as the Independent which, I fear, it largely missed.

I say all this with humility, because I have made similar mistakes myself. If circulation is flagging, an editor thinks, let's have glamour and sex on the cover to catch readers' attention. Then they will be amazed by the insight, wit and verve of our serious writers.

The formula worked for Alton at the Observer but he should perhaps remember that the Independent, which now struggles hard to recruit new readers, once rose from zero sales to over 400,000 on the back of an explicit commitment to serious journalism.

It is hard to see how the Independent can survive except as an upmarket (sorry, Roger) niche product. Charging more than its rivals and with less money for promotion, it needs to offer readers something not available elsewhere and, more important, be seen to do so. Addis suggests it should be a daily magazine, running features even on the front. I wouldn't go as far as that, but I believe the Independent should throw its resources into becoming a white FT, offering the most authoritative, in-depth and cerebral analysis of world affairs, domestic politics, science, environment, the arts, education, health, sport and so on, as well as business and economics for non-City readers.

Perhaps that is what Alton intends. Certainly, the new Life section looks like a daily magazine of high culture. But it is hard to tell when it runs pages about the 10 best cardigans and the 10 best fruit bowls, both puffed on the front cover. Alton, I suspect, is being disingenuous when he denies being a vision man. It would be truer to say he doesn't like articulating visions, at least not to media commentators. But if he is creating a new identity for the Independent, or returning to an old one, he should send out a clearer signal to the reading public. And he should do so very soon.

Cold comfort for Icelandic investors
Personal finance pages, you might expect, would have been well ahead of the story about the failed Icelandic banks, Heritable, Kaupthing and Landsbanki. All three have offered unusually high interest rates to British savers. There had to be a catch, and there was. Financial returns always bear some relationship to risk levels, and banks that offer the highest interest tend to be those most likely to collapse, remote though that possibility usually is.

Did journalists explain this to readers? Not that I noticed. They put the banks' accounts at the top of the "best buy" tables and added warm recommendations. When doubts about Icelandic banks emerged among credit rating agencies, personal finance sections, if they mentioned it at all, assured readers that £16,000 could be reclaimed from the Icelandic government and another £19,000 from ours. The banks were still in the best buy tables last weekend.

I recall only one business journalist - the Times columnist Patrick Hosking - who raised doubts about whether Reykjavik could pay up and whether it was worth investing in foreign banks for what, in most cases, would be less than £100 extra annual interest. Money Mail told readers last Wednesday: "We got it wrong and for that we apologise." It added "many financial journalists had savings with the bank". Somehow I don't find that very reassuring.

Tribune Left to die
Next time a union leader laments the biased coverage of the capitalist press, someone should remind him or her of Tribune. The weekly paper that once boasted Michael Foot as editor and George Orwell as a columnist has been owned by a union consortium since 2004. Now it looks set to close for want of £200,000. At least the capitalists manage to keep their papers going.

Peter Wilby
The Guardian