A Terrible Weekend For Print
Print is dead. We’ve heard it a million times, and still publications continue to push their wares to ever dwindling audiences. The issue is no more acute than in sales of daily newspapers, which plummet year on year.
This weekend marked another horror story for print, with The Times running a cover image of Peter Mandelson in the week he’d had to resign his position from the House of Lords after more details from the latest release of the Epstein Files were unveiled.
Print deadlines for putting together such publications still run far earlier than most would imagine, the interview likely done weeks ago for its Magazine, the so-called ‘Supplement of the Year’. So was The Times completely powerless to have done anything about this, or were they caught sleeping on the job? Was this an analogue example of the pre-planned and automated social media post that someone just forgot to address?
No. Not a chance. The Times would have mulled this one over. Not for some time, as they didn’t have that. But they definitely had options. And then they still chose to continue as planned. It’s a massive misstep. It’s impossible to separate your moral, ethical or political beliefs from this story, but there would have been several opportunities to update or change the front page, or simply pulp the edition.
Cost implications of scrapping the entire print run of a magazine? Considerable, I’m sure. But they’ll now find out how much the brand damage this episode will have done. The long-term cost could be far greater for a publication that has proudly traded on being ‘The paper of record’ for more than 240 years.
Remember, this is now a right-leaning publication. In a time where impartiality in the media seems a choice for few and far between, this would have been the perfect opportunity for The Times to add another nail in the coffin of the under pressure Government.
‘Out of respect to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, we’ve removed our planned cover for this weekend’s magazine. Our interview with Peter Mandelson was undertaken prior to the recent release of further Epstein Files and the subsequent fallout. Our interview is inside.’
That, or words to that effect, should have been the cover. It’s baffling that the sole recognition of any prior consideration of whether or not they’d run the cover and the interview came within the body of the newspaper itself on the same day. One paragraph and a thumbnail image. The irony of the juxtaposition of that non-apology - following on from a front page and inside front story on how Keir Starmer’s shocking judgement makes his position untenable - completely lost on them.
This is as bad as it gets for daily and weekend titles. They cannot move as fast as the news and you have to wonder if it’s time some were put out of their misery.
