Examination of Witnesses (Questions 2480
- 2499)
WEDNESDAY 23 APRIL 2008
Mr Paul Myners
Q2480 Lord Corbett of Castle Vale:
In your evidence at paragraph 5.3 you say, "The Guardian
exists to create public value, not private gain", and you
go on to say, "The Guardian Media Group does not seek profit
for the financial benefit of its owners or shareholders, but to
sustain journalism that is free from commercial or political interference."
Are there circumstances where would you publish The Guardian
at a loss against those worthy words?
Mr Myners: Yes.
Lord Corbett of Castle Vale: Really?
Lord Maxton: But you would sustain it from the
rest of the group?
Q2481 Lord Corbett of Castle Vale:
Other activities?
Mr Myners: Yes, I think it is good to be profit-seeking,
but I think that short-term profit, which is merely a number that
is consequent on the approach that accountants have decided to
use on that particular day, is far less important for us than
our editorial values and our longer term vision, so I would have
no qualms about—
Q2482 Lord Corbett of Castle Vale:
I understand exactly what lies behind this, and personally I applaud
it, but that is by the by. At the same time, you live in a commercial
world.
Mr Myners: Yes.
Q2483 Lord Corbett of Castle Vale:
Both the group as a whole and the individual components of the
group, from a business point of view you are going to be more
comfortable if you are making money rather than losing it, as
with any other organisation.
Mr Myners: Firstly, I am delighted you applaud
it, particularly as your colleagues would describe you as a thinker.
Q2484 Lord Corbett of Castle Vale:
They are wrong about that.
Mr Myners: The measure of success for The
Guardian is not primarily a financial one.
Q2485 Lord Corbett of Castle Vale:
I agree with you?
Mr Myners: That, I think, is the key factor.
I think other newspaper groups would elevate the financial metric
far higher in their list of priorities.
Q2486 Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury:
When Mr Rusbridger decided that he wanted to change the format
of The Guardian, which presumably involved a big cost.
Mr Myners: Yes.
Q2487 Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury:
Is that something that goes through you?
Mr Myners: Yes. It was a significant expenditure,
and Alan came to the Board with a proposal justifying it because
he has to say, "This is what I believe I need to do and this
is why this amount of resource, I believe, should be used in this
particular way rather than in another way." The total cost
of moving to the Berliner format actually was a lot less than
has been reported, because we would have needed to re-press in
any case. That is to say, our old presses, which were producing
the broadsheet format, were coming towards the end of their useful
life, so it was opportune that that provided us with the opportunity
to look at different formats.
Q2488 Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury:
But that decision was not seen as an editorial one?
Mr Myners: I think the decision was an editorial
one in that the editor brought it to us, but he basically said,
"This a lot of money, I just want you to understand my thinking
and, if you have issues about this, let us debate it." As
it happened, we did debate it, because these things are never
black and white, but there was a very broad agreement that what
he was seeking to do by changing the format of the paper was right
and I think to date experience has proved him to be correct.
Q2489 Lord Maxton:
Can we just, however, make it quite clear in this high principle
that it basically related to The Guardian. You do not run
real radio and smooth radio and these other radio stations on
the basis that you would make a loss to ensure that you keep a
certain type of listener rather than playing music that---. They
are there for profit.
Mr Myners: There are there for profit and value.
Q2490 Lord Maxton:
For profit and value and, therefore, they sustain the rest, they
sustain The Guardian?
Mr Myners: They are a pool of available resource
to ensure that we can always deliver to CP Scott's vision.
Q2491 Lord Corbett of Castle Vale:
You run a very successful and large multi-media business. There
have been increasing trends to consolidation right across the
media industry as a whole. There is no sign of that stopping actually.
Could you quickly say what are the benefits and the losses in
that process, or is it just something you have to live with?
Mr Myners: Consolidation has been particularly
apparent in television, radio and regional newspapers. In all
cases it has been driven by the economics of those particular
industries coming under pressure and, therefore, a wish to develop
stronger brands and more productive investment, which is a euphemism
for cutting cost. It has not been a pressure in the national newspaper
area. That pressure will continue, particularly in the area of
regional newspapers. I believe we will see more consolidation
in the ownership of regional titles, although that may not be
immediate, because it is difficult to identify who has the resources
and appetite currently to be the driving force behind consolidation.
We have seen very significant consolidation in the radio space
in the last two years. As far as national titles are concerned,
it is a very odd area. If you look, the last four buyers of national
titles have been Robert Maxwell, Conrad Black, Richard Desmond
and the Barclay brothers.
Q2492 Chairman:
You are not getting into guilt by association, are you?
Mr Myners: They only listed themselves.
Q2493 Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury:
The NUJ argues that what consolidation leads to is fewer journalists
being employed, consequently fewer journalists having to do more
tasks and, as a consequence, poorer journalism. What is your response
to that?
Mr Myners: It has led to fewer people being
members of the NUJ.
Q2494 Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury:
It is true, certainly in the radio sector, is it not, that fewer
people are doing more jobs?
Mr Myners: I think that people are doing more
diverse jobs. I think people have to revisit the old way of defining
what you do, and the skills required are now to be effective in
multiple ways of communicating. So somebody who was previously
described as a journalist who sat at a typewriter now podcasts,
now speaks to video, now blogs online. It can be described as
multi-tasking, but I think it just makes a more challenging and
appealing job. Many of these other areas have not been as unionised
as journalism, so that has caused a problem for the NUJ. The Guardian,
of course, enjoys a very strong and good relationship with our
union colleagues.
Q2495 Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury:
You do not accept the argument, in other words: the fact that
an individual doing so many more things means that they have less
opportunity to get out, talk to people, pursue a journalistic
career in the old sense of the word?
Mr Myners: No, I think that they are still getting
out. You could argue that if you are out with a microphone and
a camera, you are even more out and less likely to be able to
do your work whilst remaining at your desk. The fact is that for
some journalists the sort of experience that you report the NUJ
as voicing is undoubtedly true, but there are, on the other side,
wonderful examples of liberation into a completely new way of
working.
Q2496 Lord Hastings of Scarisbrook:
Could you give us a sense of the proportion of the Guardian's
income which relates to your expansion in the US online? How important
is the online advertising dimension of that?
Mr Myners: The driving force of our internationalisation
through online is to broaden our voice, to communicate with a
broader audience. That is the first significant fact. The marginal
cost of production digitally is extremely low. The readers find
you. You do not have a unit cost of production in the way you
do for a newspaper; there is no paper that you have to buy to
print on; so the impetuous here is editorial reach. There is a
commercial benefit as a consequence of advertising, and we have
to pursue those lines, being able to put products and services
in front of our readers which they find appealing and attractive.
Q2497 Lord Hastings of Scarisbrook:
Do you differentiate the advertising online according to the markets
that it is being used in?
Mr Myners: Yes.
Q2498 Lord Hastings of Scarisbrook:
Do you have a substantial amount of American advertising?
Mr Myners: The content that you are taken to
through advertising and links will reflect, depending how you
got there, the way in which the algorithm works that Google or
somebody is using to take you to that site and any advertising
that you are presented.
Q2499 Lord Hastings of Scarisbrook:
Following on from that thought, you say in the submission paper
that you gave us, one of the points about the BBC being that its
decision to accept advertising on BBC.com removes potential revenue
from commercial news providers. Do you count yourself in the commercial
news provider space in that thought?
Mr Myners: Yes.
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