Mike Unger stepped down as editor of the MEN 10 years ago, having previously edited both the Post and the Echo - a unique contribution to regional journalism. Here he looks forward to the new Holy Grail.

Mike Unger

Once upon a time, I used to devour newspapers, every single one of them from the Manchester Evening News to The Wire, Trinidad.

Ok, so I edited them both but I was the ultimate paperholic. I have at home, the first Sunday Telegraph (bought as a school-boy) and the first Daily Mail, acquired long, long before eBay. 

I have a print of the first Daily Post, Liverpool and I gave away special newspapers produced during the General Strike.   

But no longer. I can go days without reading a paper, particularly during the week, and I even throw away unread the three free papers that come happily through my front door. All this confession and I’m still totally in touch with the news. And sadly, I would guess, there are are thousands of others like me. It’s not that I don’t have the time (although that is becoming an increasingly rare commodity), it’s that more and more I am being dragged into the instant me world of IwanteverythingatonceNOW. Particularly my news   

During the day I surf the net constantly. BBC, Guardian, Times, ic this and online that. (As an aside, why is that newspapers both national and regional are only very slowly realising the value of their brand and starting to proudly call their web-site after the paper rather than some nebulous, centralised, meaningless gibberish?) I get all the news I want without having to wait another 24 hours. As I write this at 11am, there is news of two people being killed in an 8.45am bus crash outside Knutsford. I have enough detail now courtesy of the BBC to be satisfied and I don’t have to wait until tomorrow for a paper, by which time I might well have forgotten.   

In the morning I flit between Radio Five Live and Radio 4 and in the evening I constantly watch the headlines on BBC News 24 or Sky News to see if anything has changed – which it seldom does, although there are pretty pictures. (As another aside I find the BBC News at 6pm so puerile and childish I literally have to switch it off. Please, we are not stupid even if we are uneducated.)   

And yes, I do miss newspapers. On the two or three times a week that I buy one.  I always find something of great interest that I just didn’t see on the internet. And this is the continuing problem and was even when I was an editor. Quick, easy electronic publishing is still really only bones on to which the printed press can supply the meat – and one still can’t really read the Internet in the bath (a significant test which papers pass). There is still no humour, little background stories and no features until repeated from the previous day’s paper – just hard news.   

But compounding the printed media’s misery is the fact that papers – both national and regional - are becoming sloppy and lazy. The Times this week had the same story as a lead on two consecutive pages; a lot of the Guardian’s news has been published in previous day’s nationals (do the Berliner presses have too early a deadline?); the Daily Post had as a page one lead an ordinary follow-up to a story they had the day before with the P1 picture (of buildings) also a repeat – all this on the day Liverpool knocked Barcelona out of the European Cup. As a consequence although I was in a newsagent’s and saw this paper, I didn’t buy it.   

Too many obituaries – required reading for me these days – are sometimes weeks out of date, and these can be some of the most wonderful bitchiest reading there is.   

So where do I get this much needed light, humorous, stumbled-across reading? From magazines.  I am now a magaholic. Anything from The Economist to Heat via Red and New Statesman.  They give me my in-depth knowledge (and lots, lots more) to the bones I have found on the internet.

Do I feel guilty about this? Not really. I am convinced that newspapers will be with us forever; they just have to work out their role.

The Manchester Evening News is trying all sorts of interesting things with variations on a theme of distribution; but the bottom line is still content. That is the Holy Grail and until owners invest in journalism and editors invest in content then they are going to struggle.

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Comments (5)

2  By Stuart Parker , on 30-03-2007 14:09 He doesn't get any better looking as he gets older! Report

4  By William Tildesley , on 31-03-2007 14:23 How true this article is to me, I am a news junkie and make it my duty to consume every piece of news. From magazines to breaking news headlines emailed to my mobile. Report

5  By bill jones , on 03-04-2007 19:48 I agree with your arguments about the diminishing utility of newspapers but I would not be without the feature articles and the leaders by the likes of Jenkins, Aronovich, Riddell, Toynbee et al. And it's no fun sitting up at one's computer desk when one could be lounging on the sofa... Report