A TRIP to Bristol on the day after Sir Victor Blank announced he was resigning as chairman of the complete disaster that is the Lloyds-HBOS merger gave a good chance to look at another of Sir Victor’s bits of handiwork.
For some years, he was chairman of the Trinity Mirror newspaper group which controls so much – surely, too much – of the press in Wales.
The group also controls the Daily Mirror - and it was of course only that newspaper which pundits in London cared anything about.
During his years in charge at Trinity Mirror, that flagship newspaper endured very mixed fortunes. Generally bad ones. Solidly overtaken by Murdoch’s Sun, it could find little to hint that any turn-around might beckon.
Why ? A number of reasons were given. Page Three (lack of, in the case of the Mirror) was one.
But some people pointed to another reason for the failure. Apparently, at the time the comment was made, the Trinity Mirror board contained not a single member who had been a journalist. In sharp contrast, Mr Murdoch, whatever you think about him, is a journalist to his finger tips.
His period at Trinity Mirror also coincided with the Western Mail’s downward slide in standards, it seems. That down-marketing had been underway for years, largely unremarked except occasionally.
When did the slide start ? What were the factors which sparked it ? As we know so little – Wales seems a country unhappy about delving into the proceedings of boars of public companies – we may be in our thoughts totally unfair to blame Sir Victor.
But his period in charge coincides at least in part with a major change in the comparison between the newspapers in Cardiff and Bristol.
The Bristol morning, the Western Daily Press, was once even considered for closure. The paper kept going, as a tabloid, but one sometimes wondered how much strength lay behind it.
It used to be very much a lightweight comparison to the Western Mail. While the Mail often dealt in serious politics – I suppose because it tried to represent a nation – the Press’s main point seemed to be reports of the previous evening’s parish council meetings. For some reason, West Country parishes could be quite inflammatory !
But now the relationship is totally different. The Press is now a lively and a fine and serious newspaper. The parish councils seem to have vanished. The paper seems to consider its readers to be intelligent.
What has happened ? The paper has been taken over by the Daily Mail group. It even uses the same headline type on page one.
But it’s the Daily Mail with a difference. The Press gives appropriate prominence to the opposite side to the story – which is hardly a strong point for the Mail.
And the paper’s evening companion – the Evening Post - even managed two pages of appreciation about the singer Paul Robeson, with appropriate emphasis on his membership of the Communist Party, his dogged fighting for the underdog, and his shameful treatment by the United States right-wing authorities.
The Post has also gone up-market and now shames totally Cardiff’s South Wales Echo. The difference can be most obviously discerned from the Bristol paper’s interest in its city’s history. Once upon a time, the Echo was similarly interested, but that sort of intelligence has long gone.
But then, the Bristol papers are owned by a company which understands journalism. The same cannot be said about the papers on this side of the channel.
How much of the blame can we lay on the doorstep of Sir Richard ? He has been gone from Trinity Mirror for some time. But questions have to be asked of that company. Blame has to be allocated, and the problems affecting the Cardiff papers long pre-date the current advertising problems.
Perhaps one day part of the tale will be told of how the Cardiff press has gone resolutely downhill – at the same time as the city has become incredibly more important – while the Bristol papers have become a credit to journalism.
