Charlie Methven interview, continued ...
And if Trinity Mirror was to prepare a spoiler or pressure retailers not to display the new upstart? "I'd be interested to see how the bookmaking industry would react to something designed to kill competition in the market."
Besides, The Sportsman will bring innovation into newspaper publishing. For a start, it intends to be the first wholly to integrate its print and online arms, writing into each journalist's contract that they will contribute to both. Furthermore, every employee will be given a significant stake in the company, amounting in total to one-tenth of its value.
"I know from working elsewhere that a lot of newspaper staff just work at 60 per cent capacity, just as merchant bankers would if they weren't incentivised and had no sense of career structure or bonus scheme," Methven explains. "With incentives, journalists can work at 100 per cent capacity. I really hope that they prove me right."
Most of the heaviest hitters recruited so far have been executives rather than hacks. Methven cites Mark Maydon, until recently digital director of News Group newspapers, who will run The Sportsman's digital operations; the Telegraph Group's marketing director, Mark Dixon, is similarly transferring to this rather smaller division. The journalist "stars" Methven identifies include Richard Evans, former Telegraph and Times racing correspondent, as well as his racing editor, Simon Rowlands, who came from the handicap-tipping service Timeform. Deputy editor, in day-today charge of the newspaper, will be Charlie Bain, until recently a Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday reporter. "We've tried to avoid poaching journalists from the Racing Post," he says. "We've taken their cricket correspondent, but as I say they are a different kind of newspaper."
A minor gambler himself - "I'm normally slightly down, which will please the advertisers" - Methven claims to have identified a market gap after working as a Sporting Life racing reporter on leaving Oxford (theology and philosophy - "my priest friends knew I'd end up doing no good"). "If it's such a clever idea, people ask me, why haven't the major media groups thought of it before?" he says. "The answer is that 55-year-old newspaper executives don't think about gambling journalism at all."
His opportunity arose, he explains, when he took voluntary redundancy after seven years at The Daily Telegraph, most of them writing for and editing the diary. "I did all right for myself," he says. "I broke the story about Tony Blair trying to interfere with the Queen Mother's funeral arrangements, and the one about Iain Duncan Smith's campaign vice-president being a member of the BNP - both of those led the 10 O'Clock News. But when redundancy was offered, I thought, 'Well, that's going to buy me another floor on my house.' And then two weeks later the Evening Standard approached me to write features."
His wife Charlotte, a freelance journalist - a member of the Pearson publishing family, and last November the mother of their first child - was the one who urged him to take the plunge. "She's a far more confident gambler than me," he says. "I sat down with her and said this very comfortable existence would abruptly end, but she said if I didn't do it I'd whinge for the rest of my days."
Yet ... it seems an awfully big risk for a man with no evident commercial experience. "I have few qualifications," Methven admits cheerily, "but I don't think I'm alone in the media business in that. I got to know a bit about the business when I was the Telegraph father of the [NUJ] chapel, and I've always picked Jeremy's brains as a friend. But no, in terms of running a large company, I've got no experience whatsoever. I've managed a diary desk of six people - but then I have Max, who ran his own internet design company, and Jeremy, probably the most experienced manager on Fleet Street."
Still, gamblers do not always make the most considered decisions. It's a huge bet, isn't it, on the 125 people whose wages he will be liable for?
Methven pauses. "It is, and I'm conscious that it's a big punt for a lot of them, too," he says. " Sometimes I think, 'My God, this is something quite serious - these are people who had well established careers, slogging their guts out for this project, on the premise that the idea I had a year ago is worth it.' Now, I strongly believe it is - but I'd be lying to you if occasionally I didn't look around and think, 'Crikey.'"
(Evening Standard, January 25 2006)
Besides, The Sportsman will bring innovation into newspaper publishing. For a start, it intends to be the first wholly to integrate its print and online arms, writing into each journalist's contract that they will contribute to both. Furthermore, every employee will be given a significant stake in the company, amounting in total to one-tenth of its value.
"I know from working elsewhere that a lot of newspaper staff just work at 60 per cent capacity, just as merchant bankers would if they weren't incentivised and had no sense of career structure or bonus scheme," Methven explains. "With incentives, journalists can work at 100 per cent capacity. I really hope that they prove me right."
Most of the heaviest hitters recruited so far have been executives rather than hacks. Methven cites Mark Maydon, until recently digital director of News Group newspapers, who will run The Sportsman's digital operations; the Telegraph Group's marketing director, Mark Dixon, is similarly transferring to this rather smaller division. The journalist "stars" Methven identifies include Richard Evans, former Telegraph and Times racing correspondent, as well as his racing editor, Simon Rowlands, who came from the handicap-tipping service Timeform. Deputy editor, in day-today charge of the newspaper, will be Charlie Bain, until recently a Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday reporter. "We've tried to avoid poaching journalists from the Racing Post," he says. "We've taken their cricket correspondent, but as I say they are a different kind of newspaper."
A minor gambler himself - "I'm normally slightly down, which will please the advertisers" - Methven claims to have identified a market gap after working as a Sporting Life racing reporter on leaving Oxford (theology and philosophy - "my priest friends knew I'd end up doing no good"). "If it's such a clever idea, people ask me, why haven't the major media groups thought of it before?" he says. "The answer is that 55-year-old newspaper executives don't think about gambling journalism at all."
His opportunity arose, he explains, when he took voluntary redundancy after seven years at The Daily Telegraph, most of them writing for and editing the diary. "I did all right for myself," he says. "I broke the story about Tony Blair trying to interfere with the Queen Mother's funeral arrangements, and the one about Iain Duncan Smith's campaign vice-president being a member of the BNP - both of those led the 10 O'Clock News. But when redundancy was offered, I thought, 'Well, that's going to buy me another floor on my house.' And then two weeks later the Evening Standard approached me to write features."
His wife Charlotte, a freelance journalist - a member of the Pearson publishing family, and last November the mother of their first child - was the one who urged him to take the plunge. "She's a far more confident gambler than me," he says. "I sat down with her and said this very comfortable existence would abruptly end, but she said if I didn't do it I'd whinge for the rest of my days."
Yet ... it seems an awfully big risk for a man with no evident commercial experience. "I have few qualifications," Methven admits cheerily, "but I don't think I'm alone in the media business in that. I got to know a bit about the business when I was the Telegraph father of the [NUJ] chapel, and I've always picked Jeremy's brains as a friend. But no, in terms of running a large company, I've got no experience whatsoever. I've managed a diary desk of six people - but then I have Max, who ran his own internet design company, and Jeremy, probably the most experienced manager on Fleet Street."
Still, gamblers do not always make the most considered decisions. It's a huge bet, isn't it, on the 125 people whose wages he will be liable for?
Methven pauses. "It is, and I'm conscious that it's a big punt for a lot of them, too," he says. " Sometimes I think, 'My God, this is something quite serious - these are people who had well established careers, slogging their guts out for this project, on the premise that the idea I had a year ago is worth it.' Now, I strongly believe it is - but I'd be lying to you if occasionally I didn't look around and think, 'Crikey.'"
(Evening Standard, January 25 2006)
<< Home