Sarah Sands interview, continued ...
Like the Conservative Party, she suggests, much-needed modernisation provokes resistance. "I've heard that David Cameron has said of the Sunday Telegraph that he sees it as the expression of 'cool Conservatism'," she says. "Well, it is an absolute core Conservative paper, my beliefs are impeccable, so it's down to how that is expressed. You can either talk about Europe the whole time, or find a type of conservatism that's apolitical. That's why, on the Saturday Telegraph, I set up a gardening section because virtually all gardeners are conservative by nature. You can bring in people that way."
So does Cameron attract her unequivocal support? Her paper's politics do appear more uncertain than under Lawson. "Well, we're not groupies. But it's better to have charisma than not engage with the public. We got very cross with him about grammar schools, but so far I think he's interesting to watch and I like the way he looks fresher when his back's against the wall."
Such remarks may reinforce some critics' concern that, while elegantly designed, the new Sunday Telegraph emphasises appearance at the expense of underlying issues. I ask Sands to explain what her paper stands for. "We're a thinking paper, fairly independent-minded, and we value the family very much, the ladder [of aspirational opportunity]," she says.
As for claims that her paper's news values have been softened, she points to recent scoops - a convicted sex offender teacher to embarrass Ruth Kelly, an exposé of John Prescott's unpaid housing costs - as proof that the main section is neither "classically feminine nor cuddly". Indeed, she suggests, her comment pages "are less feminine than The Observer's, [where] more women are writing about lighter subjects, whereas ours is pretty meaty".
In arts, too, she claims to show a more serious commitment than her rivals. "I don't think the Sunday Times is terrifically interested in the arts," she says. "While The Observer takes a 20-year-old's metropolitan view. We're a slightly more highminded Sunday read."
Sands became a journalist "by accident". Growing up in Tunbridge Wells and briefly in Africa - her father was in the Colonial Service - she had wanted to work in publishing, but joined a local newspaper as a way to learn typing. "Then I got married very young" - briefly, to the actor Julian Sands - "and had to earn a living, as I had a small child." She found shifts on the Evening Standard, eventually editing the Londoner's Diary and the features pages. "It was a lunatic existence at first," she says. "At one stage I had a baby with pneumonia in hospital, where I was sleeping, then I'd have to go and take my diary contacts for lunch on my own money."
She later married Kim Fletcher, who resigned as the Telegraph Group's editorial director once she took over the Sunday paper. She now reports to Murdoch MacLennan, the group chief executive, and claims to have met John Bryant, the new Telegraph Group editor-in-chief, only once. He has had no hand in the relaunch, she points out, and she "cannot speculate" as to his future intentions for the Sunday. "I emailed him just the other day to see if we can have lunch and catch up," she says. "I edit the Sunday paper, so I decide what goes into it,but it's perfectly civil."
Nor have the Barclay brothers shown any day-today interest in how she runs her paper, she says - perhaps because, unlike Conrad Black, they want it to be "a proper commercial operation" rather than a mouthpiece".
"So advertising matters more than circulation, as that's where the money is," Sands says. "And advertising has been a big triumph. Circulation will follow."
(Evening Standard, January 18 2006)
So does Cameron attract her unequivocal support? Her paper's politics do appear more uncertain than under Lawson. "Well, we're not groupies. But it's better to have charisma than not engage with the public. We got very cross with him about grammar schools, but so far I think he's interesting to watch and I like the way he looks fresher when his back's against the wall."
Such remarks may reinforce some critics' concern that, while elegantly designed, the new Sunday Telegraph emphasises appearance at the expense of underlying issues. I ask Sands to explain what her paper stands for. "We're a thinking paper, fairly independent-minded, and we value the family very much, the ladder [of aspirational opportunity]," she says.
As for claims that her paper's news values have been softened, she points to recent scoops - a convicted sex offender teacher to embarrass Ruth Kelly, an exposé of John Prescott's unpaid housing costs - as proof that the main section is neither "classically feminine nor cuddly". Indeed, she suggests, her comment pages "are less feminine than The Observer's, [where] more women are writing about lighter subjects, whereas ours is pretty meaty".
In arts, too, she claims to show a more serious commitment than her rivals. "I don't think the Sunday Times is terrifically interested in the arts," she says. "While The Observer takes a 20-year-old's metropolitan view. We're a slightly more highminded Sunday read."
Sands became a journalist "by accident". Growing up in Tunbridge Wells and briefly in Africa - her father was in the Colonial Service - she had wanted to work in publishing, but joined a local newspaper as a way to learn typing. "Then I got married very young" - briefly, to the actor Julian Sands - "and had to earn a living, as I had a small child." She found shifts on the Evening Standard, eventually editing the Londoner's Diary and the features pages. "It was a lunatic existence at first," she says. "At one stage I had a baby with pneumonia in hospital, where I was sleeping, then I'd have to go and take my diary contacts for lunch on my own money."
She later married Kim Fletcher, who resigned as the Telegraph Group's editorial director once she took over the Sunday paper. She now reports to Murdoch MacLennan, the group chief executive, and claims to have met John Bryant, the new Telegraph Group editor-in-chief, only once. He has had no hand in the relaunch, she points out, and she "cannot speculate" as to his future intentions for the Sunday. "I emailed him just the other day to see if we can have lunch and catch up," she says. "I edit the Sunday paper, so I decide what goes into it,but it's perfectly civil."
Nor have the Barclay brothers shown any day-today interest in how she runs her paper, she says - perhaps because, unlike Conrad Black, they want it to be "a proper commercial operation" rather than a mouthpiece".
"So advertising matters more than circulation, as that's where the money is," Sands says. "And advertising has been a big triumph. Circulation will follow."
(Evening Standard, January 18 2006)
<< Home