Interview: Liz Forgan, the Scott Trust (Evening Standard)
By David Rowan
MEET Fleet Street's first woman newspaper proprietor - with the power to hire and fire editors at will and determine where tens of millions of pounds get spent. As the new chair of the Scott Trust, the body that owns the Guardian Media Group, Liz Forgan now controls the destinies of The Guardian, The Observer, a swathe of radio stations and websites, and a lucrative publishing empire stretching from Autotrader to the Wilmslow Express. No wonder the former Evening Standard leader-writer has been calling friends this week to declare effusively: "I am Lord Beaverbrook!"
At this stage, in a frenzy of self-laceration, The Guardian would correct and clarify a couple of points. First, the Beaverbrook remark is a Forgan joke. Second, the term "proprietor" may imply that The Guardian papers are run like any other. And the Scott Trust, set up in 1936 to protect the paper from death duties and preserve its editorial independence, does not fire editors "at will" but is there to support them against the brutal commercial world.
"It is a peculiar arrangement, but it really works and keeps the papers fantastically strong," Forgan says in her office at the Heritage Lottery Fund, where as chair she similarly channels millions of pounds to promote worthy causes.
"The trust lets you stand as a bulwark against any onslaughts on the papers' editorial freedom. You can take a long view and add an 'X' ingredient to your balance sheet that isn't money, it's journalistic quality. It's easy to sound snooty, but a certain kind of journalism is worth sacrificing commercial objectives for."
The formula has earned The Guardian a loyal readership that allowed it to weather the broadsheet price war, and a reputation for risk-taking journalism and editorial innovation. Yet among its rivals, the newspaper remains a frequent target for mockery. "Yes, I know people say that we're sanctimonious, and we have to watch out for that," Forgan says. "It's an occupational hazard of struggling to do what is right. If you're Boris Johnson, it's easy to pen a graceful hymn to unrighteousness."
A more specific concern, within the paper and beyond, is its Middle Eastern coverage. Last Saturday, Julie Burchill wrote that her departure for The Times was influenced by The Guardian's "quite striking bias against the state of Israel", which she equated with anti-Semitism. She also highlighted a Richard Ingrams column in The Observer that called for Jewish journalists to declare their racial origins.
Forgan identifies this as "the hottest, most passionately controversial topic" in Farringdon Road. "I really do not think The Guardian is anti-Semitic, but the question is, is it fair to Israel? Because it permits polemical outspoken views, sometimes more outspoken than views tolerated in other newspapers, the impression may be created that The Guardian takes a stance it doesn't have. That's the risk that you run if you pursue freedom of expression."
Rivals' complaints concern The Guardian's dominance in public-sector advertising, prompting frequent assert ions in more conservative publications that the paper's cosy relationship with Left-wingcouncils is boosting its balance-sheet. Naturally, Forgan rejects the argument. "You might as well say it's unfair that the FT gets more City advertising," she says. "It's not unfair trading, and has nothing to do with the paper's political stance. It's a highly competitive market, in which I'm happy to say The Guardian does very well."
She says there are no plans for the paper to follow The Independent and The Times in going tabloid. "It's not a burning issue," she says. "For The Independent, it was a really bold response to a big problem, though I'm not very impressed. The Times has made a better job. But The Guardian has a very stable circulation, and there's no need for us to hurry up." Nor is she in a hurry to see The Guardian's websites and The Observer stem their long-term financial losses, said to account for more than £10 million a year. "I don't think it's sensible to make stipulations about what stage they need to break even," she says. "The website investment is about spreading those qualities of excellence and pluralism into the new world of media. We have the benefit of taking a longer than immediate view." Roger Alton, she says, has done "a fabulous job" to give The Observer "heart", and it would be unreasonable to expect it to break even any time soon.
Forgan, 59, a product of Benenden now living in Primrose Hill, says she is not bothered by her own reputation as something of an overweening head girl - elaborated in some conservative newspapers during her days running the BBC's radio networks and before that as Channel 4's director of programmes.
When she first read newspaper columns denouncing her "patronising" manner and her "overbearing Left-wing bias", she was shocked. "But then you realise it's a special language only the tabloids use, when they set you up as an Aunt Sally of the bossy Left for their knockabout amusement." In fact, she would not even consider herself Left-wing. "At [Oxford] university, I canvassed the Cowley industrial estate in the Conservative interest in the company of a Pakistani princess," she says. "My political trajectory has been all over the place."
SHE was more upset by coverage of her personal life, notably her long-term relationship with Rex Cowan, a married older man whose wife apparently gave it her blessing. "It's not my kind of journalism," Forgan says. "I don't like it, and though I don't consider myself a public person, there is no aspect of my life that is a closed book." But she rejects calls for a privacy law. "No, we need decent newspapers. Legislating for privacy has so many risks of damaging really important freedoms." As for the Press Complaints Commission, she thinks it's "much less pathetic" than it used to be, but was "utterly incomprehending" of its condemnation of The Guardian's small payment to a convicted criminal while exonerating the News of the World over the Beckham kidnap plot.
She thinks Channel 4 is far too obsessed with sex. "I do think they have to be careful - they're still pushing the boundaries, but too much of that is in the narrow area of sex," she says. The BBC too has some "serious issues" to address, such as its over-expansion into commercial spheres and the dual, regulator /manager role of its governors. Some of these regulatory roles, she suggests, may be better handled by Ofcom.
As for Forgan's own future, will she be writing to Guardian staff as she did when she took over BBC radio? That letter, much satirised in the press, urged staff to "treat my office like Waterloo Station ... I'm simply knocked out by the treasure house of interest, revelation and pleasure you are putting out ..."
"Actually, it was a perfectly good letter," Forgan says now, with a wince. "I'm quite sensible really, if sometimes unduly enthusiastic."
(Evening Standard, December 3 2003)
MEET Fleet Street's first woman newspaper proprietor - with the power to hire and fire editors at will and determine where tens of millions of pounds get spent. As the new chair of the Scott Trust, the body that owns the Guardian Media Group, Liz Forgan now controls the destinies of The Guardian, The Observer, a swathe of radio stations and websites, and a lucrative publishing empire stretching from Autotrader to the Wilmslow Express. No wonder the former Evening Standard leader-writer has been calling friends this week to declare effusively: "I am Lord Beaverbrook!"
At this stage, in a frenzy of self-laceration, The Guardian would correct and clarify a couple of points. First, the Beaverbrook remark is a Forgan joke. Second, the term "proprietor" may imply that The Guardian papers are run like any other. And the Scott Trust, set up in 1936 to protect the paper from death duties and preserve its editorial independence, does not fire editors "at will" but is there to support them against the brutal commercial world.
"It is a peculiar arrangement, but it really works and keeps the papers fantastically strong," Forgan says in her office at the Heritage Lottery Fund, where as chair she similarly channels millions of pounds to promote worthy causes.
"The trust lets you stand as a bulwark against any onslaughts on the papers' editorial freedom. You can take a long view and add an 'X' ingredient to your balance sheet that isn't money, it's journalistic quality. It's easy to sound snooty, but a certain kind of journalism is worth sacrificing commercial objectives for."
The formula has earned The Guardian a loyal readership that allowed it to weather the broadsheet price war, and a reputation for risk-taking journalism and editorial innovation. Yet among its rivals, the newspaper remains a frequent target for mockery. "Yes, I know people say that we're sanctimonious, and we have to watch out for that," Forgan says. "It's an occupational hazard of struggling to do what is right. If you're Boris Johnson, it's easy to pen a graceful hymn to unrighteousness."
A more specific concern, within the paper and beyond, is its Middle Eastern coverage. Last Saturday, Julie Burchill wrote that her departure for The Times was influenced by The Guardian's "quite striking bias against the state of Israel", which she equated with anti-Semitism. She also highlighted a Richard Ingrams column in The Observer that called for Jewish journalists to declare their racial origins.
Forgan identifies this as "the hottest, most passionately controversial topic" in Farringdon Road. "I really do not think The Guardian is anti-Semitic, but the question is, is it fair to Israel? Because it permits polemical outspoken views, sometimes more outspoken than views tolerated in other newspapers, the impression may be created that The Guardian takes a stance it doesn't have. That's the risk that you run if you pursue freedom of expression."
Rivals' complaints concern The Guardian's dominance in public-sector advertising, prompting frequent assert ions in more conservative publications that the paper's cosy relationship with Left-wingcouncils is boosting its balance-sheet. Naturally, Forgan rejects the argument. "You might as well say it's unfair that the FT gets more City advertising," she says. "It's not unfair trading, and has nothing to do with the paper's political stance. It's a highly competitive market, in which I'm happy to say The Guardian does very well."
She says there are no plans for the paper to follow The Independent and The Times in going tabloid. "It's not a burning issue," she says. "For The Independent, it was a really bold response to a big problem, though I'm not very impressed. The Times has made a better job. But The Guardian has a very stable circulation, and there's no need for us to hurry up." Nor is she in a hurry to see The Guardian's websites and The Observer stem their long-term financial losses, said to account for more than £10 million a year. "I don't think it's sensible to make stipulations about what stage they need to break even," she says. "The website investment is about spreading those qualities of excellence and pluralism into the new world of media. We have the benefit of taking a longer than immediate view." Roger Alton, she says, has done "a fabulous job" to give The Observer "heart", and it would be unreasonable to expect it to break even any time soon.
Forgan, 59, a product of Benenden now living in Primrose Hill, says she is not bothered by her own reputation as something of an overweening head girl - elaborated in some conservative newspapers during her days running the BBC's radio networks and before that as Channel 4's director of programmes.
When she first read newspaper columns denouncing her "patronising" manner and her "overbearing Left-wing bias", she was shocked. "But then you realise it's a special language only the tabloids use, when they set you up as an Aunt Sally of the bossy Left for their knockabout amusement." In fact, she would not even consider herself Left-wing. "At [Oxford] university, I canvassed the Cowley industrial estate in the Conservative interest in the company of a Pakistani princess," she says. "My political trajectory has been all over the place."
SHE was more upset by coverage of her personal life, notably her long-term relationship with Rex Cowan, a married older man whose wife apparently gave it her blessing. "It's not my kind of journalism," Forgan says. "I don't like it, and though I don't consider myself a public person, there is no aspect of my life that is a closed book." But she rejects calls for a privacy law. "No, we need decent newspapers. Legislating for privacy has so many risks of damaging really important freedoms." As for the Press Complaints Commission, she thinks it's "much less pathetic" than it used to be, but was "utterly incomprehending" of its condemnation of The Guardian's small payment to a convicted criminal while exonerating the News of the World over the Beckham kidnap plot.
She thinks Channel 4 is far too obsessed with sex. "I do think they have to be careful - they're still pushing the boundaries, but too much of that is in the narrow area of sex," she says. The BBC too has some "serious issues" to address, such as its over-expansion into commercial spheres and the dual, regulator /manager role of its governors. Some of these regulatory roles, she suggests, may be better handled by Ofcom.
As for Forgan's own future, will she be writing to Guardian staff as she did when she took over BBC radio? That letter, much satirised in the press, urged staff to "treat my office like Waterloo Station ... I'm simply knocked out by the treasure house of interest, revelation and pleasure you are putting out ..."
"Actually, it was a perfectly good letter," Forgan says now, with a wince. "I'm quite sensible really, if sometimes unduly enthusiastic."
(Evening Standard, December 3 2003)
posted by David Rowan at Wednesday, December 03, 2003
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