The Sunday Times Qatar scoop demonstrates the power of print

Only newspapers have the resources to tackle large-scale, technical and legally dangerous projects, writes Raymond Snoddy – so why do so many people think the future of news lies with the likes of Buzzfeed?

This week’s Sunday Times splash could hardly have been less equivocal.

“Plot to buy the World Cup” the front page headline screamed, on top of a front page story that led the way to no less than 10 broadsheet pages inside. It was a story that instantly went around the world.

The “plot” that allegedly led to the most implausible decision ever made in world sport, awarding the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, a tiny country with no football tradition and temperatures that rise to 50C in the summer, was exposed in all its glory.

How could FIFA have gone ahead with such a choice when its own inspection team warned that both players and spectators could be in danger from the heat. And then there have been the nearly 1,000 migrant workers from poor countries such as Nepal and Bangladesh who have died so far in the construction of the stadia.

That compares with eight construction deaths in Brazil in the preparations for this month’s World Cup and no deaths at all in producing the London Olympics.

Thanks to The Sunday Times and millions of leaked emails we now have a fair idea how such a thing could have happened and there is at least the possibility that the 2022 contest, and possibly even the linked 2018 award to Russia, could be re-run.

Given the bizarre nature of FIFA, which operates almost as a Ruritanian nation state, there is no guarantee that this will happen.

Michael Garcia, the independent investigator appointed by FIFA, plans to interview the Qatar bid committee next week. But according to The Sunday Times, Garcia has no plans to interview Mohamed bin Hammam Qatar’s top football official, whom the paper accuses of running a $5 million slush fund to win the finals.

Hammam apparently had nothing to with the official bid committee.

Can Garcia really be planning to wind up his inquiry next week before he has had any opportunity to consider properly the latest newspaper allegations and with Sunday Times reporters already at work on a second fusillade for this weekend?

The only thing we can be sure of is that this year’s journalistic honours are already being dusted down to hand over to the Sunday Times in the way The Daily Telegraph was garlanded for its similarly extensive investigation into MPs’ expenses.

The world of the internet and virtually indestructible email trails are so obviously a boon for investigative journalism and a growing threat to the bad guys wherever they are located in the world.

The irony is equally obvious. Only newspapers have the resources to tackle such huge, technical and legally dangerous projects enabled by the internet, at the very time that the internet continues to undermine the financial viability of such journalistic teams.

Could any other medium have tackled the sheer scale of the current Qatar investigation? Possibly, but the reality is they didn’t and most couldn’t.

In the past Panorama has had a crack at the problem that is Sepp Blatter, the Fifa president, although Teflon doesn’t do justice to his ability to face down trouble.

BBC journalism is, however, facing increasing financial constraints with another 600 posts likely to go.

As for the new arrivals on the Internet scene, the Huffington Post scarcely has the resources for such an endeavour and Buzzfeed would be at work on 30 things you didn’t know about Qatar.

It is remarkable just how reliant the world still is on newspapers for ground-breaking journalism – and I do mean newspapers rather than news brands. Would the equivalent on 10 broadsheet pages available only online have made the same stir, the same impact?

Most of the trends on the financing of serious newspaper journalism appear bleak. The latest annual edition of PwC’s The Outlook, showing media and entertainment trends – 2014 to 2018 – make the point with painful clarity.

The media and entertainment businesses in the UK will show compound annual growth of more than 3 per cent in the period and will be worth £64 billion by 2018. The areas of fastest growth are, unsurprisingly, internet advertising, internet access, out-of-home advertising, video games and television advertising.

Not much funding for serious investigative journalism there.

The only potentially positive trends for news brands here are the rise of tablets and smart phones.

By 2018, according to PwC, half the UK population will own a tablet and 73 per cent will have a smartphone. That at least offers the potential for newsbrands to sell both online subscriptions and advertising to help offset the impact of flagging paper sales.

Year-on-year paper sales of The Daily Telegraph fell more than 5 per cent to 519,000, while The Sunday Times was down nearly 6 per cent to 830,404.

Yet not a day passes without newspapers revealing information that authority would prefer not to be exposed and pricking the pomposity of politicians.

The latest example was the totally ludicrous attempt by Lib-Dem heavyweights Nick Clegg and Vince Cable to feign togetherness by pulling pints together in a Piccadilly pub.

At least as some high profile phone-hacking cases head towards juries the industry – or at least most of it – has set its face firmly against any involvement, however tangential, by politicians in the regulation of the press.

Sir Alan Moses, who will chair the Independent Press Standards Organisation, seems an inspired choice. It will be difficult for anyone, apart from the blinkered, true-believers of Hacked Off, to argue that such a quirky, independent-minded former judge is merely a creature of the publishing industry.

The IPSO members also seem a muscular and varied bunch who should be able to make independent regulation work without the need for Royal charters.

Meanwhile, more power to the elbow of The Sunday Times in exposing the folly and the scandal of the Qatar 2022 World Cup.

And you can be sure that the next newspaper exposé is already being worked on and could be published as early as tomorrow.