A victory for plurality of views and persons in UK news media

Opinion

Ray Snoody gives his verdict on Axel Springer’s £575m acquisition of The Daily Telegraph.

The deal may have been overshadowed by events elsewhere, but Axel Springer’s knock-out £575m bid for The Daily Telegraph is a great outcome for those involved, including the British newspaper industry.

We will now probably never know what the competition authorities and regulators would have made of the £500m offer by the Daily Mail and General Trust.

But what is clear is that it was Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy’s decision to refer the proposed Daily Mail deal to both the Competition and Markets Authority and Ofcom that put a spoke in the works.

It was the threatened months of delay that would have ensued that attracted the attention of the leading German publishing group, which first tried to buy The Telegraph 20 years ago and later tried unsuccessfully to acquire The Financial Times.

This was acknowledged by DMGT, which, after congratulating Axel Springer, complained about “the protracted and out-of-date regulatory framework” which put UK-based newspaper groups at a huge competitive disadvantage.

One issue was that a merger between the Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph would strengthen the right-wing sector of the British press, a concentration of views that many worry are already over-represented.

Tellingly, Ofcom said it would be investigating the need for a “plurality of views in the news media” and a “plurality of persons with control of the media enterprises.”

As fresh blood in the British newspaper industry, the arrival of Axel Springer and its dominant chief executive, Mathias Döpfner, who is also a major shareholder, will clearly add to the plurality of voices.

It is not clear how much change there will be to the plurality of views because the German company has pledged that The Telegraph will stay a right-of-centre newspaper. As almost all of the paper’s readers are almost certainly right-of-centre too, any radical change to the basic editorial line would amount to commercial suicide.

There may not be too much difference between Döpfner, a former music critic and editor, and that of The Telegraph.

In an email to staff, Döpfner said: “We support the right of existence of the state of Israel and oppose all forms of anti-semitism. We believe in the alliance between Europe and the US. We stand for the free-market economy and reject all forms of extremism and discrimination”.

One big policy difference between the two sides could be over Europe

Axel Springer, who was given his licence to publish by the British at the end of the Second World War, set out the principles that would guide the group’s publications. 

Apart from support for Israel, there was also support for a united Europe. The principle of a united Europe has been dropped in any formal sense, although Axel Springer and its chief executive are likely to have a more European sensibility than some of the Brexiteers at The Daily Telegraph.

The main Axel Springer title, the populist Bild, ran a campaign during the Brexit period urging Britons to stay in the European Union.

Life in future may be a bit more comfortable for assistant editor Jeremy Warner, who has denounced Brexit as a “near-disastrous “economic decision, than for arch-Breexiteers on The Telegraph such as Tim Stanley and Sunday Telegraph editor Allister Heath.

Then there is the problem of the price. Many thought £500m from DMGT was toppish and that £350m might have been closer to the mark.

However, DMGT could have probably made savings from a merger, amid backroom job losses.

But £575m to be paid for in cash? That, according to Enders Analysis, amounts to a “trophy” price, and to some extent, Döpfner really wanted the trophy of the 170-year-old Daily Telegraph.

It will absolutely be run as a business rather than a trophy, and The Daily Telegraph staff- particularly backroom staff will have noted that Döpfner is an early adopter of, and an enthusiast for, the application of AI to publishing.

In the past, he has identified large areas of the publishing business where AI can cut costs. They range from fact-checking, aggregating information already out there, and translating it into layouts, to photo selection and production.

As early as 2023, 200 jobs were lost at Bild, some of them replaced by AI.

Instead, journalists should focus on the traditional core of journalism, reporting, seeing something that no one else has seen and most of all, investigative journalism, “finding out something that was not supposed to be found out.”

That adds up to turmoil, at least in the short term, although after the three years of chaos following the Barclay family’s use of The Daily Telegraph as little more than collateral for debt, maybe this will seem like an acceptable degree of stability by comparison.

While savings from the adaptation of technology are clearly part of the plan, the big bet will likely be placed on the hope that The Daily Telegraph can expand overseas, particularly in the US.

Most of those who considered buying The Daily Telegraph, including DMGT, have dreamed of expanding into the US, with a particular emphasis on business reporting.

With the hollowing out of once great papers such as The Washington Post, that option starts to look increasingly attractive – perhaps even more so in a post-Trump era, which might come sooner than most people think.

Axel Springer already has a base in the US, with Business Insider and Politico, a global non-partisan news organisation.

Both have, however, been cutting jobs in recent years, but the acquisition of The Daily and Sunday Telegraph demonstrates a renewed commitment to English-language publication.

Above all, the Axel Springer deal demonstrates a belief in publishing and indeed the future of newspapers and their continuing value, although Döpfner admits to being something of a contrarian.

It could have been so much worse. Given the level of uncertainty, The Daily Telegraph might not have made it, or have been reliant on the whims of some eccentric, extremist billionaire for its survival.

All things considered, in an imperfect world, The Daily Telegraph may have found a proper home at last.

Raymond Snoddy is a media consultant, national newspaper columnist and former presenter of NewsWatch on BBC News. He writes for The Media Leader on Wednesdays — bookmark his column here.