Are newspapers about to have their Higgs boson moment?

Finally, some parts of the newspaper market have discovered rare particles of hope, writes Raymond Snoddy.

Sometimes newspaper enthusiasts who believe that the death of print is not inevitable feel a bit like Nobel physicist Peter Higgs.

Since 1964 he was convinced that a vital particle that became known as the Higgs boson existed but couldn’t prove it – until glorious vindication in 2013.

For fans of newspapers it was hard to stick to hope in the face of the apparently remorseless decline of print sales across the piste. At the same time the dramatic rise in digital impacts, though flashy, seemed like a mixed blessing at best, as digital advertising for very rational reasons, failed to match the loss of print advertising. And then along came another kick in the guts from ad-blocking.

Of course we must all emphasise that it is the overall impact of newsbrands – digital and print – which is the thing, and that the combined impact is the greatest that newspapers have enjoyed in modern times. It would be foolish to forget, however, that print sales still bring in the disproportionate share of the revenue.

While it also would be naïve and premature to announce that the print equivalent of the Higgs boson had been found, there is at last some evidence that, at least for part of the industry, the very worst may be over.

Finally particles of hope have been discovered.

Perhaps the first glimmer of a changing mood came from WPP chief executive Sir Martin Sorrel when he changed his mind and pronounced that media industry negativity had been overdone.

Sir Martin went out of his way to emphasise the impact and engagement that good newspapers deliver in a digital world of robot “readers” and contact that can last little longer than a Higgs boson.

Consultants McKinsey, writing about the US market predicted that maybe those who were going to abandon newspapers had already done so and a period of greater stability might be on the way.

[advert position=”left”]

Another such particle came with the October ABC figures when the nationals as a whole lost just 0.5 per cent and the Sunday papers “only” 1.5 per cent.

Why, The Times was even slightly up and stable for the year, while The Sun was flat despite the fact The Star rose by 7 per cent on the back of a 50 per cent cover price cut from 40p to 20p.

Against the gloom of recent years this qualified as good news, or at least as good as the industry was going to get.

Then Glory Be along comes the March ABC figures. We mustn’t allow ourselves to get more than a little excited. The usual caveats apply and The Independent has marched off to the ether and that’s 55,000 print copies gone at a stroke for this month.

But the remarkable thing is that there are no less than nine plus signs beside the print circulations figures for the nationals and only two minuses and even the minuses aren’t as catastrophic as those in recent years.

You can over-analyse a single month’s figures but a clear pattern is emerging – it is the “unpopulars” which are doing best.

The Times leads the list with a 4.42 per cent rise to 420,570 followed by the Financial Times up 3.74 per cent. The Guardian is next up with a 2.16 per cent increase followed by The Daily Telegraph on 481, 525, up 1.82 per cent.

The only fallers were The Sun by a small 0.15 per cent margin and the Daily Mirror down 0.97 per cent.

It’s impossible to know but the better performance by the serious newspapers may reflect the need for serious information for one of the most important choices to be made for a generation – in the 23 June referendum.

Many of the electorate are undecided and even more are seeking unbiased information to help them make up their minds.

It is a great opportunity for newspapers to demonstrate trust, judgement and respect for the longer-term interests of their readers. Some papers will rise to the occasion, others will pump out propaganda, either because they believe it as a knee-jerk little England reflex, or because they think that is what their readers believe and want to hear.

It is surely no co-incidence that the four papers, which have most increased their circulations, are those at least trying to provide the most balanced, comprehensive coverage of the Brexit debate.

There is more to be done along the lines of sifting out the facts from the myths, so far as that is possible, and newspapers are ideally placed for such a task.

As a demonstration of the power and impact of print it is difficult to beat Saturday’s Daily Telegraph which found itself with the scoop of the month – maybe even the year – with President Obama urging the UK to stay in the European Union.

Obama went on to warn that a vote to leave the EU would leave Britain less able to tackle terrorism, the migration crisis and any economic shocks in the global economy.

It was powerful stuff for a paper that probably leans emotionally toward Brexit.

The response, which also made headlines, though of a more unfortunate nature, came from Boris Johnson writing in The Sun.

By leaving himself open to a charge of “dog-whistle racism” in his attack on the US President, Boris has done more to take his political career towards the exit than the UK out of Europe – a case of Borexit.

All the fuss about Boris and Obama provided a helpful smokescreen for beleaguered Culture Secretary John Whittingdale and his increasingly close relationship with the Mail on Sunday.

The MoS splash managed to damage the London Mayor further with the headline: Boris Rage At ‘Ridiculous Weird Obama’.

Had Boris lost the plot entirely by calling the leader of the free world “ridiculous and weird”?

In fact Boris was the victim of a dodgy headline. He actually said Obama’s arguments were weird and ridiculous, not a clever thing to say but not exactly the same thing as the headline either.

The row pushed the latest episode on the life and times of John Whittingdale all the way to pages 18 and 19 but it was still entertaining.

A mystery blonde date is named as Kristina, the glass-blower from Lithuania, there are allegations about connections to a pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarch and suggestions that he made £80,000 from renting out his flat in London while he claimed £20,000 a year for his flat half a mile away.

A Whittingdale spokesman said: “John has fully complied with the parliamentary rules, with all expenses claimed in accordance with these.”

It’s another example of a newspaper having an impact and making a difference and making it difficult anymore to accuse the press of sucking up to the Culture Secretary over press regulation.