Media Matters

The last great press dynasty

Lord Rothermere wants to take full control of his Mail empire stephen glover

The Fleet Street into which I first wandered more than 40 years ago was still partly ruled by dynasties. But in a world of new conglomerates, they were most of them struggling to retain their newspapers.

At the Daily Telegraph, where I found a berth, the Berry family were just about hanging on, with Michael Berry (Lord Hartwell) as chairman and editor-in-chief. Beaverbrook’s son, Max Aitken, had sold the Express titles in 1977 to a British property company, and David Astor had recently persuaded an American oil company to take the Observer off his hands. Vere Rothermere still reigned at the Daily Mail, which his great-uncle, Lord Northcliffe, had launched.

It has been a similar story in America, where the Washington Post has been bought by the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, and the Wall Street Journal has been acquired by Rupert Murdoch. Among the grand titles, only the New York Times has resisted the trend, and is still controlled by Sulzbergers, who acquired the paper in 1896.

Generational family newspaper ownership would appear largely to be a thing of the past, which is why most people assume that when Rupert Murdoch eventually dies, the media empire he has built up will not long survive him. The only notable exceptions in this country are the Mail titles, still controlled by Jonathan Rothermere and the Harmsworth family. The recent announcement that the family hopes to turn control into outright ownership is therefore extraordinary.

Since the 1930s, the Harmsworths have owned a minority stake in the papers while owning all the voting shares. This gave them control. The obvious question is why the family should now feel the need to buy out all the other shareholders, and turn Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) into a private company.

Here I should issue a health warning. As I write a column for the Daily Mail, readers might assume that I am speaking on behalf of a particular faction or have privileged inside information. I’m not, and I don’t. All I can offer are my own insights.

Control is not the same as ownership. As a publicly quoted company, DMGT must observe all kinds of rules, such as issuing profit warnings and publishing regular financial updates. Apart from everything else, this is very expensive, since lawyers, PR honchos and financial advisers have to be fed and watered. There is a board of directors, whose opinions are taken into account.

If DMGT goes private – as I write, it is not certain the deal will come off – all such restrictions fall away. Lord Rothermere becomes supreme. He can be confident that his eldest son will succeed him at a time and in a manner of his own choosing. He can dispose of whatever assets he wishes, and buy whatever businesses he wants, provided he has the financial resources to do so.

All of which invites the question: does he have any plans that he is unable to fulfil so long as DMGT remains a public company? He surely must have, or should have, though I don’t know what they are.

One obvious challenge concerns the relationship of MailOnline to the Daily Mail. The former is at last becoming seriously profitable. It is said to be the biggest newspaper website in the world. Meanwhile, the Mail, though it still makes more money than its digital sibling and has the highest circulation of any British newspaper, is ineluctably losing print sales in common with all titles.

There’s little doubt that the fantastic success of MailOnline, which is free, has been partly at the expense of the Mail. Newspapers such as the Daily Telegraph and the Times have secured their long-term futures by building up large, paid-for digital readerships. The Mail hasn’t so far managed to do the same, and the main reason is the existence of MailOnline.

The interesting thing is that although MailOnline has drained readers from the Daily Mail, the two publications are increasingly dissimilar beasts. MailOnline now generates 90 per cent of its own content. It is more downmarket, less socially conservative and much racier. Its readers are younger. Unlike the Mail, it doesn’t try to reflect the preoccupations of middle Britain. Its worldview is strikingly different. And yet these two fundamentally unalike publications are yoked together, at any rate in the public mind.

A family-owned company run by Lord Rothermere could simply allow the Daily Mail to wither very slowly over the next decade or two while building up MailOnline to become an unstoppable global force. But is this the legacy he wants to hand over to his eldest son? DMGT may no longer be dominated by media businesses, but at its heart is the newspaper that started it all – the Daily Mail.

I suspect it is what matters most to Jonathan Rothermere, however profitable MailOnline may become. How can the Mail continue to prosper in an increasingly digital world in which MailOnline is free? That is the conundrum a family-owned DMGT will have to crack.

How can the Mail continue to prosper in an increasingly digital world?