Being His Own Man

Watching some of my fellow-editors jostle frantically for Rajya Sabha seats or scheme inelegantly to enter full-time politics, I wonder what madness has struck them. Can the exercise of illusory "power" be so enticing?

True, as editor you are merely a privileged spectator, someone on the "touchline", not on the "pitch". However, consider the benefits of being on the margins. For a start, the editor answers to just a single master—the proprietor. As long as the proprietor is happy, no one, literally no one, can touch the editor.

Besides, being a spectator is infinitely more satisfying than being a player; and you sleep better at night! As an editor, I am my own man. Few things are professionally more exhilarating and rewarding than the knowledge that you can take on the highest in the land: the rich, the powerful, the corrupt and the arrogant. Hypothetically, an editor can bring down a prime minister while the prime minister cannot lay a finger on the editor. Now that is real power!

These days when the English media is Foe No. 1 in North and South Block, I have been reading a gripping and instructive book. Max Hastings was editor, then editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph, London, in the late 1980s. He took an ailing, financially sick daily and nursed it back to spectacular health. Editor explains how that remarkable turnaround was achieved. Hastings tells the story with panache, if at some tedious length. Those of us who have attempted similar resurrections will find familiar yet unoriginal details in the account. The trick, as I have learned, is to put the best possible journalistic team together and provide an environment in which those journalists can flourish. Secondly, and most crucially, instead of galavanting around chasing mantriji, a good editor edits his paper till it goes to press. If he can accomplish these twin tasks, he is on the road to success.

Hastings’ book, fortunately, is much more than a "How I did it" manual. He describes with anecdote, erudition and telling example his complex, love-hate relationship with Condrad Black, the Canadian proprietor of The Daily Telegraph. Black emerges as an opinionated, witty if power-drunk newspaper baron, who enjoyed wining and dining presidents and prime ministers, and who had a clear vision of where he wanted the Telegraph to go. That vision was not shared by his editor. (Black was a right-wing Conservative while Hastings was a left-wing Conservative.) Yet, Hastings survived 10 years with Black’s blessings. For me, the tale of that survival is the core of this fascinating memoir.

The proprietor-editor relationship was courteous and cordial but on vital areas of policy, Black disagreed profoundly with Hastings. However, and here is the moral, Black had given Hastings a job to do, i.e., rescue the paper from near financial bankruptcy and as long as he stayed on course, the editor was secure. Indeed, in 10 years Max Hastings transformed the Telegraph into one of the most successful and profitable titles on Fleet Street.

Along the way there were numerous rows. On small issues, the wise Hastings compromised (giving a column to Black’s girlfriend) but on the big issues he stood firm (Britain’s place in the European Union). While the proprietor exercised his right by sending the editor toxic memos questioning his editorial judgement, he didn’t sack him. Black had the habit of telephoning his editor late at night, rousing him from sleep and complaining (sometimes for an hour) about some position the paper had taken. "My wife muttered at these moments, ‘think of the money, think of the money’. And so I did," notes Hastings.

The parting occurred over a "big" issue. Black insisted on imposing a deputy editor on Hastings. The Laxmanrekha had been crossed; the editor put in his papers. In India where the deteriorating status of the editor is the subject of animated discussion, the give-and-take in the Black-Hastings relationship needs examination. As Benjamin Bradlee once put it, "To be a great editor you need a great proprietor."

I end with a quote from this luminous book: "On a daily newspaper," writes Hastings, "the fruits of triumph and disaster are laid bare before one’s eyes within hours. It’s an old cliche of our trade that the editor is only as good as his last edition."

That goes for weekly magazines too!