Save the Observer?

“It’s an absolutely splendid Newspaper” said an interviewee on last night’s Newsnight. The news that the Observer may close has very quickly sparked off a campaign to save it. In just a a couple of days the “Save the Observer” facebook group has gained  nearly 3,000 members, and progressives seem to be rallying round.

But do we really want to save it? Last Sunday I had a good read of the Observer for the first time in ages. I am not sure whether its quality has got worse or my taste has improved, but I was struck by the stream of unoriginal political cliches with which I was confronted. I read Ruth Sunderland’s musings on the failure of citizens to step in and stop crime.  This she told us was an “extreme expression of a wider malaise; part of an insidious individualism where narrow selfish interests always come first, where politicians put self-enrichment ahead of public service, and where bankers continue to award themselves bonuses while the rest of the economy gasps for air.”

If I wanted to encounter such  banalities on a Sunday morning I could go to church.  In fact the only person writing something that really made me think was Nick Cohen. And at the end of the day, the work of  out-and-out red-baiter – however stylish – is hardly going to convince me that the Observer needs to be saved.

But there is also the question of whether it is good that major loss making media ventures should be supported with tens of millions of pounds – as the observer is by the Guardian Media Group and the Scott Trust. The obvious progressive answer might well be yes, of course we want media that does not completely conform to the profit making model. Yet I would suggest that both the profitable Murdoch press model, and the “Observer model” represent different sides of the same plutocratic coin. In the case of the former, a paper is viable because it is backed up by hugely powerful corporate machinery. In the case of the Observer, a paper exists because a small organisation with vast, vast reserves of cash deems it intrinsically worthwhile. In both cases, money is crucial to the content of our media.

When a business decides to sell at below cost this represents a near insurmountable barrier to new entrants. Similarly, the fact that the Observer has a special ability to run at a multi-million pound loss puts it at an enormous advantage over those who may challenge its ground. Regardless of its appeal, the position of the Observer is ossified. The subsidies it  recieves may act as a break upon a medium otherwise dominated by advertising revenues, but they also act as a break upon publications that do not benefit from such wealthy benevolence.

Were the Observer to go it would leave a vacuum, and one which I wouldn’t expect to be filled by the rest of the quality Sunday Press – The Telegraph, The Times and The Independent. This might bring about an interesting moment in the history of print media. We have heard over and over again that the Observer has been around for 200 years, as though this in itself were a reason to keep it going. But perhaps it should cause us to reflect critically upon the institutional stasis in the British media, and the fact that we have been served for donkeys years by the same few papers. Perhaps it is time for new people and new organisations to come in. And if so, then somebody needs to get out.