Kate and Maddie, health scares and house prices - the Express keeps faith with its losing formula

Well it had to happen. Groundhog Day dawned at the Express this morning, with publication of the front page on the right, which pretty well mirrors the one from April 23 on the left.

In April, Jo Willey told us:

A simple operation which could effectively cure high blood pressure is being tested on British patients. 

Today she is excited about another treatment:

A simple skin patch to treat high blood pressure could dramatically slash deaths from heart attacks and strokes. 

This one has apparently been licensed in Japan, and could be available in the UK 'in the next couple of years'. In case that is too long, or you don't fancy wearing a patch or a bit of keyhole surgery in your lunch hour, the paper has had some other ideas about what you should or should not do. 

       

People have been saying for years that the Express is selling to a dying readership - but the paper is doing its damndest to keep them alive. 

It seems to have a clear vision of its typical readers: a retired (or soon-to-be-retired) couple hankering for the Britain of the 50s. They have more than a few aches and pains between them and worry about how they are going to finance their old age. Their home is their biggest asset, so they constantly check estate agents' windows and every market report to see if prices have recovered from the 2008 crash. They have a pension and find life on a fixed income tricky in this era of low interest rates. 

The Express couple are convinced that Europe and immigration are to blame for every ill in the country and they give thanks daily for our wonderful Queen and the delightful Wills and Kate. Harry's a bit of a handful, but he's learning. They are even coming to see Camilla as a good egg - though of course she can never replaced the sainted Diana. If they have a conversation with the neighbours, there is only one topic: the weather. They are unlikely to talk about the news because only the biggest events penetrate their cocoon.

Do such people exist? Perhaps there are a few 20th century outposts  dotted around the country, but surely not enough to keep a newspaper afloat? And those middle-class, middle Britain, Little Englander hypochondriacs that do survive are not -  as the Express appears to suppose - middle-aged, but well into their seventies and eighties. 

People in their fifties and sixties are still hard at work, and when they have time off they climb mountains, sail, fish, play golf, watch football, go to festivals, theatres, cinemas, concerts - or simply down the pub. They are internet savvy, fashion conscious and run almost every village or small community in the country. They have no intention of reaching for their slippers and pipe.

Whatever the readership, the duplication at the top of this post is unforgivable. Readers and casual observers may get a feeling of deja vu every time they pick up the paper - is this today's, yesterday's or last week's? But what were the editor, night editor, chief sub, picture editor thinking? Don't they remember their own work?

In a spirit of helpfulness, SubScribe has gone back over the Express front pages since April 1 - for some reason it seemed an appropriate date - and sifted them by subject matter. Over the past four months, hard news has intruded on a handful of occasions: the Philpott case, the Boston bombing, the death of Thatcher, the murder of Lee Rigby, the arrest of Rolf Harris, the birth of Prince George, and the proposal that patients should have to pay to see their GPs. There have also been the developments (if you can call them that) in the Madeleine McCann case.

The Express has splashed on health stories 32 times in the past four months..so here we go:

The paper has cottoned on to the idea that there are certain lifestyle choices that may determine how long we have on the planet. These can be summarised as:

Keep slim, stay active, drink alcohol in moderation, don't smoke, choose oily fish over red meat, eat five portions of fruit or veg every day, avoid sugary and high-fat foods and drinks - and breastfeed your baby until he/she is six months old.

So much for revolutionary thinking. But worry not, there are plenty of wonder drugs, magic pills and miracle cures - and advice on how to avoid nasty things we don't want.

I'm particularly keen on the proof that statins save your life on April 4 being followed up on July 7 with statins really do save your life - as though anyone could disbelieve the Express. And everything is so simple - a simple jab here, a simple operation there, a simple test for this, a simple change in lifestyle to that and we'll all be feeling simply wonderful.

It's all very well to joke, but this approach to health matters is worrying - and remember these are just the front pages; there are many more such stories inside. 

Thousands of researchers (aka scientists or even boffins) are conducting experiments in laboratories all over the world. They learn a little bit at a time about what causes a condition and this gives them a clue as to how to try to combat or prevent it. Many months or years of work are then needed to devise a drug - and there's no guarantee that it will work. 

Saturday's splash Alzheimer's cure is close is a case in point. The story explains that clinical trials on two new drugs had to be halted three years ago because of serious side-effects, including internal bleeding and skin cancer. A Swiss research team now believes it has found a way to overcome such problems. But that doesn't make a cure 'close'. The drug has to be developed and undergo many tests before it gets anywhere near a human being. 

But the Express doesn't deal in maybes - everything has to be a risk or a cure.  Genuine breakthroughs that will revolutionise treatments are rare, yet to look at the Express you'd think they were happening every day. Of course every step brings you closer to your target - just as reaching Exmoor after heading out from Land's End indicates progress, but it doesn't mean you are anywhere near John O'Groats.

So much for health issues. Next on the list of favourites is the weather, and our stick-in-the-mud readers obviously won't want any of this celsius nonsense. Good old-fashioned fahrenheit is what they need so they can sizzle at 100 rather than a lame old 33. Then, of course, they should be shivering 32 instead of  0, which also seems odd. Still, there's nothing to beat flexibility:  the -12 we experienced over the coldest Easter for however many years was (thankfully) C not F.

Off we go then:

The predictions were all over the place in the spring. At the beginning of April people were moaning about drought warnings, which seemed reasonable after all the rain and flooding that had gone before. The downpours in the middle of the month seemed to prove the point, but by the 30th we were again looking forward to drought. We had a lovely warm Mayday bank holiday, but soon we were being warned to expect yet more rain. And yes it came.

In the middle of June we were promised a tropical heatwave, and then when summer really arrived last month, the Express wasn't sure whether this was something dangerous or something to savour. The one thing that was certain was that it had to be the splash. The paper led on the weather every day from July 12 until the 23rd, when the royal baby intervened. Little George was given three days, the GPs with their £150 charge popped up on the 26th and then it was back to the usual diet of weather, health scares and house prices.

But hang on, what about pensions and foreigners and benefits? Yes, these are the other staples of the Express diet, but they were all given a rest for most of July. Apart from the weather, there were a couple of days of Madeleine McCann and Andy Murray won at Wimbledon. But there had been plenty of money matters earlier.

The Express is more consistent on scroungers and nasty foreigners than on anything other than house prices - apart from the hiccup between April 27, when migrants were to get more benefits and June 3 when they were facing a ban. Maybe the Government took note of the paper's concerns. Anyway, the pages speak for themselves, so I shan't go into the detail of the content. Except...

Oops, there's another case of deja vu...with the same heading in the same shape on April 6 and 15. 

And not only that, they've contorted the type. This is a crime. We have the same wording on both pages, but we need more room to get both Kate and the doll in the picture slot - so the bottom two lines have been squeezed. And, while I wouldn't swear to it, it looks suspiciously as though those two lines have been stretched on the second page.

This is a sin being perpetrated day in, day out (it's not entirely SubScribe's incompetence with picture cropping and positioning that's to blame for the uneven display of pages). Take a look, for example, at the EU guide to British benefits a little further up the screen. The Cat Deeley picture is only slightly narrower than that of Vordemann, so there's really no room for an extra character in the final line of heading - but there it is. Is there a font in the world in which the word 'BENEFITS' occupies a similar space to 'BRITISH'? I might have a little try:

BRITISH

BENEFITS

BRITISH

BENEFITS

BRITISH

BENEFITS

BRITISH

BENEFITS

No, I thought not...

Never mind. Our ageing couple don't need benefits; they've been brought up to stand on their own two feet, but they are concerned about whether their savings will cover their outgoings.

On pensions, the Express doesn't know whether it's coming or going. There's a windfall in the air on April 11, then a crisis less than two weeks later with payouts slashed. But worry not, by June 10 they're soaring. Oops. Spoke too soon, there's a blow for millions the next week, followed swiftly by assaults on the state pension and by July 4, the paper is resigned to the 'chaos' lasting for months. Still, at least the weather picked up around then.

And so we come to house prices. The Express is quite restrained on this front if you think about it. Every month there are four big surveys of house prices - from the Nationwide, the Halifax, the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors and the Land Registry. They all put a number on that mythical 'average house' - but it's never the same. The building societies and banks produce their figures on the basis of loans approved, RICS focuses on estate agents' asking prices and the Land Registry on the prices achieved in sales that have completed.

All of these figures and portraits of a market in recovery are distorted by London, where vast properties costing many millions are sold to foreign billionaires - largely from Qatar and Russia. If you tried to come up with an average house sale price on the basis of a few hundred semis across the country and a dozen West London mansions, you are unlikely to reach a sensible number.

The Express adds in its own complications. It not only runs statistics compiled monthly by accepted industry sources, but it also conducts ad hoc straw polls of its own. Last Friday's splash, House prices to rise £33,000, is an interesting example. 

Simon Ward, chief economist at Henderson Global Investments, told the paper that he thought property was undervalued by about 13 per cent, based on rental yield. In other words, someone looking to invest in a house to rent out could afford to pay a fair bit more than current sale prices and still get a reasonable return. That is not the same thing at all as buying a house to live in.

On the basis of one analyst's view of the rental market, the Express has gone away and added 13 per cent to the £162,000 being paid for  the 'average three-bed semi', based on Land Registry figures of completed sales. That put an extra £21,000 on the value of the house. But couldn't that be made more dramatic?  

What happens if you try the same sum using 'average asking prices' - which will, of course, include our London mansions and the pipedreams of sellers with unrealistic expectations of what their home is worth. This way we have an average price of  around £253,000 and the promise of an increase of £33,000.  

Remember, nobody anywhere along the line has actually said they would go up by that amount. Just that landlords looking to enter the buoyant rental market could stand that sort of increase and still make money.

SubScribe has gone round the houses on the matter of property surveys in the past, so that's enough for this time, other than to point out that missing from every such story are the key facts readers need to know:

1: you won't know what your house is worth until you come to sell it

2: estate agents will tell you to market it at more than they think it will fetch - and there will then be upset when they tell you to reduce the price and not to be so greedy

3: even when you've agreed a deal there are a dozen things that can go wrong. These are compounded by the shortage of houses  for sale and the unaffordability of property for young people who need to have enormous deposits even to contemplate putting a toe on the ladder.

Then there was Kate. Everyone made a fuss of little George when he was born, but the Express could hardly contain itself throughout the pregnancy. Aside from the three days around the birth, the Duchess of Cambridge was the subject of the paper's main front-page picture 17 times between April 1 and August 5 - including six times in eight days at the end of April. She also made a few guest appearances in the puff. 

The Queen appeared ten times as the main image, plus a few puffs, Camilla three times,  Charles  and Harry twice, while Sophie, Zara and the Duke of Edinburgh were on the front once each.

Madeleine McCann was the lead to the paper three times, the front-page picture five times and in the puff twice - with the same image used every time. Other picture choices included Nigella Lawson (5),  Andy Murray's girlfriend Kim Sears (3), Angelina Jolie (3), and Laura Robson, the Beckhams, Gwyneth Paltrow, Joss Stone and April Jones, who each appeared twice.

It's easy to mock.  If you have a winning formula, by all means stick to it. The Express has struck on a losing formula and won't let go. It is losing readers to the graveyards, to the internet, to rivals. Circulation has fallen by half to just over 500,000 since the beginning of the century (Although as an esteemed former colleague has pointed out, that is still more than the Guardian and Independent combined). The Crusader logo remains on the titlepiece, but the paper no longer shows any crusading spirit. It cheats its readers every day with that red roundel that suggests they can buy it for 10p, when what it is really pointing to is how much cheaper - in cash terms -  it is than the slicker Mail. 

It is all a great shame for a once-great newspaper. And even more so, because when it dares to put the Health and Beauty Express template aside, it is still capable of coming up with front pages to challenge the best.

 

Here's the rundown of the past four months' Express front pages:

One final thought

The Express is far from the only paper to stick to a formula. SubScribe will be looking at some of the others next time.

Front pages from paperboy.com.

SubScribe

@gameoldgirl

Memo to newsdesks: there is life north of Watford Gap

New website steps in as Press abandons Manchester

There's a Nando's, a Cafe Rouge, plenty of other restaurants, bars and clubs, an Imax cinema and a gym. What more could a journalist want?

 A computer, a telephone, an office would be nice. Some congenial people to work and play with would be better. The clatter of the presses down below and an inky first-of-the-run paper to take home would be perfect.

 The Printworks in Manchester describes itself as a buzzing, state-of-the-art entertainment complex in the heart of the city centre with something to offer day and night. Others might prefer to remember it as the biggest newspaper production plant in Europe. But that was back in the day.

 Back in the day when most nationals had complete teams to produce a paper in Manchester simultaneously with that being prepared in London. The fashion started at the turn of the last century when the Mail was concerned that the trains couldn't get the paper to its northern readers in time.

The idea was for the Manchester lot to replicate the work being done in the capital - but the journalists didn't quite see it like that. They wanted to find, write and print their own stories. And they did. They were also perfectly capable of making clear their irritation when the London night editor started changing pages to accommodate some late event in the other Piccadilly.

One by one, other papers followed the example so that by the mid-50s, the Express, the Telegraph and the Mirror all had full-scale operations in Manchester, creating a community of some 1,500 journalists in its heyday. The Mirror even introduced a cartoon character specially for its northern edition in 1959; his name was Andy Capp.

 Then there were the local lads. The Guardian, as we all know, was born in Manchester - stirred into life in 1821 by the Peterloo massacre - and proudly bore the city's name on the masthead for 138 years. The Daily Sketch, too, started in Manchester. It was founded in 1909 by Edward G.Hulton, building on the sporting newspaper empire created by his father (also Edward) after he was sacked from the Guardian for hawking his own racing sheet alongside the paper that paid his wages. Hulton sold the Sketch in 1920, setting the paper on a 50-year grand tour of baronetcies until it finally died of exhaustion in 1971.

As the former Guardian journalist Robert Waterhouse relates in his book The Other Fleet Street, many titles (of both newspapers and their owners) came and went over the years. The thriving Withy Grove printing house established by Hulton also had its share of names - Kemsley House, Thomson House and Maxwell House.

 Robert Maxwell bought it for £1 in 1985, raising immediate concerns for the jobs of the 1,700 people working there. The company responded with a 'no comment', then suggested that half of them might be safe. Maxwell closed the plant the following year and the building lay idle for a decade. The derelict plant was eventually sold for development for £10m, and re-emerged as The Printworks in November 2000 after a £110m refurbishment.

Ken Lavery started as a 15-year-old copy boy at Kemsley House in 1951. The job set him on a path that led to a 50-year career as a press photographer. Talking to the NUJ in 2010, Lavery recalled the atmosphere there:

In those days Kemsley House was home to the Daily Despatch, the Daily Sketch, the Sporting Chronicle, the Evening Chronicle, and the Saturday Pink, which was the Chronicle’s football paper, and numerous journals and periodicals, some of which were printed at Kemsley but written and edited elsewhere. 

 I first worked in the phone room, sitting round a massive table with a lot of other young lads starting out in the newspaper industry. We were responsible for producing ‘blacks’ for the typewriters, which involved inserting carbon sheets between two sheets of white paper, securing them with a pin and adding them to a stack of blacks that was built up as high as possible before being whipped away.

 These sheets were used by the copy typists, who sat in booths with their headphones on taking copy down the line from the reporters. You can imagine how fast we had to work on a Saturday when the Pink was being produced. We also used to run around the building delivering copy and messages. 

Naturally I got to know Kemsley House inside out. It was a hive of characters in those days - reporters, printers, linotype machinists, chefs, editors, secretaries, accountants, subs, copy takers - all busily occupied across eight floors connected by numerous staircases, back-stairs, corridors and lifts. 

The Manchester press corps included top-notch writers including Arthur Ransome, John Masefield, Alastair Cooke and Neville Cardus, as well as men who went on to become legendary editors: Larry Lamb, Arthur Christiansen, Harry Evans and Derek Jameson.

 But it was not to last. The Guardian dropped the 'Manchester' from its name in 1959 and within five years was on its way down south to London, finally ending production in its home city in 1976. By the end of the Eighties, the Telegraph, Mirror, Express and Mail had all moved out, leaving only small teams of journalists to cover the area.

As editor of the Sun, Rebekah Wade got rid of the journalists too, closing the Manchester operation altogether in 2004. It was revived in the spring of last year when seven reporters and two feature writers Media City at Salford Quays, below. There was even talk of expansion, but then the paper announced last week that the three photographers working on contracts would now have to take their chances as freelances.

The rivalry evident between London and Manchester never abated. The head office crew looked down on 'the regions' and 'the provinces', even though the people working in Withy Grove and Ancoats Street were every bit as much national newspaper journalists as those in London. The Manchester set meanwhile complained constantly of 'London blindness', an inability to see that anything beyond the capital might matter. It's a complaint that remains justified to this day.

The BBC may have decamped to Salford Quays, but its approach has been rather like a Groundhog Day wayzgoose, since it has taken busloads of London staff along for the ride, many of whom go home to London when their work is done. It makes sure it tells the audience when a programme has come from Manchester, but not if it was made in London - as though the default position must be London and that any deviation needs explanation.

Newspapers are finding savings by tightening the M25 belt and dispensing with virtually everyone who works beyond it. Subscription deliveries are never offered to people living outside the magic circle. In this Londoncentric environment, where north Essex or south Kent are regarded as strange and different countries, it's easy to see how Birmingham, Manchester and all stations north, west and east feel unloved.

The former Times reporter Helen Nugent is now trying to redress the balance with a new website called Northern Soul, which covers all aspects of 'living north of Watford Gap'. She has started by focusing mainly on Manchester, but aims to spread its coverage as the site becomes established. In the guest blog below, she explains how she feels the London Press has abandoned the North and why that is a mistake.

A place for people who love the North

Guest blog by Helen Nugent, Editor of Northern Soul

Is it just me, or is there a shortage of first-rate writing about the North of England? And, if there is a dearth of quality articles about this part of the world, whose fault is it?

In an effort to address at least part of this puzzle, I have come together with a number of other professional journalists, bloggers and writers to create a website that celebrates all things northern. I call it a webzine but it could just as easily be called the post-blog blog: a sophisticated group-written and edited website that publishes a variety of stories.

Northern Soul was born out of a desire to read well-written reviews, previews and features about where we live, as well as a thirst to see images that do the North's urban and rural landscapes justice. After less than two months online, it seems that there are plenty of people out there with the same ambitions. 

Helen  Nugent: ink in her veins

Northern Soul is not a listings site or money-making machine. Nor is it a citizen journalist enterprise or an excuse to upload any old rubbish that has failed to find a home elsewhere. Northern Soul is simply a place for people who love the North.

What all the writers have in common is a passion for the north of England and a fantastic way with words. Whereas in the past they might have written solely for local and national papers and regional magazines, today they have turned to the web. And as the writers move to a new medium, so do the readers.

 A few short years ago the Guardian had four writers based in the North. Today there is just one, on her own, attempting to cover everything north of the Watford Gap. By mid-July the Times will no longer have a northern correspondent: its long-serving reporter is a victim of the recent night of the long knives at the paper of record. For the past few months, the Daily Telegraph has been short of a northern reporter, with little sign of a replacement.

And I'm just talking about Manchester-based journalists here. Pity Newcastle, Carlisle and York.

I love newspapers. I worked for the Times for ten years and I've freelanced for pretty much all of the nationals. I still get a paper delivered at the weekend; the thrill of picking it up off of the doormat and dirtying my hands on the typeface will never leave me. But I'm in a minority. And even I, with print running through my veins, find increasingly little of interest for a Northern-based subscriber. 

Is it because southern newspaper bosses think that we northerners are provincial oiks with scant regard for culture, news and comment? Why do we have to wait for a terrible tragedy (the murder of Middleton solider Lee Rigby, the trial of Dale Cregan) to read about what's happening in our back yard? Is it simply that in a time of cost-cutting and belt-tightening that northern coverage is the most disposable of roles? 

I don't know what the real reason is (although I could hazard a guess). But I'm angry about it nonetheless. And I'm not the only one. Perhaps those frustrated with their traditional sources of information will turn to local papers and their websites for news? While some are shadows of their former selves (yet more victims of cutbacks and staff atrophy), there are some cracking regionals out there. The Rossendale Free Press, for example, combines a hard-hitting news agenda with a slew of events in the area. It puts some of its larger rivals to shame.

Northern Soul has no plans to turn itself into a news website: there are plenty already which serve local communities perfectly well. To be frank, it's about time there was somewhere to read positive prose showcasing all that is great about the places and people up here. 

As a start-up with many giving their time for free, Northern Soul will be hard pushed to recapture the glory days of broad cultural analysis, incisive discussion and damn fine writing about the north of England. But we're going to give it a bloody good go. 

Helen can be contacted at nugenthelen@hotmail.com.

 If you have memories of life in the 'other Fleet Street' or views about whether the media are too London oriented, please use the comment box for your anecdotes or opinions. We'd also love to see pictures. If you have a story to tell but would prefer not to comment here,  please email me at gameoldgirl@gmail.com