’I will not be an editor of another newspaper,’ Andrew Marr, editor
of the Independent, declares as he defends the dramatic changes he has
made to the paper over the past few months. Marr dismisses critics who
refer to his latest creation as ’a newsless newspaper’, saying: ’Well,
it’s just bollocks really, isn’t it? If you look at the newspaper on any
day, there are more news stories now than before, and there are more
words in the paper than before.’
The Independent has become a crusade for Marr. He has put his
distinctive mark on a newspaper that has been handicapped by a limited
budget and an inability in recent years to push past the crucial
circulation point of 300,000. In September he created a new look to try
to broaden the newspaper’s readership, while setting it apart from the
sameness and conservative approaches of its rivals. The conventional
front page was scrapped in favour of a stark, photo-led page, running a
maximum of two stories. The usual run of home and foreign news has been
replaced by feature-length news analysis, placed according to Marr’s
news agenda that day.
October’s ABC figures, released last week, were the first real test of
the new Independent’s success, following an exceptional surge in sales
in September caused by a price cut, heavy promotions and the death of
Diana, Princess of Wales. In October, the newspaper’s circulation fell,
in line with other national newspapers, but at 265,156 it was its
highest circulation for a year, after September.
It’s too soon to open the champagne but Marr is optimistic about the
paper’s future. ’Everything we expected to happen by and large has
happened.
We have attracted a lot of the readers we were hoping for - bright young
professionals. Inevitably, we have lost some of our traditional readers,
and that was going to be the case.’
Marr likes to swim against the tide. At university he was known as Red
Andy because of his membership of the Cambridge hard left and his
tendency to wear a beret.
A tutor described him as one of the brightest pupils he had ever taught,
and Marr looks more like an affable Oxbridge don than a broadsheet
editor. ’He’s willing to be eccentric and take risks. He’s thoughtful,
provoking and original. His decisions are sometimes woeful, wilful,
bizarre and ’look at me, aren’t I clever’,’ one broadsheet editor
muses.
Marr describes himself as a political animal who fell into journalism
after abandoning a PhD and working in a bookshop. He trained on the
Scotsman and came to London in 1985 as the paper’s Parliamentary
correspondent.
He was at home with his parents in Scotland when he read in the FT that
a few people from the Telegraph were leaving to set up the Independent
and, shortly afterwards, he was asked to join as lobby
correspondent.
After two years, aged 29, he became the political editor of the
Economist, which Marr describes as ’a mixture of an Oxford college and a
newspaper - gloriously old-fashioned’. In 1992 he returned to the
Independent as its chief political columnist, before taking up the
editor’s reigns in May 1996, following the resignation of Ian
Hargreaves, who had failed to stem the paper’s circulation decline.
Married to the ITN political correspondent, Jackie Ashley, with children
aged eight, six and three, time is a rare commodity for Marr. ’Life is
unbelievably busy. I am lapsing into the cliche of the ex-new man, and
have turned into a useless workaholic.’ If he had to choose an
alternative career, Marr says he would be a cartoonist. He’s a prolific
doodler, particularly during news meetings, and in the past produced a
strip cartoon for the newspaper, Radical Scotland.
Like Citizen Smith, Red Andy likes to be seen as a man of the people,
familiar with everyone on his editorial team and ready to haggle with
them over his news decisions. He glowingly describes his team as: ’An
oasis of good humour with intellectual but non-stuffy and non-pompous
people. It’s not a big newspaper - it’s a guerrilla operation compared
with the brawn of the FT or the Times.’ The redesign, he admits, suits
the newspaper’s tight editorial resources. ’I have certainly constructed
it around the resources I have. I don’t believe you require the
resources of the Telegraph or the Guardian to produce a proper
newspaper. I would like more staff, of course. Anybody would say the
same.’
As I leave Marr’s office, an orderly queue waits outside for the morning
news conference. Compared with the shouts, squawks and constant din of
ringing phones at Campaign, the Independent’s newsdesk is eerily
quiet.
Marr’s PA says it’s because everyone talks in whispers - but then again,
maybe it’s because there’s hardly anyone working there.
The Marr file
1985 The Scotsman, Parliamentary correspondent
1986 The Independent, political correspondent
1988 The Economist, political editor
1992 The Independent, chief political commentator
1996 The Independent, editor
