THE NITPICK PAPERS


Charles Dickens had a short-lived spell as a newspaper editor. Jonathan Sale looks back


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elebrity editor walks out after only 17 issues of new paper shock horror! It would not have been the first time that anyone let out a yelp of ‘What the Dickens!’ –


the exclamation had been used for centuries as a less blasphemous version of ‘What the Devil!’ Yet those three devilish words have never been more apposite before or since that moment when Charles Dickens stomped out of the national daily he had founded and edited. This short chapter in Dickens’s life story had begun so well. In July 1845 the genius who called himself ‘the Inimitable’ was already the author of novels which still live on: The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby and A Christmas Carol, with more where they came from. However, he craved financial security, fretting about the future health of both himself and his book sales. “With hindsight, this seems absurd,” Claire Tomalin points out in her highly praised Charles Dickens: a Life. In an improbable but non-fictional twist of


fate, the great author’s apparent problems were solved by Joseph Paxton, (opposite, far right) the Duke of Devonshire’s gardener at Chatsworth, who had made some money on the side by investing in railways. This spare cash led him to suggest to Bradbury and Evans, who published his annual Horticultural Register, that they all three should go into the newspaper business. The publishers were persuaded; they knew just the man to be editor, their star author – Charles Dickens – and offered him the editorship.


16 | theJournalist Dickens had already thought of starting a


newspaper to challenge The Times and welcomed the idea of a regular salary, particularly when he managed to persuade them to double their original offer and ended up with £2,000 a year – about a quarter of a


IT IS much easier to walk out of a newspaper than to launch one; in 1987, John Pilger (pictured) resigned as editor-in-chief of the News on Sunday before it had produced any of its few issues. Most of the national


newbies have been the offspring of existing papers, such as The Sunday Telegraph and Mail on Sunday. Metro too came from the Mail stable. The Daily Star was born in the Express group in 1978, with


Daily Star Sunday following in 2002. Murdoch’s Sun evolved in 1969 from a very different paper with the same name owned by the Mirror group which had shone briefly after rebranding itself from the proudly left Daily Herald launched in 1912. Eddie Shah, owner of


the Messenger group of local papers, started the technologically advanced Today (and Sunday Today) in 1986, which soon became yesterday’s


million today. He hired his friends and relations – printers’ devils, you could say – his future biographer John Forster as a leader writer, his father-in-law George Hogarth as music critic and his uncle John Barrow as Our Man in India. The most incredible hiring was of his own father; the model for Mr Micawber, late of a debtors’ prison, a financial and family failure, John Dickens became overnight a respected mixture of managing editor and news editor. With the January 21 1846 launch date rapidly approaching, Dickens Junior was also tied up with his usual Christmas minibook, not to mention one of his elaborate amateur theatrical productions. And his family Twelfth Night party. Yet The Daily News did hit the streets as promised. “For Madras, calling at the Cape of Good Hope, to sail 3rd February,” were the first words under the title, because front pages in those days generally consisted of small ads, in this case for shipping, insurance and the Direct Northern Railway. Inside, Dickens nailed his radical colours to the


masthead: “Liberal Politics and thorough Independence,” he promised. “The Principles advocated by The Daily News will be Principles of Progress and Improvement; of Education, Civil and Religious Liberty, and Equal Legislation; Principles, such as… the advancing spirit of the times requires.” These were indeed stirring times in which to start a newspaper: next day, prime minister Robert Peel declared his opposition to the Corn Laws, which were gradually starving the country.


Paper launches can be a bumpy ride


news, as did his 1988 paper, The Post. The i newspaper


sprang from the loins of the Independent in 2010 and has survived at the newsagents. In 1986, the (daily) Independent itself was a breakthrough of production and design


but, says founder Andreas Whittam Smith “The Independent on Sunday was my big mistake.” This had an ill-fated


launch in 1990, a few months after that of The Sunday Correspondent, a similar middle-of-the-road broadsheet. “A suicide pact,” is


how Peter Cole, the Correspondent’s launch editor, describes the competitive dilemma of the two quality papers. He was fired: “One of


the backers made it a condition of the last tranche of money. I never wanted to throw in the towel.”


JAMES GIFFORD-MEAD/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO


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