I did something last weekend that I haven't done for a long, long
time. And ... well, it made me feel dirty but it was so enormously
satisfying that I could well be tempted to do it again soon. It took the
Countess of Wessex interview to get me to buy the News of the World. But
like many new readers, I found a paper that was both surprising and
entertaining.
The bogus sheik and the unfurling picture of life down at Rees-Jones
Harkin (not far off your average PR company skeletons, I guess, but how
scandalous to think that a member of our monarchy could be breathing the
same air as a cocaine-taking, homosexual colleague) have been well raked
over. The highlights for me included the comment by Murray Harkin,
Sophie's business partner, that 'The odd line of coke I quite like, but
trying to find it is a nightmare' (the gents' loo at the Grosvenor is
always a good bet, I'm told), and the fact that the pair of supposedly
PR-savvy (and tabloid-savvy) professionals were taken in by a journalist
in a tea towel (with 'souvenir of Wales' printed on it, I hear).
But what the News of the World really ended up with were some tame
comments that would hardly raise an eyebrow within the worlds of
advertising, PR and the media in which the editor, Rebekah Wade, Rees
Jones and Harkin mix.
The truly interesting story behind the story is how this came to be such
an enormous exclusive, a major PR coup for the newspaper (at least with
readers, who were well primed by last weekend; the moral backbone of the
press, however, has hammered Wade for breaking the Press Complaints
Commission code on subterfuge) and a sure-fire sales hiker.
First there was the gift of an official interview from Rees-Jones in
return for not running the revelations from the sheik scam. So the News
of the World got its 'My Edward's Not Gay' headline two weeks ago and a
rather nice exclusive. Next, rival newspapers waded in with their
(inaccurate) versions of the Sheik revelations and whetted all our
appetites with a wonderful display of free publicity for the News of the
World. So by last weekend the fire was burning brightly and even I was
slavering over the paper's follow-up.
No-one who bought the paper to read the transcripts of the original
interview will have been disappointed. But new readers will also have
found a fresher, more dynamic and less sleazily titillating paper than
the one they might remember, although the dreadful Sunday magazine has
none of the flair and wit of the main paper.
It will be interesting to see how sales shaped up, but my bet is a
significant upturn. The real question, though, is whether the News of
the World as a entire package will have been tasty enough to keep some
of those sampling readers hooked into regular purchase. I might just be
one of them - but don't tell anyone.
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