Doing a Doris Stokes on the media

’TIS said that every year on the anniversary eve of Elvis Presley’s death Kelvin Calder MacKenzie would issue an identical standing order to one of his trembling ‘Features creatures’: “Get hold of Doris Stokes and offer her a couple of grand for an exclusive chat with The Pelvis.”
Handsomely remunerated, the famous medium would contact the rock icon on ‘the other side’ and help him compose an anniversary message for his grieving fans, all of them readers of Kelvin’s Sun. Naturally.
All went well until 1987, when Features Editor Wendy Henry had to break the worst possible news to her editor: “Sorry, Kelv, not this year . . . Doris has popped her clogs as well.”
Undaunted, crafty Kelvin fired back: “Okay, then, get Uri Geller or someone to contact Doris in the Hereafter so she can go and find Elvis and interview him.. .. after all, she’s still on our fucking books!”
Astrology has been an essential piece of newspaper and magazine content ever since the Sunday Express asked R.H.Naylor in 1930 to chart the future happiness (sic) of the newly born Princess Margaret. The article was well received but his reputation was made a few months later when he predicted serious trouble for the British aircraft industry on the very day the airship R-101 crashed in France.
From that day forward no editor’s output was complete without a horoscope. And no one used and abused his astrologers better than MacKenzie. He once sacked an out-of-favour stargazer with a letter which began: “As you are doubtless already aware . . .”
I’ve been down that path myself. When I amalgamated Sydney’s morning Daily Telegraph with the afternoon Daily Mirror I found that my Noah’s Ark of a newspaper had inherited TWO of everything, including astrologers. When one of the unfortunates rang from London to ask “Do I still have a job?” I remembered MacKenzie and delivered the only reply possible: “Well, if YOU don’t know I guess the answer is No!”
Why, you might well ask, am I rambling on like this, dear reader? Well, it’s that time of year in the newspaper calendar that brings it on.
Frankly, astrology plays no greater part in a newspaper than in the New Year editions. After the “FREE! King’s College Carol Concert CD!” and “A six-pack of Lager for £1” offers and before the “£1 ferry trip to Boulogne!” are launched in an attempt to haul back the legion of readers who deserted in droves over Christmas comes the glossy, 36-page insert: “Your Stars for 2010”.
So, I thought, if the Sun, Mirror and Star can do it why can’t your rather staid Press Gazette become the Mystic Mag, if only for one month? Particularly as the January deadline came so hard on the heels of the arrival of PG in the Banks household that I’ve hardly had time to read LAST month’s column.
[INSIDER GOSS: The printers, apparently, wanted early deadlines to get January out of the way so they could enjoy Christmas . . . haven’t they HEARD what happened at Wapping? Was that whole war in vain?]
Anyway, I’ve consulted the tealeaves and played with the Ouija board and here’s my 1-2-3 of forecasts for the year ahead:
ONE month behind a paywall . . . that’s about as long as the stars foretell for James and Rebekah’s plan to make the punters cough up for the Currant Bun, Thunderer, Screws etcetera. If the Evening Standard can make free pay, why can’t online?
TWO Fleet Street editors will conjugate more than verbs this year. Will this require their titles be joined in a civil partnership?
THREE major newspapers - one a national daily - will follow Lebedev’s lead at the Evening Standard and go free before next Christmas.
And if I don’t get the triple up then my name’s not Tipsy Rose Lee!

HER Majesty’s round robin to editors warning them off harassing or intruding upon the peace and tranquillity that her royal family was so keen to preserve at Sandringham this festive season may well have been a self-inflicted shot in the foot.
Until her royal crest dropped onto doorsteps at the Wharf, Wapping and Kensington, reporters were yawning their way through one of the most boring Buck House eras in recent years.
But the royal command was, if not a red rag to a bull then at least a timely reminder . . . there’s a royal wedding coming.!
Now that’s what I call an invitation, ma’am.

TALK at the Stuart Higgins PR pre-Christmas bash was heavily skewed towards the Murdoch empire’s preoccupation with paywalls - not unnatural, given that the party attracted the likes of News biggies Rebekah Wade and Clive Milner and that Higgy is a former Sun editor,
Of course, my paywall prediction (see above) was roundly pooh-poohed (at their peril); therefore, I divert you to examination of another pet News project: Sun broadcasting.
This consists of former columnist Jon Gaunt nattering away to as few as twenty listeners or as many as several hundred . The latter I can tell you, having myself made a few trial broadcasts for the go-ahead Journal in Newcastle upon Tyne, is impressive.
Exact listener/phone-in figures for the Sun’s expansive, expensive radio operation are difficult to come by but party tittle-tattle recounted issues which attracted a couple of hundred texts and emails from the Sun’s online following.
Certainly enough to attract a smart advertiser and definitely easier than putting up a paywall!
First published in Press Gazette, January 2010