The Fourth Estate

Keith arrived at Arlington House fifteen minutes early, and walked up and down St. James’s for several minutes before he entered the impressive block of flats. He was kept waiting another twenty minutes before a secretary took him through to Lord Beaverbrook’s large office overlooking St. James’s Park.

“How is your father keeping?” were the Beaver’s opening words.

“He’s well, sir,” Keith replied, standing in front of his desk, as he hadn’t been offered a seat.

“And you want to follow in his footsteps?” said the old man, looking up at him.

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“Good, then you’ll report to Frank Butterfield’s office at the Express by ten tomorrow morning. He’s the best deputy editor in Fleet Street. Any questions?”

“No, sir,” said Keith.

“Good,” replied Beaverbrook. “Please remember me to your father.” He lowered his head, which appeared to be a sign that the interview was over. Thirty seconds later Keith was back out on St. James’s, not sure if the meeting had ever taken place.

The next morning he reported to Frank Butterfield in Fleet Street. The deputy editor never seemed to stop running from one journalist to another. Keith tried to keep up with him, and it wasn’t long before he fully understood why Butterfield had been divorced three times. Few sane women would have tolerated such a lifestyle. Butterfield put the paper to bed every night, except Saturday, and it was an unforgiving mistress.

As the weeks went by, Keith became bored with just following Frank around, and grew impatient to get a broader view of how a newspaper was produced and managed. Frank, who was aware of the young man’s restlessness, devised a program that would keep him fully occupied. He spent three months in circulation, the next three in advertising, and a further three on the shop floor. There he found countless examples of union members playing cards while they should have been working on the presses, or taking the occasional work break between drinking coffee and placing bets at the nearest bookmaker. Some even clocked in under two or three names, drawing a pay packet for each.

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; By the time Keith had been at the Express for six months, he had begun to question whether the editorial content was all that mattered in producing a successful newspaper. Shouldn’t he and his father have spent those Sunday mornings looking just as closely at the advertising space in the Courier as they did at the front pages? And when they had sat in the old man’s study criticizing the headlines in the Gazette, shouldn’t they instead have been looking to see if the paper was overstaffed, or if the expenses of the journalists were getting out of control? Surely in the end, however massive a paper’s circulation was, the principal aim should be to make as large a return on your investment as possible. He often discussed the problem with Frank Butterfield, who felt that the well-established practices on the shop floor were now probably irreversible.

Keith wrote home regularly and at great length, advancing his theories. Now that he was experiencing many of his father’s problems at first hand, he began to fear that the trade union practices which were commonplace on the shop floors of Fleet Street would soon find their way to Australia.

At the end of his first year, Keith sent a long memo to Beaverbrook at Arlington House, despite advice to the contrary from Frank Butterfield. In it he expressed the view that the shop floor at the Express was overmanned by a ratio of three to one, and that, while wages made up its largest outgoings, there could be no hope of a modern newspaper group being able to make a profit. In the future someone was going to have to take on the unions. Beaverbrook didn’t acknowledge the report.

Undaunted, Keith began his second year at the Express by putting in hours he hadn’t realized existed when he was at Oxford. This served to reinforce his view that sooner or later there would have to be massive changes in the newspaper industry, and he prepared a long memorandum for his father, which he intended to discuss with him the moment he arrived back in Australia. It set out exactly what changes he believed needed to be made at the Courier and the Gazette if they were to remain solvent during the second half of the twentieth century.

Keith was on the phone in Butterfield’s office, arranging his flight to Melbourne, when a messenger handed him the telegram.

11.

The Times

5 June 1945

SETTING UP CONTROL OF GERMANY: PRELIMINARY MEETING OF ALLIED COMMANDERS

When Captain Armstrong visited Der Telegraf for the first time, he was surprised to find how dingy the little basement offices were. He was greeted by a man who introduced himself as Arno Schultz, the editor of the paper.

Schultz was about five foot three, with sullen gray eyes and short-cropped hair. He was dressed in a pre-war three-piece suit that must have been made for him when he was a stone heavier. His shirt was frayed at the collar and cuffs, and he wore a thin, shiny black tie.

Armstrong smiled down at him. “You and I have something in common,” he said.

Schultz shuffled nervously from foot to foot in the presence of this towering British officer. “And what is that?”

“We’re both Jewish,” said Armstrong.

“I would never have known,” said Schultz, sounding genuinely surprised.

Armstrong couldn’t hide a smile of satisfaction. “Let me make it clear from the outset,” he said, “that I intend to give you every assistance to ensure that Der Telegraf is kept on the streets. I only have one long-term aim: to outsell Der Berliner.”

Schultz looked doubtful. “They currently sell twice as many copies a day as we do. That was true even before the war. They have far better presses, more staff, and the advantage of being in the American sector. I don’t think it’s a realistic aim, Captain.”

“Then we’ll just have to change all that, won’t we?” said Armstrong. “From now on you must look upon me as the proprietor of the newspaper, and I will leave you to get on with the editor’s job. Why don’t you start by telling me what your problems are?”

“Where do I begin?” said Schultz, looking up at his new boss. “Our printing presses are out of date. Many of the parts are worn out, and there seems to be no way of getting replacements for them.”