The Fourth Estate

“I think you’ll find it was two.”

“Didn’t Sir Somerset Kenwright suffer roughly the same fate when you took over the Chronicle?”

“No, that’s not quite accurate. I can assure you that no one admired Sir Somerset more than I did.”

“But Sir Somerset once described you,” said Kate, glancing down at her notes, “as ‘a man who is happy to lie in the gutter and watch while others climb mountains’.”

“I think you’ll find that Sir Somerset, like Shakespeare, is often misquoted.”

“It would be hard to prove either way,” said Kate, “as he’s also dead.”

“True,” said Keith, a little defensively. “But the words of Sir Somerset that I will always recall are: ‘I couldn’t be more delighted that the Chronicle will be passing into the hands of Sir Graham Townsend’s son.’”

“But didn’t Sir Somerset say that,” suggested Kate, once again referring to her notes, “six weeks before you actually took over?”

“What difference does that make?” asked Keith, trying to fight back.

“Simply that on the first day you arrived at the Chronicle as its proprietor, you sacked the editor and the chief executive. A week later they issued a joint statement, saying—and this time I quote verbatim…”

“Your next appointment has arrived, Mr. Townsend,” said Heather, standing by the door as if she was about to show someone in.

“Who is it?” asked Keith.

“Andrew Blacker.”

“Rearrange it.”

“No, no, please,” said Kate. “I have more than enough.”

“Rearrange it,” repeated Keith firmly.

“As you wish,” said Heather, equally firmly. She walked back out, leaving the door wide open.

“I’m sorry to have taken up so much of your time, Mr. Townsend,” said Kate. “I’ll try to speed things up,” she added, before returning to her long list of questions. “Can I now turn to the launching of the Continent?”

“But I haven’t finished telling you about Sir Somerset Kenwright, and the state the Chronicle was in when I took it over.”

“I’m sorry,” said Kate, “it’s just that I’m concerned about the calls you have to make, and I’m feeling a little guilty about Mr. Blacker.”

There was a long silence before Keith admitted, “There is no Mr. Blacker.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” said Kate.

“He’s a code name. Heather uses them to let me know how long a meeting has overrun: New York is fifteen minutes, Mr. Andrew Blacker is thirty minutes. In a quarter of an hour she’ll reappear and tell me I have a conference call with London and Los Angeles. And if she’s really cross with me, she throws in Tokyo for good measure.”

Kate began to laugh.

“Let’s hope you last the full hour. You’ll never believe what she comes up with after an hour.”

“To be honest, Mr. Townsend, I wasn’t expecting to be given more than fifteen minutes of

your time,” Kate said, as she looked back down at her questions.

“You’d begun to ask me about the Continent,” prompted Keith.

“Oh, yes,” said Kate. “It’s often reported that you were devastated when Alan Rutledge resigned as editor.”

“Yes, I was,” admitted Keith. “He was a fine journalist, and had become a close friend. But the paper had fallen below 50,000 copies a day, and we were losing nearly £100,000 a week. Now, under the new editor, we have returned to sales of 200,000 copies a day, and will be launching a Sunday Continent early in the new year.”