All that Glitters was an opportunity for Newcastle University’s Dance Society showcase the breadth of participation and enjoyment of dance. Having recently won “Best Society of the Year” at the ncl+ Awards, the society’s formidable reputation has been compounded by swelling membership numbers (almost three-hundred at the last count) and a run of category wins from various inter-university championships.

Hosted at the Northern Stage, the showcase required full use of its lighting and staging by opening with a dark and dramatic full cast performance to Justice’s “Genesis”. Choreographed by the out-going President Ania Kurek, it was a comprehensive introduction to the range of abilities involved, with students of varying experience dancing side by side.

To be able to offer every member the opportunity to enjoy a wide variety of dance styles is a substantial credit to the society’s dedicated student-teachers. Their hard work was clearly reflected in the smiles on their faces of the “Jai Ho!” performance, who seemed to enjoy every second of the Bollywood dance. Also, the Musical Theatre group’s upbeat act “Rehab” smacked of Glee-style enthusiasm, with girls and geeks bouncing across the stage.

Undoubtedly, the Beginners performances reflected the sheer popularity of the society, involved in the entire range of dance categories. “The Nutcracker” by the Beginners Ballet group was an unexpected choice, performing traditional choreography that contrasted with the more modern ballet performed by the Intermediate and Advanced groups.  It was a challenging choice and though it was performed a little stiffly and with a few wobbles, it received a fantastic response from the audience. “Fever” was a particularly enjoyable performance, rich with the dramatic and sassy attitude that seems more commonly found in experienced dancers.

The Intermediate groups seemed to be a fluid category, using dancers from both Beginners and Advanced which explained the small number of dances they performed compared to other groups. Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” was the perfect soundtrack for Intermediate Jazz’s vivid performance, whilst Intermediate Ballet presented “Dog Days Are Over”, which worked particularly well as  a vibrant and uplifting partnership with Advanced dancers.

Naturally, it was the Advanced groups who presented the most choreographically innovative and challenging performances. In “Billy Elliot” and “Workmen” the Advanced Tap group danced to The Jam’s “A Town Called Malice” in the former, and (bravely) to no music in the latter, allowing them to show off their practiced technique. The Contemporary group’s “Bird of Prey” and Jazz’s “Black and Gold” were stylishly choreographed and powerfully performed, using dark lighting to accentuate the drama of their movement. However, it was the Street dances that stole the show with body-popping, energetic movements; the kind that make your own legs jerk about involuntarily. They performed competition-winning routines that had been rehearsed to perfection, they wowed the with their precise execution of challenging choreography from Bethany Bresnen and Natasha Halhead.

Unfortunately there were a couple of technical issues that interrupted the professionalism shown by the dancers, as the accompanying music was edited to cut off abruptly and was at times uncomfortably loud. Although undoubtedly irritating, these did nothing to deter the enthusiasm and support of the audience, which was in raptures by the finale.

4 stars

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'Peter Pan' - part of Topher McGrillis's photography exhibition

Topher McGrillis clearly understands the subtle art of theatrical photography. It’s certainly something Northern Stage have picked up on as they gave him a year-long commission to collate an exhibition reflecting the theatre’s 40th birthday year. Found on the mezzanine floor of the Northern Stage, I was somewhat disappointed to find the exhibition room cluttered with tables and chairs which relegated the photographs to a purely decorative role rather than being the main attraction. This was a shame, as the photographs themselves were captivating: McGrillis shows real flare for capturing the drama of the moment; whether it’s performance art or musical theatre.

The exhibition is a mix of photographs that capture the glamour of a performance as well as intimacy of backstage preparations. My favourite was Peter Pan – a shot of Louis Roberts brandishing a sword towards the audience in the theatre’s much-acclaimed alternative pantomime. McGrillis has chosen the pictures with care, avoiding the pitfall of making the exhibition an advert for the Northern Stage.

It’s unfortunate that such skilled photography wasn’t in a more fitting artistic space.

2 stars

Published in The Courier

Taking on Tom Stoppard’s absurdist play was certainly a brave move.  It focuses on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern – two minor characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet –who attempt to make sense of a world they don’t understand.

Taking on the role of the clownish Rosencrantz, Tom Dickson warmed up the crowd with enthusiastic and comically timed tomfoolery whilst the more sedate Guildenstern was played by Dan Grant, who broodingly paced the stage delivering tongue-twisting lines in rapid-fire, almost always getting it spot on. We can forgive him the occasional slip – Stoppard is known for using language as a particularly confounding form.  The pair complimented each other artfully, showing off the philosophical complexities of Stoppard’s script, most effectively seen in the sleekness of the wordplay rallies of Act One.

Particular mention must go to Julia Middleton for her performance as The Player, as she cut through the frenetic verbal jousting of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with a bright-eyed boldness that wouldn’t look out of place in the Theatre Royal. Alongside her crew of tragedians, she brought to life the “play within a play” that is so famous in Hamlet, with real comic effect. Though there was a slight technical problem with the lighting at one point, the performance was most certainly a convincing, engaging and entertaining one.

3 stars

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Dave Spikey

You’d think Dave Spikey was born with a mic in his hand. As I speak to the comedian about his up-coming tour, the fervour in his voice is audible: “I just love stand-up more and more and get really excited about it and I think it’s what I’m best at. I love the immediacy of it – I can be driving to the gig, think of something on the way there and hours later I can be doing it live.”

He was inspired to write material for his current tour Words Don’t Come Easy after coming across ridiculous headlines and stories in local newspapers that he’d read whilst on a previous tour. His routine cuts to the core of the laziness and silliness inherent in so many parts of our day to day lives. “Say, if you heard the Vanessa Williams song ‘Save the Best Till Last’ on the radio. She sings “sometimes the snow comes down in June, sometimes the sun goes round the moon”…What? No it doesn’t!  Would’ve been a scorcher that day…” He cleverly highlights these commonplace instances that show the ease at which lyrical laziness is accepted without question by the general public. His material appeals to the everyman as he takes to task the daft things parents say, adolescent chat-up lines and idiotic road signs.

Spikey’s comedic bent evolved from an unusual background as he worked as Chief Biomedical Scientist in Haematology at the Royal Bolton Hospital before making a career in comedy. Stand-up and science aren’t the most likely of bedfellows, but it seems that the two have been tied together since Spikey’s childhood. “One of my happiest memories was me and my dad sat watching Morecambe and Wise and I laughed so much that I slid off the sofa. So it just assimilates itself into your brain.  At school I was quite studious and did very well, but the comments I used to get from teachers were ‘David, why does everything you write have a comedy element to it?’  I didn’t do it deliberately, but just saw things in an amusing light.”

Planning to study medicine, he took up a job at his local hospital and enjoyed lab work so much that he gave up the ghost of his prior ambitions. Whilst working he became heavily involved in the hospital’s amateur dramatics group and began writing scripts and pantomimes. As though haematology and comedy were two components of his job, he described the moment that he decided to forge a career in his erstwhile hobby.“Someone said ‘you’re really funny, you should be a comedian’. It was that kind of “I’ll have a go” moment that came out of wanting to push myself, whether it’s a job or hobby. I started doing stand-up in the early Nineties and then met Peter [Kay] in 1996 at the right time and in the right place and I was ready for it. We became really good friends and started writing from day one really and then it all happened. I had no game plan, just one thing led to another as it does in life.”

He talks of this nonchalantly, but it became one of the biggest turning points in his comedy career. Their partnership brought to life comedy TV shows such as The Services and That Peter Kay Thing and a year later a show that was to define his career: the BAFTA-nominated Phoenix Nights. Set in Greater Manchester, the show embraces the cast’s northern roots but Spikey is quick to point out that “from the feedback we get everywhere I go people loved it, and that’s mainly because of the characters. No matter what accent they’ve got, people can relate to them, and we worked very hard on our characters to prove that.”

He has continued to grace TV screens as a team captain alongside Sean Lock and Jimmy Carr on 8 out of 10 Cats and with David Mitchell and Angus Deayton on Would I Lie To You? He is currently churning through a stack of books as preparation for the second series of Channel 4’s TV Book Club. He confesses: “I don’t like anything that’s too literary; I’m maybe a bit of a philistine in that. Like when you spend about a page describing something, I’m not bothered about that, just get on with the story!” At least we won’t have to wait long for his stand-up tour, when Dave Spikey can prove that on stage, words certainly do come easily.

Published in The Courier

Blood Brothers at Newcastle's Theatre Royal

At the Theatre Royal, the lights dimmed, the curtains opened and the narrator asks the audience: “Did you ever hear about the Johnstone twins?” Up until then I hadn’t, but I had a good idea of what to expect. Willy Russell’s 1983 musical Blood Brothers followed in the successful footsteps of Educating Rita (1980) with a plot rooted in issues of education, class and social mobility. Set in Liverpool, a tale of twin brothers unfolds as they are separated at birth and unwittingly re-united by chance whilst children. Russell plays with the age-old debate of nature versus nurture: one child is raised in a large working class family living on the breadline, whilst the other is an only child living in a strict middle class household. In finding each other, they appear to overcome the deeply-wrought social boundaries of Thatcher’s Britain. Russell treads the fine line between kitchen-sink drama and light entertainment by drawing upon his local roots to balance out social critique with a liberal measure of Liverpudlian humour.

Though a musical at heart, Blood Brothers does away with the gimmicky Andrew Lloyd-Webber-esque chorus-lines whose glittery tunes are often appear to over-compensate for an otherwise threadbare plot.  Numbers such as “Tell Me It’s Not True” and “Shoes on the Table” are catchy, but they also work with rather than detract from the plot’s cloying sense of guilt and longing belied by the protagonist Mrs Johnstone. Despite earning her stripes on the X-Factor in 2007, Niki Evans took up the lead role with real theatrical panache, lending her voice well to such emotionally charged songs. She is supported by a small but talented cast, some of whom play several roles in the production. Particular mention should go to Sean Jones who captured the affections of the audience as Mickey Johnstone who transforms from a cheeky boy of seven to a world-weary adult of twenty-two in the space of the three-hour performance.

From the outset, the emotions of the audience were tethered to the unravelling of a forbidden friendship and by the climax of the final scenes, it is no understatement to say there was a collective sniffing coming from the stalls as many around me dabbed their eyes, having been genuinely moved by the performance. This year Blood Brothers celebrates its twenty-fifth year on the stage and owing to Russell’s superb craftsmanship, the show’s exceptional relevance continues to resonate in the standing ovations it deservedly receives.

5 stars

Published in The Courier

With over half of the Conservative Party’s funds coming from City companies and bankers, the back-scratching of the economic elite has become an enraging injustice whilst youth unemployment runs at 20.5% and many highly-qualified graduates are struggling to find jobs.

The Daily Mail recently reported that City internships were auctioned off at the Conservatives’ Black and White Party fundraiser. Tory supporters at the exclusive £400-per-head event bid for lucrative internships for their children, guaranteeing them a head-start to a career in some of the most competitive and over-subscribed industries. Auctioned lots included a week’s work experience at Mayfair-based hedge fund Caxton Associates (sold for £2500), a fortnight at the “social bible” Tatler Magazine (sold for £4000) and a day as an extra in Downton Abbey (sold for £25,000). Lot 10 was a week’s work experience at top-flight PR agency Bell Pottinger, whose eponymous founder Lord Timothy Bell was Margaret Thatcher’s spin-doctor. The lot sold for £2000, giving a fortunate individual a career kick-start that could be gained by no other means. Public Relations is, as with many others, an industry where work experience is one’s most marketable asset, as recruiters value work experience at a top agency as a hallmark of determination and ambition. That such a career-making experience could be purchased at a private event is a clear indication of the Conservative Party’s desire to preserve the status-quo of the wealthy and the big business they rely upon.

I initially came across this story in the PR trade press shortly after attending a job interview at Bell Pottinger and was infuriated to consider that any one of the competing graduates or recent trainees could have been the beneficiary of a similar leg-up. The Tories’ auctioning of work experience is particularly hypocritical given that the coalition is currently unrolling its Equality Strategy, which (to quote verbatim) claims to “promote diversity through internship programmes”.  Recent investigations such as the BBC’s documentary Who Gets the Best Jobs? have sought to show how bright, ambitious graduates are frozen out of the best positions because they can’t afford to undertake unpaid work experience in London. We may have moved away from overt social distinctions, but the buying of privilege shows that in today’s hyper-competitive world, class remains the elephant in the room. George Osborne’s signature quote “we’re all in this together” smacks of ignorance and shows why he’s often kept out of the media spotlight; he illuminates the complacent distance between the government and the electorate they purport to serve.

Frighteningly, the marketization of work experience has filtered down to university level as last year Oxford University’s charity Red Dress Ball auctioned off prized internships including a mini-pupillage with Neil Kitchener QC and a summer internship with a prominent City law firm. Though the organisers claimed that whilst work experience looks good on your CV it won’t get you the job, the reality couldn’t be more different. Work experience marks out the ambitious and driven candidates who have sought to experience life in an industry on their own merit, rather than those who rest solely upon their academic credentials. To break into competitive industries and impress hard-nosed recruiters, candidates are required to be all-rounders: they need a good degree, a string of relevant placements and extra-curricular achievements. However, for those who can afford it, events such as the invitation-only Tory party fundraiser show that thanks to the old cliché “who you know, not what you know” you can bypass this. Though many graduate schemes use online applications to break down the prevailing contact-culture, meritocracy in the workplace will only be achievable under an egalitarian government.

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Going by the book: library closures deserve to be campaigned against as much as top-up fees

This November will go down as the month that students found their political voice, with mass protests and occupations across the country against cuts to future education prospects. But if students are concerned about the impact of cuts to education, why are we not also protesting against the closing of public libraries? With the silence on this subject comes the suggestion that perhaps the proportion of students who use public libraries is shrinking.

For some, there’s an inherent guilt in enjoying a paperback at the expense of coursework, but many others just don’t consider reading a form of entertainment – you’re more likely to find CDs and DVDs on their bookshelves than books. Many of the owners of these will have been protesting for the right to affordable learning, but arguably the most important form of free, state-provided institution is the public library. A single trip to Newcastle City Library tells me that its regular visitors are of the same demographic as those who go to see an Alan Bennett play: middle aged.

We are a generation of digital natives and unlike generations before us, our reading consists of news feeds, blogs and posts, and our oracle is a search engine rather than an encyclopaedia. In this way, the demise of literature as we know it has been catalysed by technology – the unfortunate birth of the e-Book reader threatens to make the reading of a paperback as obsolete as watching a VHS. In this way, it’s not difficult to see why students no longer feel the need to borrow and read books when information is so readily accessed at the click of a mouse. 40 per cent of the UK population regularly use libraries, so the loss of  up to 1000 nationwide is devastating.

Acclaimed author Will Self believes that “libraries are a cultural resource of universal benefit that shouldn’t be subjected to the crude calculus of cost-benefit analysis. What they should do is provide access to as many books as possible for as many people as possible.” Under the coalition government, these cuts to free learning facilities threaten to turn back the clocks to the Thatcher years, only this time it’s the educational rights of the public that will be privatised.

As students campaigning against the restriction to education, public-lending libraries and the immeasurable value of reading should be included in our thoughts as we look beyond the parameters of our degrees to the resources provided by the state. If it were not for these cuts, perhaps the newly disillusioned generation of would-be students, could have drawn reassurance from the film Good Will Hunting in which the highly intelligent Will gains a university-standard education that costs him “a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library”.

So, perhaps if we are so eager to support the cause of free education, we should champion the preservation of libraries alongside the fees fight-back, and then hopefully future generations will go on to take a leaf out of our book.

Published in The Courier

Peter Mandelson launches his memoirs 'The Third Man'

In the age of celebrity culture, political memoirs now regularly headline bestseller’s lists, showing that while the stars of politicians rise and fall, the genre within which they write is steadfastly popular.

Publishing and politicians clearly go hand-in-hand; just ask the Mayor of London Boris Johnson, who infamously claimed his bit-on-the-side columnist salary of £250,000 was “chicken feed”. Indeed, the big-namers might find that corporate-sponsored speeches don’t provide quite as much money as having your name in print and then of course there’s the book signings where they get to meet the electorate to show they’re in touch with the people. Peter Mandelson’s hatchet-job memoirs The Third Man earned him a £150,000 advance, and a reported £350,000 for serialization rights. Though politics is often referred to as “showbusiness for ugly people”, having a famous face on a book cover is surprisingly beneficial – Cherie Blair’s Speaking For Myself generated £1 million in sales. Her husband’s recently published memoirs A Journey became Waterstones’ fastest-selling autobiography, shifting 92,000 copies after just four days on sale. It was so popular that Mrs Blair couldn’t resist flogging copies of the book at knockdown-prices from her eBay account.

Setting aside the black market practices of his wife, Blair made a point of donating royalties from the book (which explores his highly controversial decision to go to war with Iraq) to a charity for injured soldiers. In a gesture which smacks undeniably of guilt, Blair shows how political memoirs are written as a form of catharsis and in some cases, denial. They are used to give the author’s “side of the story” and strive to atone for wrongs committed whilst in power or, at very least, in the public eye. Often disgraced and scandal-ridden MPs choose to put a personal spin on a political story in order to connect the reader to the author’s point of view, allowing for sympathy and a bond of understanding to arise. Many memoirs are written by those close to key political figures, creating adulatory as well as disparaging semi-biographical accounts. In fact, eighteen of Margaret Thatcher’s staff went on to write accounts of their time under her well-documented leadership.

As previously mentioned, Peter Mandelson’s memoir focused on the complex relationships between himself, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown during the New Labour years. Dubbing them the “soap opera years”, Mandelson’s account is typical of political memoirs in that they capture the drama of high-level politics, appealing to readers who otherwise think of the arena as dry, boring and irrelevant. However, in some instances the candid and overly-intimate nature of memoirs can be somewhat off-putting: Tony Blair’s cringe-worthy reference to sex with Cherie earned him a nomination for the Literary Review’s Bad Sex Award. He received the nod for penning the lines: “I needed that love Cherie gave me, selfishly. I devoured it to give me strength. I was an animal following my instinct”. With political memoirs, you can’t always see the wood for the sleaze. In essence, they are often self-justifying pieces or attempts to erase the bad publicity that arose from their time in government; the level of agenda-pushing in the prose is often barely veiled. In the same way that Webcameron broadcasts a mediated cross-section of David Cameron’s personal life, political memoirs are another form of media that has been harnessed to be used as personal propaganda.

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Simon Armitage at the Durham Book Festival (image courtesy of New Writing North)

This year’s Durham Book Festival brought together the finest North-East literary talent as well as numerous famous faces. Alongside Bill Bryson, Peter Snow, and Will Hutton, the poet Simon Armitage took time out from promoting his recent anthology, Seeing Stars, to get involved. Catching up with him at the festival’s launch party proved initially tricky as he was passed from one person to the next, fulfilling his commitments as the festival Poet Laureate.

Armitage believes the role he played had much to offer during the fortnight-long event. “They kind of tie the whole thing together. Quite often when you go to a festival, it’s a bit of a smash-and-grab event. You get off the train, go and do your slot, and you’ll be back on the train perhaps the next morning, having not seen much of the town or the festival; so this is a way of getting more involved with how people experience the festival. It’s about going to events, meeting readers, meeting other writers and just generally playing a part in it.” His specially-commissioned festival poem Fell Ponies is a Romantic-inspired account of walking across the misty countryside of County Durham and encountering the wild horses that were once pit ponies in the North East’s mining collieries. After hearing Armitage read the poem in the dramatic setting of Durham Cathedral, it seems that northern landscapes are an important feature of his work. Born and bred a Northerner, the poet drew upon the wild moors of his home county, Yorkshire, to create The Present which won this year’s Keats-Shelley Prize in October.

Armitage’s poetry is most often compared with that of fellow Yorkshireman Ted Hughes, but the nature of his non-fiction work undoubtedly suggests greater similarities to that of the Irish poet Seamus Heaney due to their similar translations of medieval poems – whilst Heaney translated Beowulf, Armitage worked on his edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. “I got attracted to the poem for all kinds of reasons, but primarily because it has a strong narrative (I’m a narrative poet) and it’s inherently Northern. I never thought that it was going to be anything but a small piece of work that I’d done, and now it turns out that I’ve probably sold more copies of that book than anything else I’ve ever written.” Its success spoke in reviews as well as sales figures – Nicholas Lazen of The Guardian went as far as to claim that Gawain “might even be the best translation of any poem I’ve ever seen”. Armitage grew up very close to where the anonymous Gawain poet is said to have lived, over 600 years ago and felt that the poem had for him, an intrinsic calling: “As you get more experienced as a writer (in the same way as when you get older), you start looking for ancestors and relatives, a bit like that TV programme Who Do You Think You Are? Being a poet is an odd thing to do, and you want to know who else has been one, for what reasons and attempt to make a connection with them.“That poem, in the end, was something that I had a very strong connection with. In cases such as Gawain, you always feel as if a space has opened up for you to walk into, and you can inhabit that role.”

As a prolific modern poet, Armitage has followed in the footsteps of Hughes and Heaney to have poems published in school curriculum anthologies of literature. Many students of our generation will know the poet primarily for the dry wit of “Homecoming”, “November”, “Kid” and “Hitcher”, as well as poems selected from his Book of Matches anthology. For Armitage, there is an inherent problem with the way poetry is taught in schools, meaning that unlike with novels, poems are often neglected by students after finishing their education. “Unfortunately, the situation has arisen where poems in schools are presented as riddles or puzzles and students complain that they appear intimidating.”

To remedy this problem, North East writing agency New Writing North uses Arts Council-funded programme ‘Well Versed’ to send writers into schools so that children can engage more effectively with poetry. Armitage himself actively and regularly participates in school events. “If I go into a school, I try and encourage children to read them in the spirit of which they were written. Poems try to be works of art in the way that literature or film, but you’re not expected to be sat in front of my poems trying to work out it’s meaning, you’re expected to respond to it.” Though university graduates may have studied poetry themselves, many who go on to teach are unaware of the most effective and inspirational ways to communicate the importance of it to future generations. Armitage agrees: “When I was at school we used to do this thing called “blind criticism” where you’d write about a poem you’d never seen before, and the fear was that you’d get it wrong. So I think that’s the element that needs to be taken out of poetry.” To this end, Northumbria University is setting up a Postgraduate Certificate in Creative Writing designed especially for teachers. When asked what advice he’d give to students studying poetry at university, he replies candidly: “What does the poem say to you? Don’t be scared of poets – we don’t know anything. It’s all about saying things in a particular way, it’s all about style. We’re no more observant, no more intelligent, we know no more than anything else. We just develop a way of writing things down.”

As a cultural contributor, Simon Armitage is a jack-of-all trades. Alongside writing poetry and novels, he has written for radio, television, film and stage, as well as working as a regular contributor to The Guardian’s culture section. Through this outlet, he fulfilled the lifelong ambition of meeting and interviewing Morrissey, the lead singer of Armitage’s favourite band – The Smiths. His meeting with the sharp-tongued singer triggered headlines as he controversially referred to the Chinese population as “sub-human” in light of their dubious animal rights record. Despite being pressed on what it was like to finally meet his idol, he bluntly quipped: “ask his lawyers”. A regular gig attendee, Armitage’s passion for music is also channelled through his band The Scaremongers – who peddle what they refer to as “kitchen-sink snow-shaker pop-rock” – perform at local and literary events. His autobiographical book Gig: The Life and Times of a Rock-star Fantasist reflects deeply upon a life lived with music and poetry at its core. The Durham Book Festival’s launch party coincided with the eve of the government’s sweeping budget cuts, and as a poet, a lecturer and a musician, Armitage has plenty to say about the impending threat to the arts. “Obviously I’m against them. It’s grin-and-bear-it time for everybody. I just hope that the cuts are fair and that the arts aren’t persecuted because they’re generally non-profit and therefore don’t count.” He goes on to quote Seamus Heaney, who argued that poetry is an “anthropological necessity.” “Profit through art isn’t monetary – its value is enormous and my point would always be that if you don’t have something to raise your sight out of the gutter then it’s kind of a pointless exercise. Don’t measure the arts in terms of hospitals or prisons – it’s something different.” Armitage’s laureateship at the Durham Book Festival is something to be appreciated by fans and new readers alike. As a straight-talking, down-to-earth, hoop-earringed poet, he comes across as someone decided in his opinion, yet open-minded and optimistic in his outlook for the future of poetry and the wider spectrum of the arts. It can only be hoped that the future generations of poets that follow, will follow suit.

Published in The Courier

News International’s controversial decision to charge users to read Times Online and Sunday Times Online was put to the test last week as subscription figures were released. In a speech to American newspaper editors in July, News Corporation oligarch Rupert Murdoch argued that online readers “should” pay to access Times Online and Sunday Times Online. However, the baby steps of the pay-wall initiative have proved wobbly as the number of visitors to the papers’ sites has slumped from 21 million per month (April) to 2.7 million this month.

By privatising the websites Murdoch has added the online domain to his collection of carefully controlled media outlets which include the book publishers HarperCollins, daily newspaper The Sun and Fox Broadcasting Company. Of course, Murdoch’s public statement deviates from his private agenda as he argues that the income garnered by the pay-wall will support and maintain the prevalence of high-class journalism in the publications. Whilst pay-walls are de rigeur for newspapers in the US, this first attempt in Britain has been received poorly with visitor hits slumping by 87% since its introduction.  Murdoch’s belief in the old ways of business is steadfast, and rather than exploring modern and more innovative marketing and advertising strategies, he has dealt with News International in his own way. His pay-wall strategy was succinctly summed up by one critic as the “milking of [Murdoch’s] dying cash cow dry, one pound at a time”.

Looking at the pay-wall’s business model, it’s hardly a progressive strategy: by charging users to access content, publishers have simply applied the methods of newspaper-selling to the online arena, assuming firstly that the nature of the content is the same, and secondly that sales will be matched.   Surely to be a key player in the fast-paced media industry, the notion of change is, if anything, inherent to the success of a business’s longevity?  Our own Union shop sells The Times for a meagre 30p, yet just to shift the papers promotions teams need to entice students with regular freebies.

As the generation who is most familiar with the Internet, Murdoch has failed to recognise that we, the “digital natives”, are most easily accessed and influenced through the burgeoning realm of social networking outlets. Sites such as Facebook and Twitter encourage access to information, whereas the Times pay-wall encourages exclusivity. In any case, the site’s pay-as-you-go features are all too easily undermined by a single and instantaneous click on a rival newspaper website, or even just Google.

Comedian and Guardian columnist David Mitchell posed the salient question of whether the paper he writes for would follow suit if the pay-wall were to be successful: “Are we to believe that the Guardian wouldn’t institute something similar? Or would it be happy to be reduced to the online equivalent of a freesheet?”  Either way, it is presently too early to foresee whether Murdoch’s pay-wall will be a publishing success story or failure. If things don’t work out, the Sunday Times could consider staff cuts: getting rid of moron-cum-“social commentator” Jeremy Clarkson should certainly save a quid or two.

Published in The Courier