Inside Express Newspapers: Desmond's law

The takeover of Express Newspapers by Richard Desmond, the publisher of Asian Babes and OK! magazine and owner of adult television channels, was greeted with near-universal dismay at the Express Group when it was announced to staff in November 2000. I was as dismayed as anybody. As a writer on the business of media for the daily and Sunday titles, I knew my working life was about to change, probably not for the better. Like many colleagues, I sought escape routes. Unlike some, I was not brave enough to quit on the spot.

I had been one of the previous owner's favoured employees. Or at least that's how it seemed when Clive Hollick wrote to say I would be receiving a £40,000 bonus for helping to turn around the Express Newspaper Group during his ownership. Hollick had transformed the paper into a left-leaning, more serious kind of tabloid, very different from the Thatcherite cheerleader it had been. Sadly, because of a lack of marketing funds, few potential new readers knew about that change. With the purchase of the group by Desmond, there would inevitably be changes. It was only a matter of weeks before the editor Rosie Boycott departed, taking her liberal-ish views with her. Hello, asylum-seeker bashing, we thought; goodbye Ms Boycott.

During Hollick's ownership, I was left pretty much to myself to write about the business media world. Apart from a couple of occasions – once when the Labour peer accused me of costing him millions after his partnership talks with Carlton Communications were disclosed in his own paper, and once when I got wind of United's deal to sell its broadcast assets to Granada after bumping into all Granada's public-relations advisers leaving a lift in the building – I enjoyed an immense amount of independence, free from proprietorial intervention.

From the beginning of Desmond's ownership it became clear that media business stories would attract the new proprietor's special attention. Many such stories were spiked once Desmond was told about them. He thought ITV Digital would collapse, and therefore demanded negative stories about it. He didn't like anybody knocking BSkyB, the satellite operator part-owned by his favourite media baron, Rupert Murdoch. BSkyB also happened to provide Desmond with a healthy income from the distribution of some of his adult stations.

Complaints about proprietorial interference to the then Sunday Express editor Michael Pilgrim – later to make the same complaints as his sacking became inevitable – were largely ignored. Some colleagues, such as the investigative reporter Michael Gillard, left in disgust at their stories being spiked for commercial reasons or because they offended Desmond's friends.

The way the intervention worked in the early days was pretty straightforward. To begin with, it most affected the Sunday business section. Normally by Thursday the editor, Pilgrim, made the cigar-chomping proprietor aware of the business news and features list. Stories or ideas he didn't like were spiked; sometimes Desmond suggested ideas himself. The daily business section was less affected. The major changes there involved the introduction of a business gossip column, which seemed to most people a good idea, and more space. However, when the then city editor Patrick Hosking asked for more resources for the enlarged section, he was told by Desmond in front of his staff: "You don't need more resources, Patrick. There's loads of PRs out there waiting to hand stories to you on a plate."

Again in front of an enthralled audience of City reporters, Desmond asked Hosking to shake hands on an agreement to expand the section from the following day. In a piece of pure theatre, Hosking hesitated before shaking the proprietor's hand. A few weeks later Hosking took voluntary redundancy. The voluntary redundancy scheme under which he left reduced the journalistic staff of the Daily and Sunday Express and the Daily Star by about 25 per cent across the group. Interestingly, there were few, if any, compulsory redundancies, and Desmond's executives negotiated the programme with a strengthened National Union of Journalists' chapel.

Like Hollick, Desmond was keen to bring down costs. Asked by the then deputy editor Chris Blackhurst for a replacement for the departing medical correspondent, Desmond said: "Why can't we just take stories off the internet?" For Desmond the internet, with its huge resource of free content, is a means of saving money rather than spending it (as other newspaper groups have done by starting up websites).

Under Hollick, a large group of journalists had transferred to or were recruited for the Express titles' heavily loss-making internet sites. They found themselves in limbo when the new owner sold the group company for which they worked for a nominal sum to a group linked to one of Desmond's financial advisers. At first it looked like the hapless hacks would lose their jobs with no compensation. But, after strong union backing and protestations to Desmond, they negotiated an acceptable package.

My direct contact with Desmond at this time was minimal, but that changed one day in 2001 when I was summoned to the office of the then new Sunday Express editor Martin Townsend. He told me he wanted me to edit a new media section for his paper, an offer that came as a surprise and brought both excitement and foreboding. My surprise was partly because of what had occurred minutes before meeting Townsend. I had chaired an NUJ chapel meeting that had passed a motion – later to be featured on BBC2's Newsnight – condemning the Express group's scaremongering headlines on asylum. So I hardly felt my relationship with Desmond was going to be a smooth one.

Townsend said the job would be fairly straightforward. "It will be quite simple, David. Richard likes these companies over here and he doesn't like these here." He offered me sight of a notebook in which he had written these likes and dislikes. I declined to look. At midnight on the Friday before the debut of the section, called Media Uncovered, the editor called me into his office having read more than 2,000 words of copy to the proprietor. "Richard wants a few changes," he said. "He wants you to call Clive Hollick the bearded Clive Hollick. And he wants you to say..." To my surprise the changes requested were slight rather than the substantial reworking I had expected.

However, the demands grew. One week Martin called me to say that the size of the section would be doubled to four pages and it was to include a double-page spread on Lord (Conrad) Black, owner of the Telegraph Group. Lord Black had raised the price of The Daily Telegraph by 5p. "We've got him. Give it everything you can," Martin said. At this point I decided to quit editing the section and prepared myself to leave the Express Group altogether. I called in sick and then issued a statement through the NUJ complaining of editorial interference in "supposedly objective reporting". I expected that my five-year stint at Express Newspapers was about to end.

Strangely, it did not happen. When I returned to work three weeks later, the proprietor welcomed me back enthusiastically. By mutual consent I resigned from the editorship of Media Uncovered, but resumed my position as a senior financial reporter.

Twenty-eight months on, I have begun to view Desmond quite differently from the way I did when he took over. I now believe him to be largely a positive force for the Express Group, even though some of the people who work for it are not valued as much as they should be.

Sure, he would be a far more respected proprietor, and a more successful one, if he interfered editorially on fewer occasions and was less keen on cutting editorial resources to the bone. But he has passion and enthusiasm and a will to win. He is certainly not afraid to take on the mighty Mail group. When he took over, one of my more experienced colleagues said that Desmond's meddling in the editorial of the papers would at least give them an identity, something that had been missing for several years. I can now see that is exactly what is happening, even though it is the Daily Star, rather than either of the Express titles, that has developed the strongest identity. Whether the Express titles, which require a more subtle character change, can ever regain their poise remains to be seen.

David Hellier recently moved from the Express Group to become acting news editor for the City & Business section of 'The Independent'. A longer version of this article appears in the 'British Journalism Review', available from SAGE Publications, 6 Bonhill Street, London EC2A 4PU (subscriptions: 020-7330 1266; subscription@sagepub.co.uk)