Times, it is a changin'

The Independent’s tabloid strategy has maintained its momentum into the New Year: trade estimates reach me suggesting that it will be able to claim an ABC for January of almost 250,000 - a healthy 12 per cent up on the same month last year.

Now, as I have written here before, this is not life-transforming and still leaves the Indy a clear fourth in the general quality market. But it has sure put a spring in its step and represents the first signs of circulation life for years.

The January increase will undoubtedly encourage publisher Ivan Fallon to introduce tabloid editions on Saturdays and Sundays - I expect that will begin to happen in the next few weeks - and will hasten the day when the Independent is only tabloid (though that is still some way off).

That will be the real test: the Indy, like the Times, has been churning out tens of thousands of tabloids on top of its normal broadsheet run. The extra availability helps to boost sales - but it is very expensive in newsprint costs, which come on top of the promotion costs in each region as the tabloid edition is rolled out. The move to tabloid for the Indy and the Times is becoming as expensive as a price war.

The long-term success of the tabloid strategy can only be assessed when "unsolds" return to normal levels and the promotion ceases. But for the moment the Independent has plenty to be pleased about.

Its tabloid experiment is faring far better than the Times, which, at a trade estimate of 660,000 for January, looks like being around 1.7 per cent down year-on-year (though the tabloid Times has reversed what looked like a relentless slide to 600,000 and below for most of last year).

But the big loser is what the Indy still regards as its main rival, the Guardian, which seems to have slipped permanently below its previous 400,000 benchmark. The Guardian is heading for a January ABC of 385,000 - more than six per cent down year-on-year. Nor does that look like the end of its slide: last week trade estimates suggest it managed a circulation of only 376,000.

There was a time when Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian’s editor, used to dream of broadening his paper’s appeal beyond its Left-wing, public-sector core readership to move into Times territory, with the aim of reaching 600,000. He used to bemoan the resources being swallowed up by his paper’s loss-making Sunday sister, the Observer, arguing privately that he could make much better use of the several millions it lost.

But that never happened and the Guardian retreated even further into its Left-wing laager. Its constant preaching of the politics of compassion sits strangely with the often mean-spirited and malicious manner in which it treats those of whom it disapproves (I write from personal experience but many others will know what I’m talking about) while its news and analysis has become almost entirely driven by its own narrow agenda. At its worst it is little better than a student rag.

None of this affected its bottom line as long as its near-monopoly of public-sector recruitment ads stayed strong. Now that Gordon Brown has indicated that public spending needs to be put on a tighter leash its finances are likely to suffer just as private-sector advertising in other papers is picking up.

But it is not shortage of money that has stopped the Guardian from spreading its wings. It is a harshness of tone and spirit which now seems to be alienating even its existing readership.

Meanwhile its own plans for a tabloid remain locked behind closed doors in a rigor mortis of decision-making as sales seep away. A miserable January will likely concentrate minds: perhaps it won’t be long before the Guardian, too, is forced to roll out its tabloid edition.

Only the journalistically naive think that there is a contradiction in terms between being a political editor and writing for the Sun. Once again, the feisty tabloid’s political editor, Trevor Kavanagh, whose contacts at the highest levels of the Number 10 machine are widely known, has scooped every rival with his leaking of the conclusions of the Hutton Inquiry. Three years ago, Kavanagh revealed the date of the General Election had been postponed, which was how most of the Cabinet - and the Queen - found out. Alastair Campbell was rumoured to be Kavanagh’s source on that occasion. Trevor is being tight-lipped as to who was the mole this time round but isn’t it interesting that the Sun’s coup knocked Blair’s narrow squeak on tuition fees off the front pages? The Sun’s cheek has displeased at least one person, Lord Hutton himself. Hutton is a man normally noted for his icy reserve but yesterday he was positively bitchy about the Sun, suggesting bizarrely that running the leak was "not in the public interest". He even hinted at legal action, though the fact that his inquiry was on a purely non-statutory basis suggests his anger with Kavanagh is getting the better of his normally razor-sharp legal mind. His total castigation of every level of the BBC, while letting Kavanagh’s confederate Alastair Campbell off the hook completely, suggests the law lord is less than friendly to journalists as a class. Indeed, you might call him the anti-journalist judge.

The return of I’m a Celebrity - Get Me Out of Here! on Monday night proved to be a surefire winner for ITV with almost 11 million tuning in, no doubt helped by topless model Jordan’s silicone-enhanced assets - which means, I suppose, she’s earned her £100,000 fee already. I was not one of them - I hate this kind of trash TV - but even non-viewers will find the show hard to escape: the tabloids are full of it and even the broadsheets are giving it generous acreage. Perhaps ITV should send them all a bill.