For the Love of Money

by Bill Whiting

  “Ten per cent of a £100,000 debt!” she scorned. “That’s irresistible! But I’ll take it. That means the three of us own the company, all 112% of it. And I’ll have a small financial stake in a big commercial headache.”

  Miller and King also decided to give up their locally rented apartments, and agreed to each buy a camp bed and move into the office. “The Chronicle is at war with the mafia at the Post – we shall take to the mattresses!” Miller declared.

  The rival Weekly Post ran to around seventy pages and looked every column inch a proper newspaper. It was rich in advertising, but was also well balanced with ample editorial content, including a front-page lead story in the last issue, which reported a shocking and reader-grabbing local incident of infanticide. The only flaw Miller and King could detect was a tendency to publish, at rather too frequent intervals, photographs of Sir Basil Hathaway at various local events. “It looks like the editor has a three-bedroom apartment up Hathaway’s arse,” King commented.

  The Post looked as if it must employ dozens of professional staff. “All considered, it doesn’t look too promising,” King said, as Miller nodded.

  “Bloody hell,” Rachel chipped in. “I wish I’d met you two mugs a few months ago instead of Khan. I’d be in Hawaii now.”

  “Anyway,” Miller said to King, “I’m an adman, so I’ll look after the advertising. You were a junior reporter years ago, so you can see to the editorial, and Rachel can do the rest. How’s that with you?”

  “That’s fine, partner,” King responded. “Two questions, though. First, what’s our pay then?”

  “Well,” Miller answered, “if we take the revenues less costs – less depreciation on the equipment, and new capital spending, of course – and we divide fifty-fifty the 107%, less Rachel’s ten per cent share, that leaves fuck all pay for me and fuck all for you and Rachel too.”

  “Mmm… for three people who are broke that’s a pretty bleak prospect,” King said. “Still,” he added, “as an old Chinese chum of mine used to say: ‘Heaven won’t cancel winter because we don’t like the cold’.”

  “So what’s the second question?” Miller asked.

  “Who is the boss?” King replied.

  “What do you mean, who’s the boss?” Miller queried.

  “Well, I’d like to be the boss,” King said. “We need someone who can make any essential and urgent big decisions, just in case we can’t agree. As my old Chinese friend said: ‘One mountain with two tigers means trouble’.”

  “This is a damn molehill, not a mountain,” Miller said.

  “Ah, there you go, see!” King responded. “When house is too small, women will quarrel.”

  “Okay,” Miller said, “I’ll do the advertising and you do the editorial – and you can also be Emperor Ring-a-Ding King, and ruler of all the coffee mugs and filing cabinets. But just zip it up on the wise Chinese stuff will you!”

  “Done!” King answered. “I just needed to be the boss, that’s all.”

  But just as King was being crowned at the Chronicle, Sir Basil Hathaway at the Post was planning his downfall. Hathaway had convened a meeting of his six senior managers, and stood at the end of the boardroom table as they sat before him, armed with pens and notepads.

  “We have an important matter to deal with,” Hathaway began. “The Chronicle has been bought by two men from London. I wasn’t concerned when Khan was running it. He was no trouble at all. But these two could be different. I don’t like the look of them, and intend to run them off the patch. I want them out of here fast. And to achieve this I’ve got a four-point plan.

  “Number one,” he continued, as his staff diligently wrote down that number, “for a six-month period, we will offer all our major advertisers, who also advertise in the Chronicle, a twenty per cent discount in return for exclusive use of the Post.”

  An audible gasp emerged from Paul Raynor, the Post’s advertising director.

  “Number two,” Hathaway then said, “each week, until further notice, we will run a simple reader competition with a £1,000 first prize. This will be launched with a first-week prize of twenty thousand pounds. Yes, I said twenty thousand!”

  At this, the assembly downed pens and clapped enthusiastically. But the applause stopped abruptly as Hathaway boomed, “Number three: I want a big and exclusive story on our front page every single week from now on.”

  The fifty-year-old Post editor Jock McKinlay stiffened nervously and stared back fearfully as Hathaway continued the briefing. “McKinlay,” he barked, “each week you will pay a bonus of £200 to whichever reporter writes the story which is chosen as our front-page lead.”

  More spontaneous applause and cheering broke out, and continued until Hathaway raised his hand and began to speak again. “This is a very big investment,” he said, “and I expect you to deliver. Now get back to your desks and get on with it.”

  “Excuse me, Sir,” McKinlay said, “you said it was a four-point plan.” He then glanced down at his notepad and added, “I’ve only got three down here.”

  “Well, number four can wait a few months,” Hathaway replied. “If the Chronicle isn’t closed quickly, then, in accordance with point four of my plan, you lot will all be out of work and I’ll get some competent managers in.”

  Hathaway stared back at six totally silent executives.

  “Well, no applause for that one then?” Hathaway said cheerfully as the team shuffled out of the room.

  Hathaway then sat down with a look of satisfaction on his face. He was a winner and had been for all of his seventy-two years, and was determined to remain so. He was not the brightest of intellects, but had enjoyed a comfortable upbringing in a very well-heeled home. A good private school education had also given him something more important than brains: an unshakable confidence in himself and the superiority of his abilities. He’d grown up in a world in which the master-servant relationship was well established, and had all the self-assurance needed to exercise authority. Although family money had set him up in business, he’d done well. Whereas others may have to work hard at making bold, courageous decisions, and being both dauntless in the face of competition and positive in the face of opportunity, Hathaway’s deep pool of self-belief provided all he needed.

  He disliked competition, not because it was threatening, but because he felt, instinctively, that it was ‘out of order’. It was not in the proper scheme of things for other people to hinder him; their purpose was to serve him. The rightful purpose of a free and competitive market economy, was to select and reward merit – and his rightful purpose was to be one of the selected and rewarded.

  EIGHT

  It had been a very long time since King had been a junior newspaper reporter, and he needed, once again, to consider the question: What is the nature of news? He also had to come to terms with the fact that small towns make small news.

  Perusing back numbers of the Chronicle, King concluded that almost everything which happened in and around Cosworth would not, by London standards, merit the stuff of actual ‘news happenings’. The kind of events that made front-page news in Cosworth would not make one news paragraph in London. And to a strange and growing degree, King thought, if something doesn’t make the news, it doesn’t really happen; it’s an unimportant, unknown, non-event. These were days before social media had boomed into mass use, and only if something made the news, if it reached society’s collective awareness, was it bona fide real.

  Indeed, King figured, even if something didn’t happen, but the news media said it did, then, to all intents and purposes it did happen. Furthermore, a truth of which only one individual is aware, is a much lesser truth than an untruth which, via the media, nonetheless achieves wide collective awareness as a truth.

  It’s the same mechanism which can make even untalented, unpleasant and banal people important. Media coverage can make them significant as ‘celebrities’; whilst i
nfinitely better, but unknown people, remain unimportant and uncelebrated.

  Furthermore, even the unimportant things unimportant people do, suddenly become important when they are done on reality TV shows.

  But perhaps, King pondered further, this was not an entirely new phenomenon. After all, even Adolf Hitler, a man of almost uniquely and colossal negative merit, became extremely popular. Thanks to his talented PR man Goebbels, the Führer achieved celebrity status.

  But these thoughts were not helping King. The news challenge he faced in Cosworth was formidable. He was looking to fill an unimportant newspaper, in an unimportant place, full of unimportant people, doing unimportant things. His meandering mind reflected that his new job could be compared to that of the editor of Ant Weekly – if such a newspaper was published in an ant nest. Once in a blue moon, the ants might discover a nearby sticky toffee, meriting a ‘Sticky Toffee Bonanza – Ants Go Wild’ headline. But, other than that, the scene was one of unrelenting repetition and apathy. No workers’ revolutions. No amazing revelations about the Queen’s half million children. Not even ‘Problem Page’ letters from neurotic ants suffering identity crises and questioning the purpose of life.

  A typically minuscule item in a Chronicle back number read: ‘The Cosworth Hospice Satellite Television Installation Appeal, raised £18 at their charity night quiz at the Coach & Horses public house last Saturday night. Everyone thanked the secretary, Angela Thomas, for organising the event and congratulated the winner, Maurine Martin, who was the only entrant who knew that the Cuyahoga is the biggest river in Northern Ohio’.

  Occasionally, more interesting events had occurred, such as the entirely unsolicited and malicious motorcycle delivery of forty-two ‘Jumbo’ cheese-and-tomato pizzas to a Women’s Institute meeting. “We are investigating complaints by both the WI and Pronto Pizzas,” Inspector Robert Williams told the Chronicle, “and we would like to hear from anyone who saw youths using the public telephone at the corner of Albert and Crimson Streets at around 11am on Tuesday.”

  Other stories of apparent little consequence had produced curious consequences and then became ‘runners’. For example, the theft of manhole covers in the High Street by scrap metal thieves had provoked a subsequent controversy – because the old British-made manhole covers were replaced by new ones of Korean manufacture. This, in turn, also provoked a small storm at the Town Hall, when a group of literally minded young people admonished the Town Surveyor for not referring to the manhole covers by using the gender-neutral term, ‘inspection covers’.

  Continuing to chew upon the evident essence of ‘news value’, King considered that an obvious starting point is that a news event must be unusual: the ‘man bites dog’ rule. But, he thought, perhaps less immediately obvious, is the fact that the best news is always bad news. For example, the tenuous possibility that a moderate storm might strike Britain in the coming month, is much bigger news than the fact that, just yesterday, Britain had luckily just missed a terribly fierce storm.

  Fear sells, and the basic journalistic rule of thumb is that the worse the news is, the better it is. In fact, if the nation enjoyed a day filled with no horrific accidents, robberies, murders or ghastly misfortunes, then newsrooms would be the only gloomy places in the country.

  So, it seemed to King, the best journalists have to be particularly skilled in the art of turning moderately bad news into terrible news. And they also have to be able to combat the dreaded ‘quiet news day’, which is bound to occur from time to time. After all, if one looks at any newspaper on any day, it’s easy to see that the happening described in the lead story might not have happened at all. For example, an earthquake which grabbed the headlines might well have not happened.

  And, presumably, if that had been the case, the second news item would then have been promoted to the lead story, say a multiple car crash. But of course that also might not have happened either. And, King mused, this could go on and on until the worst thing that happened was that a child fell off a bicycle and suffered a grazed elbow on a gravel path. And in that event, journalists would have to pursue extremely remote fears that a deadly bug contained in cat faeces could have been buried in the gravel path.

  And it was with this ‘bad news’ train of thought, that King finally stumbled upon his front-page lead story for that week.

  Whilst outside the Cosworth Public Library, he overheard a distraught elderly man, with soaked trousers, complaining that he had been ‘took short’ whilst in the town’s park. He had then discovered the toilets had been closed, for economic reasons, by the local council. He had rushed to the toilet door, only to find it locked, and bearing an unhelpful message directing people to the public conveniences beside the public library, which were: ‘Open 8am to 6pm Mon to Sat, Closed Sundays between 1 Oct to 31 March inclusive.’

  And as King pursued the story, it grew in stature. It seemed the local council, whilst closing the toilets, had invested in building an expensive new skateboarding facility. As one pensioner told King: “It’s older people like me, who had to fight for the country and now pay the council taxes, who are the ones who really need the toilets. The young ones do nothing, pay nothing and get everything – and they don’t have prostate trouble either.”

  King gathered other quotations which added extra spice to the story. An elderly lady with an arthritic hip, was quoted as asking if she was expected to throw down her walking stick and sprint half a mile to the library, dragging her Pekinese dog behind her. And another man who, in extremis, had been obliged to take a dump behind the toilets, consequently soiled, and had to discard, a very expensive and initialled silk handkerchief.

  King photographed the complainers, and went to the park to take a shot of the offending closed convenience. Luckily, whilst there, he also found the silk handkerchief on top of a small brown heap. Amazingly, close by, was another heap, evidently deposited by a woman, who had afterwards obviously been obliged to wipe her bum using an envelope with her name and address on it. King photographed that too, though he was unsure whether it would be ethically appropriate to print a photograph of a turd, with the producer’s name and address sat on top of it.

  A few interviews with teenagers then added an interesting element of ‘generation gap’ controversy, with one youth playfully suggesting the old people should get skateboards, so they could get to the library bog in less than two minutes. The story was then completed by the local council spokesperson, who rejected King’s suggestion that the matter warranted an urgent review and an emergency meeting should be called. The official said, “You will have to hold on until the Parks and Recreation Committee meets in two weeks, at which time any public discomfort will be considered.”

  ‘DESPERATE FOR THE LOO? Hold on for two weeks, says council’, was a headline which almost wrote itself. And with this story in the bag, King churned through a small mountain of regular editorial fodder needed to fill that week’s Chronicle. He was rather pleased with himself, and felt he had not lost his journalistic touch. However, his partners were far from impressed.

  “So,” Miller said, “in this world full of drama; this world pregnant with tragedy and despair, triumph and joy – all you can come up with is an old bloke who pissed himself and two pensioners who took a dump behind a wall? That’s some nose for news you’ve got there. Bill King, ace newshound, sniffs out a turd! Bill, this is quite literally, a crap story.”

  “Look, Jamie, it’s a good story,” King protested. “People like controversy. They like a good local row, especially when they can have a go at the council. Everybody hates local government.”

  “This is a great picture, though,” Rachel butted in.

  “What’s that?” Miller said.

  “It’s a lump of poo with a name, address and postal code on it,” Rachel answered. “Presumably, someone was very proud of giving birth to it. You’ve got to admit, Jamie, this turd has something important written all over it.”r />
  “Okay,” King said, “we’ll drop the shit picture, but we have to run the story. It’s all we’ve got and the print deadline is now.”

  Miller reluctantly nodded and King rang the printer to give the go-ahead to run the paper. As he put the phone down, he looked at Miller and said, “So, Advertising Director, how did you do this week?”

  “Not good, as a matter of fact,” Miller answered. “It’s strange. The small ads have held up, but we’re down on the bigger retailers and the estate agents. I’ve been on the phone and knocking doors all week, trying to get some new customers, but nothing doing. I think they might be waiting to see what we make of the paper before they commit. That’s why we needed some good editorial this week, Bill.”

  “Ah,” said King, “so you’ve had a crap week too. I thought you said you’d spent twenty years in advertising.”

  “This isn’t really advertising,” Miller said. “It’s not about selling famous branded products; it’s just about printing lists: lists of houses, lists of job vacancies, lists of plumbers. It’s just lists. My reputation was built on creating and building blue chip famous brands.”

  “Well,” King responded, “as an old Chinese friend of mine once said, ‘Reputation is like drawing a cake in the sand – not much use when you’re hungry’. How long can we keep going before we get some cash in?”

  “About four weeks,” Rachel said. “We’ve got to pay the printer and distributor up front, and I spoke to the bank manager today. He won’t release any more overdraft unless he sees the business financials picking up. He said he might match any additional funds that we put in, but that’s it.”

  “Well, we haven’t got anything left to put in,” King said, “and even if we get the paper moving now, the cash won’t come through for a month or more.”