Vertical Insanity: how the media is reshaping in strange ways
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I was sat by the shores of Lake Orta in northern Italy, when my partner shoved her phone under my nose. “Have you seen this?” she asked.
‘This’ was a news story indicating that Michael Gove — the former Education Secretary and long-time Tory MP — would become the new editor of The Spectator, taking over, with almost immediate effect, from the incumbent, Fraser Nelson. It was an appointment that followed the £100m takeover of the magazine — the UK’s prestige (small ‘c’) conservative weekly — by the hedge fund tycoon turned media magnate, Sir Paul Marshall.
The Spectator is where I started my career as a broadcast journalist, working there for a couple of years shortly after the Brexit referendum. It wasn’t a love match, for reasons both ideological and pragmatic, but it was perfect training for everything I’ve done since. And unlike basically any other UK media institution, The Spectator has had a swaggering last decade, exhibiting both total confidence in what it’s doing and the financial results to bear that out. Fraser Nelson was one of the few leaders on Fleet Street (or the Fleetish diaspora) who understood the requirement for joined-up thinking in the modern media landscape. (I remember many evenings working late at The Spectator’s fabulous offices in Westminster, thinking I was the only person still in the building as I scrambled to get the podcast edited and out. Then I’d hear the door open, Fraser walk in, and soon enough my editing laptop had disappeared, along with him, for a couple of ours where he’d feverishly remark my work. Irritating though this was at the time, my experiences subsequently have been that most newspaper/magazine editors barely know of the existence of their podcast division — let alone have the skill or appetite to work on it directly!).
At the same time as this was all happening over on Old Queen Street (another of Marshall’s publications, UnHerd, had recently moved in next door — perhaps a sign that the noisy neighbours were coming for the prestige populace), another story was developing. Tortoise Media, a slow-news start-up led by former BBC bod James Harding, announced that it was in talks to buy The Observer, the historic Sunday newspaper, owned by the Guardian Media Group. The Observer has been knocking about since 1791; Tortoise since 2018. Despite starting life as a mixed-media platform, Tortoise has become an audio-first publisher, with decent hits like Sweet Bobby and Pig Iron building a modest name for the brand (at quite extraordinary cost).
What the hell’s going on then?
I see these two stories as inter-related but profoundly different. On the one hand you have Paul Marshall and his apparent ambition to challenge Rupert Murdoch for media space on the British political right. He has already launched GB News, a linear television station, to mixed results, as well as UnHerd, a website that took a few goes to find its feet but is currently an important part of the media mix. £100m for a weekly magazine at a time when all trends seem to be moving away from that format is a big risk. It’s a show of faith in what the Speccie has achieved with its subscriptions and digital strategy, but also a repudiation of the old wisdom that you can’t buy class. Actually, you can’t build class. You can’t build prestige. But you can buy it (and most readers won’t notice the difference).
Clearly, Marshall perceives the Spectator as an important vertical in his spectrum. I suspect that the brand will soon be integrated throughout the portfolio. Perhaps UnHerd will be refashioned as The Spectator presents… UnHerd, the digital Speccie. Perhaps Spectator TV (which outgoing chair Andrew Neil put a lot of energy into after his acrimonious departure from GB News) will be integrated as an hourly segment on GB News. Who knows? But what’s clear is that acquiring The Spectator gives Marshall access to a legacy asset, to cast the warm glow of familiarity across his more insurgent, problematic vehicles.
Over with the Centrist Dads of Tortoise, the same sort of thing is happening. Superficially, it seems improbable that Tortoise Media might acquire The Observer. After all, one is a powerful, prestigious news-making organisation and the other is a start-up that has struggled to nail down a consistent identity over the past 5 years. But Tortoise Media is more than the sum of its parts. When it launched in 2018, it was that rarest of things: a media content company that had raised Venture Capital funding. Indeed, it’s the fundraising abilities that are more important here than anything else. Nobody is asserting that Tortoise will buy the Observer in the regular fashion — a bigger company snapping up a smaller one — but instead, the implication is they will do so leading an investment consortium. Private investors and funds around the world trust the team there to make this acquisition, even if it seems like corporate inversion superficially.
The other note on the Tortoise deal is that the Guardian Media Group needs to cut costs, and, due to the structuring of the trust that owns it, can’t raise money as flexibly as Tortoise. Ideologically, the Guardian and Tortoise are in the same part of the field (a very different part of the field to Marshall and the Spectator). And so what we’re getting are two mixed-vertical blocs emerging, one to serve the centre-right (tempering the less-centre viewers of GB News) and another to serve the centre-left.
But, beyond all this manoeuvring, both deals are a sign of the struggles of the media right now to establish coherent, bankable identities. The Spectator has a long history and a reputation as a power base within the Tory party. Boris Johnson, Prime Minister until a couple of years ago, was a former editor. Gove, who takes over now, was touted as a future PM and ran for the leadership of his party. (As a side note, I saw Gove, a few weeks ago, going into Tate Britain. For those in the know, Tate Britain is the museum where, apparently, much of the Vote Leave Brexit dealings were done. So when I saw him go in I started speculating about what else he could possibly be conspiring about…). Gove had previously been seen as a mentor to current Tory leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch, who used to work at the Spectator. Could Marshall be paying a premium for access to the new regime?
It seems unlikely. What that £100m is buying (not to mention whatever signing-on fee the ex-MP commands) is the sentence “Spectator editor Michael Gove”. A credible publication, a credible political voice. It’s a far cry from the ragtag band of Tory has-beens who’ve appeared as presenters on GB News, which was too politically toxic for those with serious ambitions (though perhaps the success of Reform at the last election has changed that calculation). Similarly, for Tortoise, The Observer may well come with one of the most established advertising sales teams in British journalism. But even if it doesn’t, it’s a newspaper with committed relationships with top-tier advertisers and partners. If you’re cold calling Patek Phillipe, what’s the easier pitch? “Hello, I’m calling from a new podcast we’re launching which we’re hoping will get — hello? Mr Philippe, are you there?” or “hello, I’m calling from The Observer”. Your CV can be as credible as you like, but most decision-makers respond to simple brand recognition.
This strange realignment suggests a world in which heavyweight publications become mere verticals of a bigger strategy. It’s not a new idea: it’s what Mr Murdoch has been doing for decades. But right now it feels like the situation is ‘integrate or wither’ because of the media’s inherent catch-22. Legacy assets are struggling with both diminishing revenue and the difficulties of recapitalisation, while insurgent assets are struggling for market penetration and value extraction. Start-ups need credibility, prestige titles need cash. And this is why these sorts of union make a strange sense.
The question will be for a few years down the line. Will The Spectator and Observer become the media’s ships of Theseus? Hollowed out and carved up and no longer recognisable for what they once were? Or, even with shiny new parts, will they still be discernibly those titles that have held fast for hundreds of years?
Having given up on Twitter (for non-Musk reasons, really) I am now on BlueSky!
