When is a no comment a comment? Well, here's an example. Media Week reports that News International (NI) has moved closer to launching a free London afternoon paper. Its confidence in this story springs from the fact that NI has registered a potential name with the Patent Office, thelondonpaper, and has appointed a headhunter, who it identifies as Martin Bowley of Kendall Tarrant, to recruit a sales director.
The magazine also says distribution is being organised through coffee chains, including Starbucks. And there's even more. According to industry sources, the newspaper, which has been tested through focus groups, will be a mixture of London and entertainment news. So lots of detail in a follow-up to Media Week's first revelation early last month about NI's impending plans. It all sounds so different from NI's reaction to the launch of Metro when I was told that Rupert Murdoch's senior executives thought it would be a foolish act. It would never make money, I was told, and would surely fail. In fact, Metro quickly became profitable and branched out from London into other cities to become the Britain's fourth largest daily.
Naturally enough, I called NI's corporate relations department to see what it had to say about Media Week's tale. I asked a single question: had it registered thelondonpaper as reported? A spokesman eventually called back to say that the team preparing a prospective paper were off site, so NI was not commenting on the subject at present. A little naive in some ways, because it confirmed the existence of a team. In a way, a "no comment" on the title probably confirms that too, and therefore becomes "a comment". But hang on. It sounds more like an online title, doesn't it? Is this going to be a print paper and/or a website? All very intriguing, eh?
