In August 1939, a young woman named Clare Hollingworth got her first journalism assignment. “You must go to Warsaw tonight,” her editor said. Days later, after Hollingworth spotted “hundreds of tanks, armored cars and field guns” near the Polish border with Czechoslovakia, the 27-year-old cub reporter kicked off her career with a once-in-a-lifetime dispatch heralding the outbreak of World War II: “1,000 TANKS MASSED ON POLISH FRONTIER. TEN DIVISIONS REPORTED READY FOR SWIFT STROKE.”
The news organization behind this historic scoop wasn’t one of the newswires, or The New York Times, or the BBC. Rather, the glory belongs to The Daily Telegraph, a conservative London broadsheet that recently went on the block for the first time in nearly two decades. It’s a paper with an illustrious past, whose owners have ranged from Conrad Black and Sir Edward Levy-Lawson to the Berry and Barclay families. And though it doesn’t have the same global cachet as other enduring publications with roots in the 19th century, it is, as the BBC once described it, “an ornament to Britain and one of the world’s great titles…. At its best, the daily and Sunday papers channel the kind of sceptical conservatism that speaks to and for a patriotic and provincial England.”
The Telegraph’s story begins in 1855 when it rolled off the presses and boldly declared itself “the largest, best, and cheapest newspaper in the world.” One hundred sixty-eight years later, The Telegraph holds none of those distinctions. But it might as well, judging by the murderers’ row of media barons that have been identified as prospective suitors. There’s Rupert Murdoch, perhaps keen on one last conquest, whose interest has been reported as if he isn’t imminently stepping down as the executive chairman of News Corp. There’s Lord Rothermere, scion of the legendary Harmsworth dynasty, who has been consolidating influence since taking Daily Mail and General Trust private two years ago. There’s Mathias Döpfner, the charismatic Axel Springer boss, who now has a second chance at acquiring a landmark English-language newspaper after losing out on The Financial Times in 2015.
Others include a group led by GB News co-owner Sir Paul Marshall, who is teaming up with Republican megadonor and fellow hedge-funder Ken Griffin; a group led by the recently knighted former Telegraph editor in chief and erstwhile Dow Jones CEO Will Lewis, who is also reportedly one of two final candidates that Jeff Bezos is considering to run The Washington Post; and a group led by the Northern Irish media proprietor and British tabloid veteran David Montgomery, who now serves as executive chairman of the UK media company National World. The Barclay family, meanwhile, is fighting to wrest their beloved Telegraph Media Group back from Lloyds Bank, which took control of the entity in June after talks over unpaid debt broke down, thus setting the present auction in motion.
That’s a lot of rich and powerful men salivating over a newspaper that’s not exactly massive, unlike, say, The Guardian or the Daily Mail, both of which have exported their brands throughout the English-speaking world.
Why all the fuss?
“Upscale heritage brands have been successful around the world, and they’re the only ones who’ve really made the transition to digital, while many of the startups have turned out to be commercial disasters,” says Kelvin MacKenzie, the former longtime Murdoch lieutenant best known for his ferocious editorship of The Sun. “If you look around, The Financial Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Times [of London], they’ve all been successful. So The Telegraph is viewed as an opportunity to be in the digital age with a heritage brand that has unfilled potential. The bet is that they can turn this into a successful subscription-based product. And also, these big heritage brands give you a calling card at the top table, certainly in the UK.”
Joe Pompeo
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