Harvested, then expertly montaged, from the experiences and opinions of 43 journalists, Enquirer effectively distills the anger, regret and loss of confidence among newspaper staff, not least because some of them still sanguinely consider what they do to be an essentially noble vocation. Yet Enquirer shows the industry on a cliff-edge; regardless of the centuries of history behind it, the UK’s Fourth Estate risks losing its very raison d’être—the gathering and dissemination of information—amid an exponentially evolving information revolution. At times the sense of loss, and the unfairness of it all, is palpable in Enquirer—a visceral, occasionally contradictory elegy to a profession on the cusp of changes so fundamental that it could well be unrecognisable within a generation—assuming, of course, it can remain an genuine profession at all.
Certainly timely, given Lord Leveson’s unremitting inquiry into the “culture, practice and ethics of the Press”, Enquirer spends some time outlining print journalism’s “perfect storm”, not least the vicious denigration of the profession following the revelations about the Milly Dowler phone-hacking. That said, the production is critical enough to confirm that some practices, such as the paying of public officials for stories, were long-established and simply ignored by startlingly complacent editors and publishers as long as they resulted in exclusives and increased sales. Disappointingly too often overlooked is the small matter of journalists’ continued ability to earn a living, given that austerity-fixated accountants continue to wield the axe, encouraging an increased reliance on free “citizen journalism” and the blatant exploitation of unpaid interns.
Behind the latter, of course, is the rapid shift of both readers and advertisers to the world wide web, which—by offering ‘content’ and advertising space for free—has unequivocally pulled the rug from under the newspaper industry’s traditional business model. This is not, necessarily, a problem solvable by those so rooted in the industry’s traditional ways, which is why Enquirer cannot suggest a suitable treatment for this undeniably sick industry. But then, no one has yet found a new paradigm that works: as Claire Enders—founder of respected media research company Enders Analysis—recently explained to Lord Leveson, not even the Daily Mail can be said to have yet found the “magic bullet” to guarantee commercial success in a digital-only future.
Whether or not such success is even possible—whether we are witnessing the unavoidable decline and fall of another industry, or just its necessarily violent evolution to suit a new media environment—at least Enquirer reminds us why print newspapers and the journalism they support have mattered in the past, and arguably could still matter today: the role of local papers in strengthening the self-identity of local communities; the “public interest” value when holding the powerful to account; and, just occasionally, the genuine good they can directly achieve—most effectively shown in Enquirer by Ros Wynne-Jones’s account of her Sudan campaign which managed to raise £1 million from Daily Express readers.
It’s said we too often miss something only after its gone; Enquirer, if nothing else, is a timely reminder of why we shouldn’t take the continued existence of professional journalism for granted.
First published in the National Theatre of Scotland Brochure (Autumn/Winter 2012).
