Source: Independent, The (UK)
Contact:  http://www.independent.co.uk/
Pubdate: Sat, 25 Apr 1998
Our Newshawk writes: "The following article may be important since it was
Rosie Boycott who started the "Legailise cannabis" campaign. Her departure
may see The Independent dropping the campaign."

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Whenever there seems to be a rather thin news list, we have a tradition at
The Independent of making some news ourselves. I don't mean making it up,
just getting ourselves taken over, or hurling an editor or two out of the
tower to keep the chattering classes happy. We could put in on the
masthead: ''The newspaper that makes the news''. So it's been Marr out,
Rosie Boycott in, Mirror Group out, Marr in. And now it's happened again -
dull week on the media front, what to do? - oh well then, Boycott out.

Seriously, though, when I was dismissed in January after an argument (about
budgets) with the then owners, many of you wrote to me privately,
complaining that the incident and my career had been air-brushed out of the
paper in an almost Stalinist way. What had been going on, you asked. Why
weren't we told? Had they got something to hide?

You had a point, I thought. You can't be a pro-openness newspaper and then,
the minute your own affairs are under scrutiny, go all coy. We have a
straight story, therefore, on page 2. This time, the departing editor
hasn't been sacked. So what happened, you may ask, to the Marr-Boycott
''dream team''? Was it a ferocious row? Was it our disagreement over
cannabis? Some kind of Marrist revenge?

None of that. We certainly have disagreed not only about drugs but also
about how forthright the daily newspaper should be in expressing its views
on the subject. But that wasn't really the issue: I don't respect
journalists who can't argue or stand up for themselves and I'd hate to work
on a newspaper where disagreements didn't happen. On most things we agreed
and we got on perfectly well. Rosie wasn't driven out. She decided that she
wanted to work on a mid-market tabloid and that's a perfectly reasonable
ambition.

So what now? By far the most important thing is that for the first time in
the paper's history we are secure, and stable, working inside a big,
liberal-minded company - one which not only makes profits but believes in
independent journalism. For most of my time at The Independent, which spans
eight years out of eleven, we have been living with stories about our
possible demise, takeover or what have you. Now that's all gone and, like
most of my colleagues, I haven't really got used to it yet - it is like the
sudden disappearance of a kind of daily pain one had almost become used to.
Readers will see a series of changes in the months ahead which will show
quite clearly an intelligent paper moving upmarket and expanding too.

Speaking personally, I'm going to remain as editor in chief, directing
editorial policy, and taking an overview of the paper, as well as writing.
I tend to sit, looking portly, with my fingertips pressed lightly together
and an expression of remarkable wisdom on my face. I've agreed to take over
as daily editor as well, but only for a short time while new executives are
recruited. Excellent people are lining up and a new editor will be
appointed soon. Then I will float gently upwards, returning to a realm of
pure and rarified contemplative bliss.

I've spent a lot of time reading best-sellers while trying to prepare a
speech for the Booksellers' Association next week. As I swing from tube
straps deep in Louis de Bernieres or the new life of Thomas More, my
overwhelming impression is that the reading public is trading up - that
best-seller lists are fuller of intelligence and good prose than they were
in the Eighties. My colleague Boyd Tonkin, our literary editor, who is
writing opposite, confirms this. So the question for broadsheets is: if
people are trading up in books why should we think they desperately want to
dumb down as soon as they get to their newspaper? They don't: and we intend
to prove it.

Andrew Marr