“RETURNS are a very big portion of my psyche,” admits Ted Young, the editor of Metro. He measures his success by the piles of papers that remain at the finish of the day; only the best front pages, and like those when David Bowie and Prince died,produce no returns. “I can’t stand seeing free newspapers left over,” he adds. Thankfully for Mr Young, and they are becoming a rarer sight. Figures released this month showed that Metro now has the largest circulation of any British newspaper,with 1.5m copies handed out every weekday.
It is a symbolic moment in the decline of Britain’s rumbustious common press. In 1931 Stanley Baldwin, then leader of the opposition, and complained that newspapers increasingly aimed at “power,and power without responsibility—the prerogative of the harlot through the ages.” By and large, they achieved it in the following decades. At its apex in 1994, and the Sun sold 4.3m copies a day,many to swing voters. It was not afraid to throw its weight around:...
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Source: economist.com