Privacy and Injunctions - Evidence - Parliament

Martin Clarke, publisher, Mail Online, Edward Roussel, Digital Editor, Telegraph Media
Group, and Philip Webster, editor, Times Online—Oral evidence (QQ 1306–1383)
Q1581 Lord Dobbs: But not paying them to get a story?
Edward Roussel: No.
Philip Webster: Obviously we host bloggers, but generally it is opinion and not fact.
We certainly would not take a news story based on the word of a blogger or even pay him
for the tip. No.
Q1582 Lord Dobbs: I am delighted to hear that the sensible sort of regulation that
by and large you labour under in this country has not stopped you from expanding abroad.
You said that two-thirds of your market is now abroad in the case of the Mail Online
Martin Clarke: Yes. If you look at the monthly numbers, it is about a third UK, a
third US and a third the rest of the world.
Q1583 Lord Dobbs: Perhaps when this whole blogosphere has settled down, we
will discover that people still go to those places where they get good journalism. There will
always be a premium on good journalism, in the light of which I must commend your
fortitude, your rectitude and your courage in coming here today, Mr Clarke, when the
following story is high up on your website today, “Soup bowls are too small and beer too
expensive (at just £2.60 a pint): what whinging MPs have complained about in their swanky
subsidised restaurant.” No sensationalist nonsense there.
Martin Clarke: I must hand over to my colleague from The Telegraph; I think that
story started life in The Telegraph this morning. I will allow him to answer for it.
Q1584 Chair: Mr Clarke, it could be said that the Mail Online actually looks
rather more like Heat magazine or OK! than it does The Daily Mail. Is that a deliberate ploy
to boost the numbers?
Martin Clarke: No. First, the showbiz content we limit to one side because we like
to run what we call hard news—non-showbiz news—on the left. I am always amazed by the
eclectic taste of readers. It is not quite “bomber on Mars” but there is a slightly strange
science story today, about a Russian scientist who says he saw life on Venus, a story which,
by the way, is running on perfectly reputable science sites, not just the Mail Online; but it is a
slightly striking headline. Equally, there is a fantastic big picture show of a guy who went
round taking pictures of homeless people in black and white, which is something that you
might see in The Independent Saturday magazine. You would certainly never see it in The
Daily Mail, I do not think.
The reason it is different from The Daily Mail is because it is in a different market.
You might as well ask, “Why does the Scottish Daily Mail have a lot of Scottish news in it or
the Irish Daily Mail have a lot of Irish news in it?” It is because they are different markets. I
am operating in a digital market, where we do get feedback from the readers, and where I
can see, in real time, what they are really reading rather than what I might think as a
journalist they should be reading. In the digital world, if you do not listen to your users—if
you do not involve them or listen to their taste—then you are dead.
Having said that, we do not follow those data slavishly. That is where I come in. It is
my job to mediate the light and the shade. That is why it is different from The Daily Mail.
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