Andrew Marr: An independent view is more valuable now than when I edited The Independent

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When I finally became editor of The Independent, candidly, it seemed absolutely doomed. The ownership was divided, 48 per cent each between two newspaper groups with entirely different cultures, whose management loathed one another. Circulation had been falling for a long time. We were badly under-capitalised. We couldn’t afford top-dollar rates and fine journalists were leaving. Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch’s The Times was pursuing what we regarded as an illegal predatory pricing policy which had a devastating impact on our bottom line.

I took the job, as I wrote in my memoir, My Trade, partly from greed and vanity, but partly because The Independent had already given me, as a young political writer, the best times of my working life – the best and most talented colleagues, some of whom remain friends 30 years later, the most inspiring leadership, the greatest freedom. I believed then that there was a place in British journalism for an avowedly serious, upmarket newspaper that wasn’t beholden to a tycoon or a political party. I still think that.

First, however, a once-obvious question: in 2026, what is a newspaper? After all, it’s not much about paper. It bobs online, jostled by Substack essays, blogs, vlogs, anti-social media and websites still lacking a collective moniker. Information about the world, and analysis of it, can seem merely “content” to be monetised. Oh yes, and can’t AI’s large language models do the job once carried out by a human hack, fragrant with nicotine and disappointment? AI doesn’t have a bar bill.

The answer is that any worthwhile journalistic endeavour, whether it’s a newspaper, a radio show or a TV series, is, first and foremost, a tense and unpredictable human conversation about the wider world. The most successful acts of journalism I’ve seen – The Independent, The Economist , Alan Rusbridger’s Guardian, the New Statesman, the FT, The Sunday Times, early BBC Newsnight, Today – have essentially been a small group, five or six or seven people, who almost (but essentially, not quite) agree, kicking mental balls around.

Out of this, a viewpoint emerges which is more balanced than any individual’s but also sui generis. This then emerges into the world, and if it’s any use, changes things.

So, to me, a newspaper is a viewpoint and the human community that makes it. From the first time it appeared, The Indy had a different perspective and yet remained coherent. It was right/liberal on economics and liberal/progressive on almost everything else. In the latter years of the 20th century and the early years of this one, at least, that perspective seemed to chime with a decent chunk of the population.

Alongside that, the paper always prized fine, radical reporting. Tony Bevins, my mentor, as the political editor was an obvious example. There are too many others to list here, but the roll call certainly included James Fenton, Sarah Hogg, Robert Fisk, Rupert Cornwell, Francis Wheen, Helen Fielding, David McKittrick, Polly Toynbee and Suzanne Moore.

Writers, however, get too much of the attention: the editors and the subs are also in that conversation. Indy people in my time were masters and mistresses of commissioning, sharpening, editing, focusing and asking embarrassing questions of the word-monkeys. What is the newspaper? Well, also, it’s being edited.

The Independent viewpoint isn’t as valuable in the 2020s as it was when the paper launched: it’s more so. As the online world collapses into mutually loathing tribes, from the rising race politics on the right to the badlands of self-flagellating identity politics to the left, never was watchful, dispassionate reporting and a hardheaded, practical but humane philosophical outlook more needed.

From the first time it appeared, The Indy had a different perspective and yet remained coherent

So, you might ask, Young Marr, what went wrong? I identified it all in excruciating detail in My Trade, more than two decades ago, but the answer must be Young Marr himself. I had been a successful writer but never an editor. I was impatient, ignorant and thought too much of myself.

I’ll come back to that. But the biggest problem in my time, as with Ian Hargreaves before me, was the double ownership with David Montgomery of the Mirror Group, and Tony O’Reilly’s Irish independent group. You couldn’t make it up. An Ulsterman whose first God was the bottom line, and who wanted to recreate a mid-market, colourful tabloid for wealthy urban consumers with a short attention span; and a gregarious Catholic Irish global businessman who wanted an upmarket broadsheet, heavy on rugby coverage.

Every day of my editorship, I fought against increasingly aggressive demands for deep cuts to the journalism, and a much more tabloid style.

Individual journalists, regarded as the best in their fields, were, I was told, lazy, incompetent and must be fired as soon as possible. We didn’t need a production staff, or a night staff, or most of our foreign correspondents. I fought. I redesigned much too radically. I lost. I was fired. I was re-hired. I left again…

But in all that, I was given charge of a precious, rare thing in British journalism, and I was able to hand it on, still alive, still full of energy and still with its own perspective. The conversation goes on.

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