The global elite
By John Merrill Posted Wed, Dec 1 1999
An oasis of thoughtful international newspapers thrives amid a worldwide desert of mass, too often crass, newspaper mediocrity. These global-elite dailies offer readers responsible, in-depth content.
Identifying the papers belonging to this group is subjective and open to lively debate. I have found among world opinion leaders a constantly changing consensus on the elite dailies after my long years of research and thousands of international miles traveled. Some rise in quality and breadth of coverage. Others fall to mediocrity or parochialism. New ones are born. Others fade away entirely.
There are some constant characteristics. One is the nature of the audience. Readers of global-elite dailies have more interest in foreign affairs, global business, the sciences, arts and humanities than do the audience members of more localized, mass-appeal papers. Serious-minded readers worldwide take global-elite dailies seriously.
Most global-elite dailies appear in four of the world’s languages: English, German, Spanish and French. They are usually published and circulated in more economically advanced nations.
I do not read all these newspapers. But I do talk to people who depend on such papers for credible news and opinion. I see these papers in government offices, libraries and universities around the world. They help shape the worldview of other journalists, politicians, academicians and an assortment of opinion leaders.
A global-elite daily is international in its major thrust. Because it informs opinion leaders, it is serious in tone. Breadth and depth of coverage are superior in certain areas: foreign affairs, domestic politics, economics and business, multicultural issues, science, the arts and humanities.
In sum, the global-elite daily has a cosmopolitan appeal, a serious tone, linguistic sophistication and a concern for culture. Moreover, it is packaged to project this seriousness through typography, design and graphics.
Reflecting its cosmopolitan approach, the global-elite paper covers the news and points of view from many countries. Its generally sophisticated, well-educated editors and staff members take national affairs seriously, and they deem it important to inform readers of the more salient global ramifications of cross-national events and problems. These papers present the world as a single, interconnected entity.
My 1968 book, The Elite Press: Great Newspapers of the World, was based on five years of on-site and library research. I identified the world’s global-elite dailies and provided profiles of 40 representative papers.
My findings were based on the opinions of the leaders in business, politics, education, theology, science and the arts with whom I spoke and who completed my questionnaires. The findings were subjective to that extent.
I asked my respondents to list what they believed were the 10 best international dailies in the world and what characteristics they felt made these papers great. From these several hundred responses I compiled a list of the great dailies and listed 100 papers in the 1968 study, along with the criteria for their selection.
My 1999 study was far less ambitious. I received 50 responses to my questionnaire from 25 countries throughout the world. The earlier study was much larger, and respondents were far more numerous and representative of more countries, especially those of Eastern Europe and the rest of the formerly communist world. The vast political changes that have taken place during the past 30 years may account for the absence of Izvestia, the government paper of the Soviet Union, Renmin Rihbao (The People’s Daily) of China, and Borba of Yugoslavia from the 1999 list. Pravda, the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and a 1968 global-elite daily, was out of business by 1999.
Also missing from the new top 20 were such European papers as Denmark’s Berlingske Tidende, The Guardian and The Times of the United Kingdom, Spain’s ABC, Austria’s Die Presse, the Svenska Dagbladet of Sweden, and Die Welt of Germany. Falling from the elite list in the 1999 study were South Africa’s The Rand Daily Mail and Die Burger, no doubt reflecting the sea change in the politics of that nation.
In my 1999 study, the United Kingdom’s The Independent was a solid choice for elite status. It did not even exist in 1968. Also new to the list was Spain’s El Pais. Newspapers such as Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Sueddeutsche Zeitung of Munich, as well as France’s Le Monde retained their influential place on the 1999 list. Switzerland’s Neue Zuercher Zeitung also reappears.
Other global-elite dailies of 1968 that have retained their top-20 status in 1999 were Italy’s Il Corriere della Sera, Egypt’s Al Ahram, Mexico’s Excelsior, Brazil’s O Estado de Sao Paulo, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun and Canada’s Globe & Mail. From Mexico, El Norte of Monterrey is a new member of the global-elite list.
Russia and the surrounding countries of the former Soviet Union, China and the Asian sub-continent, including India, boast no elite papers. The same goes for the Middle East, except for Egypt, and the same again for Greece and the Balkans. In 1968, several Asian papers in India, Singapore, the Philippines and China were among the elites. The 1999 list includes only Japan’s Asahi from that vast region of the world.
Interestingly, the same two papers, The New York Times and the Neue Zuercher Zeitung, top both the 1968 and 1999 lists. The other U.S. papers mentioned most often in 1968 that are also placed highly in 1999 include The Los Angeles Times, The Miami Herald, The Christian Science Monitor and The Wall Street Journal. One, The Washington Post, moved from 19th place in 1968 to third in 1999.
What does it all mean? In part, it means that, despite the electronic revolution in communications, there are significant global newspapers that continue to help shape the thinking of world leaders.
If the much smaller 1999 sample does not distort reality too much, there are fewer great international elite dailies in 1999 than in 1968. What might account for this?
Many editors and publishers suspect that global television operations like CNN and StarTV now provide news and opinions of a serious nature to audiences across the world and that newspapers should now emphasize local news.
In response, papers such as the United States’ St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Atlanta Constitution, both dropped from the list, are increasingly emphasizing local or community news. They have de-emphasized international coverage. Although they are still high- quality newspapers in a local and regional sense, they do not have the global standing or influence they had earlier in the century.
In 1999, dailies from the communist world that were quite prominent in the 1968 rankings disappeared. This could be because the 1968 questionnaires were sent to a large number of opinion leaders in communist nations. There are far fewer communist nations today, and readership of the old party organs is no longer required.
The top 10 dailies in 1999 were considerably different than those in 1968. Despite the smaller sample, I believe that the 1999 selections are much more realistic than the strange clustering of dailies in 1968. Three of the 1968 top 10 were communist dailies (from China, Yugoslavia and the USSR), one was the Vatican City daily, two were British dailies, and one was an ultra-conservative Spanish daily. The remaining three, The New York Times, Neue Zuercher Zeitung and Le Monde, were solidly in the top 10 and remained there in the 1999 listing. There were occasional surprises. For example, I would have put the International Herald-Tribune in the top 10, but surprisingly it received only three mentions.
In 1999, the elite papers are more clustered in the industrialized world than in 1968. It is also possible that press freedom is considered more important in 1999 than it was in 1968; this would account for the disappearance of communist dailies and the Vatican City daily. Perhaps the recent trend toward featurization and localization of news has taken some dailies out of the cosmopolitan category.
I will leave it to others to speculate further on the reasons for the small number of global-elite newspapers. For me, it is a pleasure to know that there are still serious, intelligent, socially concerned international newspapers trying to retain substance amid a welter of journalistic organs intent on satisfying the superficial whims of entertainment-hungry audiences.
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1999 Top Ten Listed Elite Dailies
1.The New York Times, USA
2.Neue Zuercher Zeitung, Switzerland
3.The Washington Post, USA
4.The INdependent, UK
5.Sueddeitsche Zeitung, Germany
6.Le Monde, France
7.Asahi Shimbun, Japan
8.The Los Angeles Times, USA
9.Frankfuerter Allgemeine, Germany
10.El Pais, Spain
1968 Top Ten Listed Elite Dailies
1.The New York Times, USA
2.Neue Zuercher Zeitung, Switzerland
3.Le Monde, France
4.The Guardian, UK
5.The Times, UK
6.Pravda, USSR
7.Renmin Ribao (People's Daily), PR. China
8.Borba, Yugoslavia
9.L'Osservatore Romano, Vatican
10.ABC, Spain