<p>Print media do face challenges but the influence they offer – especially on the right – is considerable</p><p>‘Expect the unexpected” is the bland but pointed advice given by the evasive editor of the <em>Daily Beast</em> to the bemused William Boot, accidental protagonist in Evelyn Waugh’s deathless Fleet Street satire, <em>Scoop</em>. This has turned out to be durable counsel when observing the ins and outs of newspaper proprietors: much that is solid has a tendency to&nbsp;melt.</p><p>So <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/the-spectator">the </a><em><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/the-spectator">Spectator</a></em> (for which I worked in the late 1990s under the Telegraph Group ownership of Conrad Black) had a long period under the sway of the Barclay family, which has come to a debt-laden crashing close. The weekly magazine has been sold for a reassuringly high £100m to the hedge funder Sir Paul Marshall, after an Abu Dhabi-backed bid to buy it collapsed amid concerns that state-backed entities should not own UK news outlets.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/15/the-new-owner-of-the-spectator-didnt-cough-up-100m-just-for-the-fun-of-it">Continue reading...</a>