BOOK REVIEW / It's all done with magnates: 'Paper Tigers' - Nicholas Coleridge: Heinemann, 17.50 pounds

THE BEST book ever written about journalists and newspapers was Evelyn Waugh's Scoop. This is because the plot hinges on the two most important and immutable truths about journalists. The first is that they are far more concerned about what their rivals are doing than about finding and reporting any original material of their own. The second is that journalists - or at least senior editorial executives - are so terrified of proprietors that they obey them without question, even when they do not understand the orders. When Lord Copper cries 'send Boot', nobody dares inquire as to which Boot he means. Hence the dispatch of the wrong Boot, the hitherto untravelled nature correspondent, to the Ishmaelian civil war.

Rich men and women can indulge their whims with journalists because newspaper success is a slippery, elusive thing. The ups and downs of circulation are mysterious and probably as much to do with the size of promotion budgets as with editorial content. Manufacturers of motor-cars or pharmaceuticals listen to engineers or chemists (at least one assumes they do) before demanding changes in their products. No such inhibitions restrain newspaper publishers. Almost anybody can read and write and, therefore, almost anybody can have opinions about newspapers. The trick is to get where your opinion counts, like the 25 men and women profiled by Nicholas Coleridge. They include Sally Aw Sian and Samir Jain, the press tycoons of Hong Kong and India, as well as the big beasts of Europe and America and our own friendly neighbourhood magnates such as Lords Rothermere and Stevens.

These people bestride the world like 16th-century monarchs, sending expeditionary forces to colonise new parts of the globe, indulged by sycophantic courtiers, preoccupied by questions of dynastic succession (Lady Rothermere almost killed herself to produce a male heir for Associated Newspapers). Mr Coleridge's writing is vivid, entertaining, witty and often perceptive; but his portraits are drawn almost entirely from interviews with the proprietors themselves and with their present senior editors. The result is often something more like Crawfie than Andrew Morton.

Mr Coleridge is dazzled by his subjects and even more dazzled by their offices and boardrooms, with their serpentine mahogany bureaux and Chippendale tables. As though indeed writing about royalty, he is convinced that we should be riveted by trivia. We are told, for example, that Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Snr, owner of the New York Times, likes steaks, Westerns, light biographies, Italian restaurants, salmon fishing and golf. He dislikes heat, intellectual discussions and being seated between strange women at dinner parties. Examples of tycoons behaving like ordinary mortals - Lord Rothermere, would you credit it, has been known to enter public houses - are held up for amazed admiration. The way in which Rothermere's Daily Mail has persistently and hysterically supported the Conservative party (at the cost of any pretence at journalistic objectivity) is, by contrast, mentioned only in passing. Rupert Murdoch's use of his newspapers to undermine public service broadcasting and to promote his satellite television interests is not discussed at all.

But perhaps Mr Coleridge is right not to be too alarmed by these multi-media, multi-national empires. They may have the trappings of royalty but they come and go with remarkable rapidity. His most engrossing tale concerns Ralph Ingersoll, who bought and launched 228 newspapers in three years and then lost almost the lot in four. His Waterloo was his attempt to launch a new metropolitan daily paper in St Louis, Missouri. An indifferent newspaper had folded the previous year with a circulation of 200,000. Ingersoll reckoned he could break even on 125,000. The launch lacked nothing in promotion, bingo prizes, distribution or colour printing. It folded after 90 days with a circulation of just 17,000. The media kings may be able to command journalists, executives and even politicians, but they cannot always command the readers.