Ham & High: Trouble on the heath

The 'Ham & High' is a highly respected weekly, yet it has just lost yet another editor. Michael Williams asks why

It's long been the tribal noticeboard of the chattering classes of north London's intellectual homelands. No self-respecting household in the leafy and expensive streets of Hampstead and Highgate would want to be seen without its Ham & High every Friday.

With a reputation as Britain's most prestigious weekly newspaper, the Hampstead and Highgate Express hasn't just been about the north London élite, they've been actually part of it, too – writing letters, arguing about each others' books in the literary pages and campaigning on just about anything and everything.

It's been a rare week without a brace of Braggs, Bennetts, Bainbridges, Foots, Weldons or Denches in the paper. When they use its columns to rail against the opening of a branch of McDonald's in Hampstead High Street, or the closure of the local Coffee Cup restaurant, or cutbacks in Camden library service, corporations and bureaucrats tremble.

But all is not well in Ham & High land. Last week, the paper's editor Ross Lydall quit, in order, as he put it, to "get back into journalism". His new job as local government correspondent of the Evening Standard, is respectable, but hardly compensation for giving up an editorship. So what's gone wrong?

With characteristic bombast, former editor Gerald Isaaman lets rip in the current edition of the journalists' trade paper Press Gazette. Commenting on Lydall's resignation he says: "I was editor for 25 years, my predecessor for 30 years. Between us, I think we created a newspaper of some distinction and profitability."

This is the second time in two years that owners Archant, a Norwich-based, privately owned media group, which publishes more than 100 titles, has been involved in a spat over the editorship of the Ham & High. In April 2000, Isaaman's successor, Matthew Lewin, was summoned to headquarters and brutally sacked, leading to yet another uprising by the great and good. The first letter of protest was signed by all 59 members of Camden Council.

Ross Lydall, as respected an editor as his predecessors, is blunt about the reasons for his own resignation: "The fact is that the owners are much more interested in the bottom line than in maintaining high editorial standards."

There's another problem, too, with the rise of the Camden New Journal, a free newspaper with a 60,000 distribution (compared with the Ham & High's 16,472 circulation). As Lydall says, it's hard to work with a 48p cover price when you've got about the same journalistic resources as your free rival.

Garry Matthews, Archant's regional director, says: "The Ham & High has a level of staffing that would be the envy of many local weekly newspapers." He also says that circulation is rising by more than 5 per cent year on year. But up on the hill, there's still trouble brewing. At Lydall's leaving ceremony last Thursday, one of the Ham & High's chief reviewers remarked: "There are at least three people present here who are qualified to be the new editor, but they won't apply because of all the problems. What a waste!"

Michael Williams is the deputy editor of the 'Independent on Sunday'