Page 76

Chapter 39

‘Thefirst generation who didn’t play outside are adults now, Sergeant Poe,’ Stahl said. ‘Some of them are management and they see the world differently to you and me. If something doesn’t have an electronic footprint, it doesn’t have a value. I’d made the big league by then, and for a while it was everything I’d thought it would be. We were given serious budgets, told to put serious exclusives on the front page. We had weeks, even months to follow leads, develop stories.’

‘But it changed?’

Stahl nodded.

‘The moment papers went online was the moment real journalism stopped. Investigative journalists were the dinosaurs, unneeded relics of the golden age of Fleet Street. Clickbait was king now. Likes and shares more important than exposés and Pulitzers. The didn’t-go-outside-to-play generation wrote attention-grabbing, advertising-friendly headlines and journalists were told to find, twist or plain make up stories to fit them. Churnalism we called it, as we were expected to churn out meaningless story after meaningless story. Getting it online was more important than getting it right. They were hammering chequebook-journalism too. Outbidding the other papers for scandals about fading celebrities, half of which were planted by the celebs themselves.’

‘You went along with it?’

‘I resisted for a while, but by then I was used to a certain standard of living. We all were. So it was either do their bidding and debase myself, or pack it all in and find a new career.’

Poe finished his coffee. Asked Stahl if he wanted another one.

‘I’ll get some more water,’ he said.

‘We have some here, Henning Stahl,’ Bradshaw chipped in. ‘Poedoesn’t drink enough so I always order bottles for any room he’s working in.’

Stahl glanced at Poe and shrugged.

‘You haven’t got the kind of water Mr Stahl likes, Tilly,’ Poe said.

‘Oh? But I’ve got sparkling and still. Unless he wants flavoured, I don’t know what else there is.’

‘It’s vodka, Tilly. Mr Stahl’s drinking vodka.’

‘Forbreakfast?’

Stahl sloped out of the room, embarrassed.

‘What a loser,’ Bradshaw said.

‘He’s not well, Tilly.’

‘You were telling us how news had been replaced by clickbait, Mr Stahl,’ Poe said.

Stahl was back, a glass full of vodka in front of him. Poe calculated that in the last hour he’d had nearly a pint of the stuff. Despite that, his eyes were clear and his voice was steady.

‘There were still pockets of serious journalism going on, just not at the paper I worked at.’

‘You couldn’t transfer?’

Stahl shook his head. ‘Get a reputation for clickbait stories and that’s who you are. I applied for a job with theGuardian. Didn’t get past the front door.’

‘Was that when you started drinking?’

‘It was always a hard-drinking profession. I suppose most jobs are when you finish work in the middle of the afternoon. But it was when I started drinking too much.’

On cue, he drained half his glass. Above him, the clock showed nine o’clock in the morning. Poe said nothing. Bradshaw tutted.

‘And then some morally bankrupt chancer decided we could cut out the middleman. Stop paying journalists to develop stories and hire private investigators to steal them instead. Askthemto find out what it was the celebs didn’t want found. Pay them a fraction of what we were paid. And because they were technically freelance, we could turn a blind eye to their methods.’

‘Methods like phone hacking?’

‘Among other things.’

‘You knew it was going on?’