This is an interesting insight in to the development of The Metro newspaper and one man’s vision as to how he would create it. The newspaper which has now existed for 10 years, celebrates its anniversary today. Furthermore, the advent of the yuppy culture which has followed as part of its readership, is even more intriguing, described as “the new yuppies.”
Yuppies – which means “young, upwardly mobile/urban professional” – in the 1980s in the finance district and the emerging London Docklands developments like Canary Wharf on the Isle of Dogs, were portrayed and slightly satirised in films like Wall Street in 1987, which coincided with the disastrous “Black Monday” global economic stock market crash. The film’s protagonist, Gordon Gekko – played by Michael Douglas – emphased the riches and snobbish tendencies of bankers and City-type workers and the general excesses of the yuppy culture.
Similarly in TV sitcom, Only Fools & Horses, Del Trotter believes himself to be a yuppy despite his obvious poverty and lack of a privileged background – which parallels those who either wrongly thought themselves to be yuppies and those who tried to become them – despite being in Del Trotter’s case, old and downward, with little professionalism apart from driving a three wheeled van or slagging off Rodney.
However, the new yuppies have moved on from the Filofax, braces and brick-like mobile phones and are now according to the article, “young and cool” and “cash-rich and time-poor”. So what has changed, and why? And will there ever be room to breathe on a Charing Cross train without a snotty-nosed yuppy typing feverishly on his new Mac, whilst hollering incessantly for all the world to hear down his mobile phone, about how Charles and he played squash and then dined at a spiffing Thai bistro in Kensington? Probably not.
But have a read of the interesting development of The Metro, its culture and its future. Is it just a paper which we scan for a few seconds, like the London Lite or Londonpaper and is better off for using as fish n chip paper? Or do we as readers, really regard its journalism? And would these free newspapers ever be worth paying for?
