Tabloid Nation (parts 2 and 3) - Seminar Paper

Tabloid Nation parts 2 and 3 cover the history of the Daily Mirror from 1934 when Harry Guy Bartholomew gained control, to 1984 when the paper was sold by Reed International to Robert Maxwell.

Harry Guy Bartholomew (known as 'Bart') turned the Mirror into a clone of the New York newspaper, the Daily News.  Bart was not well enough connected to persuade the board of directors to back him in making the changes he wanted, so he enlisted the help of Cecil Harmsworth King, who was Rothermere (the owner's) nephew.  King was to handle the delicate discussions required with the board, while Bart pushed the paper in the direction of the American tabloids he so admired.

At the very beginning, Bart enlisted the help of Basil Nicholson, an advertising copywriter to assist on the editorial side, but after a falling out, Bart ruthlessly replaced him with Hugh Cudlipp.

As the changes Bart made took effect and circulation figures began to rise, Bart wondered how he could rid himself of King as a potential rival for overall control of the company.  Things went his way when he refused to take on control of the Pictorial (a Sunday sister paper to the Daily Mirror) and the job was instead given to King.  Bart thought the paper was beyond saving.  

King took Cudlipp to be day to day editor of the Pictorial, angering Bart hugely.  From that moment Bart became antagonistic toward both King and Cudlipp.

This state of affairs was interrupted by the second world war, during which Cudlipp was conscripted, and during which the Daily Mirror was so downbeat that it was accused in some quarters of trying to help the German war effort!  

Upon the wars end, Bart was promoted to Chairman of the company, with King promoted to Head of Advertising and Finance Director.  The Daily Mirror concentrated its immediate post-war efforts on getting a Labour government into power, in which it succeeded, but going into the 1950s, the real battle at the Daily Mirror was that between Harry Guy Bartholomew and Cecil King.

At first it seemed that Bart had the upper hand.  As the Mirror overtook the Express in terms of circulation, Bart felt vindicated in his leadership.  However, alcohol took its toll on him, and eventually King was able to oust Bart and replace him, as Bart's alcoholism had reached such a pitch as to render him impossible to work with.

King retrieved Cudlipp from the Daily Express, where he'd been exiled after a falling out with Bart a couple of years earlier and together they set about making the changes necessary to take the paper forward.  Through the 1950s the paper had the lower end of the market almost to itself, allowing its growth to continue to outstrip the Daily Express, it's middle-class rival.

The sheer amount of cash that the Daily Mirror was bringing in presented its own problems.  Mainly, how to spend it.  King moved the company to new purpose-built premises known as Holborn Circus, for which it paid £9 million cash.  

During the 60s the Daily Mirror began to stockpile journalistic talent in the same way that the Daily Express had done during its glory days. However, the 60's ended badly for the Daily Mirror, with King seemingly involved in moves to try and remove Harold Wilson from government.   The final straw was an article by King entitled 'ENOUGH IS ENOUGH', which led to his sacking from the Mirror and IPC.

The 1950s and early to mid 1960s were the true golden days for the Daily Mirror.  From this point, things begin a slow but steady decline.

With King gone, Cudlipp was asked to step into his shoes.  This was not a task he entirely relished.  He considered himself an expert journalist, but did not claim to be a businessman.  

During King's time as chairman, he had acquired a huge number of other newspapers and magazines, often without performing any meaningful due diligence on what he was buying.  One of the newspapers in the IPC stable was the Sun.  Cudlipp wanted rid of this weak, under-performing title and attempted to sell it to Maxwell.  However, the unions got wind of this plan and threatened to strike if there was any sign of Maxwell being sold the Sun.  Rupert Murdoch, who had entered the British press by purchasing the News Of The World, saw an opportunity.  At present his presses were idle for six days a week, and by taking on a going concern for a bargain price, he could begin printing his daily newspaper for a fraction of the cost a completely fresh start would cost him.  

Murdoch got the Sun, installed Larry Lamb as editor and began a head to head war against IPC's flagship title, the Mirror.

By 1978, the Sun overtook the Mirror's circulation figures for the first time.  It had done this by focusing on synergies with television as the emergent medium and the younger generation, who it knew it needed in order to compete with the Mirror.

The Mirror's board and senior editorial staff were ageing by this point and no longer in touch with this generation's youth.  It paid the price.  Leaking money, the Mirror was sold to Reed International, who frankly, didn't know what to do with it.  Reed made one serious attempt to reform the Mirror, installing Clive Thornton at the top of the company.  Thornton attempted to enact sweeping cost-cutting exercises at the Mirror, but needed the support of the unions.  Thornton made sincere and generous offers to the unions, who considered Thornton's offer, then told him where to go.  Desperate for somebody to take the now loss-making enterprise off of it's hands, Reed International accepted an offer from one Robert Maxwell, who was offering, from Reed's perspective, what seemed to be a very good deal.

The development of the modern British press.

The development of the modern press was facilitated on a technical level by the Gutenberg press, which was initially developed to reproduce bibles, but was modified in the 19th Century to create the rotary press.  This development is credited to Friedrich Koenig, a German who moved to London and there secured funding to develop and patent his design.

By this time presses were being used for far more than reproducing bibles, with pamphlets, books and the first newspapers such as the Daily Courant being produced.

However, it was later that papers assumed the form that they now form here, with the Daily Mail being produced by Northcliffe in 1896 and the Daily Mirror in 1903, which was the one of the first pictorially led daily newspaper to achieve mainstream success.  (Thanks to the efforts of Harry Guy Bartholomew and Hannan Swaffer)

Newspapers faced their first real challenge in the 1920s with the advent and availability of radio.  In the US, newspaper sales were decimated by radio, which was largely unregulated and commercial.  However, in the UK only the BBC were allowed to broadcast and they were given a charter that insisted their programming should educate the British public.  As such, human interest stories and less salubrious subjects were left to the newspapers, which enjoyed continued success.

The Daily Mirror continued to lead the tabloid pack until well into the 1970s.  However, the Daily Mirror tracked the baby boomers as they got older, while a brash young upstart called 'The Sun', under the ownership of Rupert Murdoch saw a gap in the market, targeting the younger generation and concentrating largely on making celebrities out of television presenters and actors from popular soap operas.

The Sun soon overtook the Mirror in terms of circulation, and Rupert Murdoch used the money to purchase a stake in, and build the reputation of Sky Broadcasting.

Will Murdoch continue to rule the airwaves in the age of the internet?  He has the intelligence to make the transition, but may lack the appetite.  Indeed, some of his tweets regarding recent attempts to enforce draconian copyright protections on the internet suggest that he lacks the will to try.  If he does indeed set himself up in opposition to this new age of collaboration, this would be unfortunate for him.  However, I suspect those whose space he would have moved into, if he had embraced this new way of thinking, are breathing a sigh of relief.

For those who didn't know...

...as well as dutifully blogging away here, I'm also part of the Flashnificent 7, who are a Winchester University based group of flash fiction writers.  Flash fiction is a form of very short story (no more than 1000 words at the most) and is designed to fit into those small spaces in peoples lives where they don't have time to read a book or a longer story, but want to be entertained/educated/distracted for just the length of time it takes to wait for a bus or sit in a waiting room.

We're based over at http://flashnificent7.blogspot.com and there's a fresh story every day, so feel free to visit daily, or just play catch up once a week, as the mood takes you.  You can also follow us via twitter, just follow @flashnificent7

In addition, stories of mine that don't relate to the Flashnificent 7 stories will generally end up at http://hierarchyofone.blogspot.com  Updates to this site will be less frequent, but again you can follow @hierarchyofone via Twitter if you want to be alerted when a new story appears.

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