Our first lecture of the new semester was a return to our look at the history of newspapers and in particular the tabloids. The main theme of the lecture was, or at least seemed to be "the baby boomers are arseholes." During this we whizzed through the history of the printing press, again, and arrived at the genesis of the modern tabloid newspaper. The history of newspapers is in some ways an example of technological determinism, the flatbed Guttenberg press was invented to print bibles and so when the steam driven rotary press was invented in the 19th century, it created the necessary condition for the press industry. In the America, the wild west and the gold rush spawned news empires like William Randolph Hearst who for us was personified in what, to me was a semi biographical film, Citizen Kane. The New York Circulation wars followed with 'The Yellow Press', the battle between Heart and Pulitzer for dominance in the newspaper industry. In England, we had Rothermore and Northcliffe fighting a similar battle as the tabloid nation began. Finally, before the lecture properly began, we looked over photography and the genius of Harry Guy Bartholomew and Hannan Swaffer. What I am really interested in today is the period from the 1920s up until almost the present day, the invention of radio and arrival of the cinema, the influence of men like Cecil King and the Daily Mirror, finally arriving at Murdoch.
Before all that though, "baby boomers are arseholes." Why? Well the Daily Mirror was, and I stress was, the most successful tabloid in the country, possibly the world. The baby boomers changed all this though as the Mirror ignores the boomers to focus on the 'hero' parents, back from the war. The death of the newspapers is going to happen though as the tabloids still remain the most popular of all the papers, and even their readers will only read them when there's no telly to watch, (on the train, on the loo). Papers are already almost dead in America and that's because television has taken over there. Here, television and newspapers have coexisted for a long time but Sky television is American television, like Fox and so the inevitable demise of newspapers really is inevitable. Murdoch once said "Modernisation is Americanisation" and that certainly seems the case in the world of newspapers. Until the ITV came along only the BBC were in opposition to the newspapers but they were aiming at very different audiences, so whilst the BBC were making news and television in general for people who didn't really read tabloids so the tabloids were able to have a monopoly on the working classes and those who didn't read the broadsheets. The Daily Mirror was in the early days the most successful of these.
In America, the Daily News did something that directly changed the way tabloid journalists in this country operate. They published a picture on their front page of a woman on an electric chair, Ruth Snyder to be exact; they published this with the headline "Dead!" Simple but effective. The circulation of the Daily News increased by 300,000 off the back of that issue and Harry Guy Bartholomew as editorial director of the Daily Mirror, wanted to emulate this success. The way in which he planned to do this was by turning the focus of the then failing Mirror to human interest stories. He employed Basil Nicholson as features editor but immediately wanted to fire him so employed a young man named Hugh Cuddlip as deputy features editor, purely so he could fire Nicholson and replace him in the most humiliating way possible. Cuddlip was a very successful features editor, ensuring letters were answered, changing working conditions of secretaries and sowing the seeds for Page 3 but even this angered Bart who moved him to the failing Sunday Pictorial. Bart was even angrier when Cuddlip managed to make the Pictorial nearly as big a success as the Mirror in far less time. During World War Two, Cuddlip was conscripted and made the Army paper, Union Jack, a huge success, later being commended with an OBE for his work. Back home in Blighty the Mirror was making a nuisance of itself, being accused of sympathising with the Nazi's in a cartoon when it was one of the few papers who had called for intervention in Hitler's plans whilst papers like the Daily Mail kept a well documented relationship with the Nazi party. In all of this, Cecil Harmsworth King was planning something of a coup. Bart had become chairman of the newspaper and was running roughshod over his editors so King managed to talk round Bart's board of directors after Bart fired Cuddlip from the Pictorial to remove Bart from office and put King himself in his place. King immediately brought back Cuddlip and the Mirror went from strength to strength. Cuddlip became the editorial director at the Mirror and brought in an old friend Jack Nener as editor of the Mirror. Nener was allowed free reign but it was still very much Cuddlip's paper as evidenced by the SHOCK ISSUES regularly published by the Mirror under Cuddlip's direction.
Cecil King meanwhile is building an empire, a magazine empire as well as a newspaper one. Having bought up various magazine presses in the country he forms the IPC as the parent company to run these subsidiaries creating what he always wanted, a media empire as large if not larger than his famous uncle Lord Rothermere. But empires always fall and when King had to accept the money sapping Daily Herald into his empire, even a name change to The Sun and a relaunch of the paper couldn't save him. When it was discovered he had tried to orchestrate a government coup in order to place Lord Mountbatten at its head and after an article was published in the paper under his name titled "Enough is Enough" about the Wilson government, it didn't take long for IPC to make the unanimous decision to dismiss him. Cuddlip took over in his place but never really had the same flair for that side of the business, his biggest mistake, underestimating the new kid on the block, Richard Murdoch (that sort of rhymed...). Cuddlip mistook Murdoch for his father really, a man of the old guard of newspapers and not something to be feared but instead Murdoch came in and bought the News of the World and The Sun without too much trouble, employed Mirror reject Larry Lamb for The Sun and out tabloided the tabloids. Whilst this went on Cudlipp was trying to style the Mirror as the first quality tabloid but how do you define quality anyway? If you were in my seminar you'll know we agonised over that point for some time. The Mirror magazine was the way forward in Cuddlip's view but that failed, and when that failed where was the plan B? The Mirror has never really recovered in a way and The Sun still shines brightest (lame pun) in the tabloid world. How long this will continue though is anyone's guess.
Until Next Time. Stay Classy Internet.
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