Journalism in Britain

A Historical Introduction

Martin Conboy

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781446243367
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Journalismus

"What might have been a forbidding chronological slog is thoroughly enlivened by Conboy?s thematic approach, shot through with passion and rigour in equal measure. This is a book written with a commitment to the importance of history for the present; it will undeniably cultivate the same commitment in its readers."
- Chris Atton, Edinburgh Napier University "An authoritative and accessible introduction to the history of journalism. Excellent resource for undergraduates."
- Philip Dixon, Southampton Solent University

A firm grasp of journalism?s development and contribution to social and political debates is a cornerstone of any media studies education. This book teaches students that essential historical literacy, providing a full overview of how changes in the ownership, emphasis and technologies of journalism in Britain have been motivated by social, economic and cultural shifts among readerships and markets.

Covering journalism?s enduring questions - political coverage, the influence of advertising, the sensationalization of news coverage, the popular market and the economic motives of the owners of newspapers - this book is a comprehensive, articulate and rich account of how the mediascape of modern Britain has been shaped.

1

Journalism and the Coming of Mass Markets

Introduction

It would be no exaggeration to say that modern journalism began in 1896 – on 4 May 1896, to be precise. This was not because of any single innovation in format or technology but in the way that Alfred Harmsworth’s Daily Mail, launched on that day, managed to draw a complex range of technical, commercial and textual features into one publication. An astute awareness of the requirements of advertisers, a recognition of the social aspirations of a class of new reader, an ability to produce economies of scale in production, and the organizational genius to be able to distribute this rapidly and effectively, enabled it to become the first truly mass circulation paper, to the extent that by 1900 it was selling in excess of a million copies per day. Chalaby has claimed that with the Daily Mail, Harmsworth brought the daily newspaper into the twentieth century and modernized journalism in the process (Chalaby, 2000: 34). However, none of this emerged from a vacuum. Harmsworth was simply a brilliant co-ordinator of these various elements.

This revolution also ushered in what we may call the popular century, where developments in the popular newspaper began to drive the practices of the entire press and where these commercial concerns consolidated their dominance as ever more channels of communication became available. Yet the Daily Mail, which was to have such a profound effect on the structure of the journalism of the next century, was the culmination of a sequence of events that had started with a government decision to abolish taxes on newspapers in 1855. This chapter will set out the chronology and debates around the emergence of mass popular markets from the late nineteenth century and show how these were to influence all subsequent mainstream journalism.

Picking Up the Commercial Pace

The abolition of taxes on newspapers in 1855 had begun to release the full force of competition into newspaper production. Elements of sensationalism and entertainment which had hitherto been prominent in the Sunday market were now to be included in the most successful launch of the period, the Daily Telegraph, in the very same year as the taxes were lifted. Henceforth newspapers would survive as commercial concerns or not at all. They would do so by maximizing their profits through targeting a topical miscellany aimed at specific readerships that were to be addressed with increasing efficiency. Of course this did not occur overnight, but the process which would lead to a full appreciation of the commercial potential of journalism had nevertheless been unleashed.

This commercialization contributed to a longer-term shift from a genteel view of journalism as an occupation for men of letters to one which saw it as predominantly to do with the satisfaction of market needs. Yet journalism has moved in a complex and sometimes surprising fashion since 1855 and its liberalization after the lifting of taxes to the twenty-first century, despite the fact that certain patterns have remained persistent. The economics of the market, for example, have combined with technological innovations to produce significant changes in journalism’s organization, distribution and content. However, this is no straightforward narrative of either triumph or decline, as these changes continue to pose profound challenges – particularly for print journalism – even today. Taking this perspective on the centrality of change to any history of journalism, Smith sees it as being determined by its own structural shortcomings in reaching its self-declared goals:

In the course of four hundred years the newspaper press has not finally dealt with the issues into which it was born. Its methods of production and distribution are always inadequate to the ideals and purposes which appear to rise from the activities of collecting news. Every century or so they undergo a major alteration … (1978: 183)

If the contemporary age can provide evidence of an on-going major reassessment of how the commercial needs of journalism continue to match its ‘ideals and purposes’, then one must stress that these were first highlighted in the mid-Victorian era. This continuity from 1855 to the present has been remarked upon by Negrine, who observed how, according to the great historian of political journalism, Koss, there were concerns in the Victorian era about issues which still have a very contemporary ring to them: ‘… the commercialism of the press, the effect of advertising, the trend to sensationalism, concentration of ownership, and the reduction of political coverage’ (Negrine, 1994: 39).

While some would characterize the changes which followed on from 1855 as the decline of a golden age of journalism (Ensor, 1968), others would argue more pragmatically that what had hitherto provided a discourse of public dialogue was from that point onwards replaced by a much more systematically commodified discourse which created what we now recognize as the modern variety of journalism (Chalaby, 1998: 66) – one which targeted the public only insofar as the public constituted a market that could be exploited commercially. Some nineteenth-century commentators applauded these developments and saw this period as providing a rejuvenation in journalism:

… in the early sixties … journalism was at a turning point. A poor order of things was passing away; a better order of things … by the attraction of many fresh, bright, strong, and scholarly minds to journalism as a power – was coming in, and coming in on well prepared ground. (Greenwood, 1897: 708)

Driven by the improved climate for commercial newspapers after 1855, the penny press of the middle Victorian era was beginning to experiment with a lighter style and more human interest, perhaps best characterized by the ‘Telegraphese’ of George Augustus Sala and the influential gossip column ‘The Flaneur’ by Edmund Yates in Samuel Lucas’s penny Morning Star, founded in 1856. At the same time the respectable, upmarket papers such as The Times and the Morning Post maintained a sober and anonymous gravitas in their journalism, bringing ‘a heavy overdose of politics’ (Herd, 1952: 222) with verbatim accounts of Parliament that were composed in blocks of solid and unbroken type and without the sort of banner headlines with which we are familiar today. The tradition of anonymous authorship in journalism was gradually being eroded via the naming of writers in the more popular magazines, and by the 1870s correspondence columns, signed articles and personal details were being used at the cheaper end of the daily newspaper market as well. This had the effect of introducing an apparent pluralism made up of many authors and spokespeople in place of a single authority and the voice of the newspaper as an institution, which had been the implicit norm up to this point in Victorian journalism (Jackson, 2001: 145).

A transatlantic cable was laid in 1866 and telegraphed dispatches then became an accepted part of a more internationalized news-gathering operation, meaning that ‘henceforth daily journalism operated within a new tense … of the instantaneous present’ (Smith, 1978: 167). In fact it was the increasingly efficient exploitation of the telegraph in combination with the newly created category of the sub-editor that signalled the only substantive improvement of these years through the extinction of the old ‘penny-a-liner’, ‘a very inferior race of reporters’ (Lee, 1976: 112) who provided cheap copy to make up pages, often copied from secondary sources and with little journalistic merit. A sub-editor was employed to shape, reduce and revise reports to fit within the spaces left by advertisements and bolder headlines while matching the identity of the particular paper.

By the 1880s, a combination of stylistic experiments, technological innovations, political advances such as the extension of the franchise to enable a larger proportion of the working population to vote, and improved economic conditions after the recessionary 1870s were to transform the ambition and content of journalism and orientate it irretrievably to mass audiences via the New Journalism. The Foster Education Act of 1870 which made education compulsory and freely available to primary-aged children also helped to fuel a new level of literacy which would soon translate into increased sales of popular publications. The introduction of the telegraph, telephone, typewriter, high-speed rotary press and half-tone photographic block began to change the look of printed material as journalism became a more visualized practice. After 1875, there was a reconstruction of the newspaper industry following a more economically integrated pattern, which encouraged a more considered and methodical capital investment in technology and more attention being paid to circulation figures and advertising revenue. The technological advances which promised a more attractive and profitable product for a wider audience brought new commercial entrepreneurs into an industry which offered increasing returns on their investment through wider distribution and a more astute harnessing of advertising. Above all else, it was the broadening of the franchise through the Third Reform Act in 1884 which meant that this New Journalism was able to address the people as having a stake in public affairs like never before, meaning that ‘… the New Journalism acquired a political resonance which had been largely lacking in press discourse during the previous 50 years’ (Jones, 1996: 132).

Newnes – Preparing the Ground for Mass Market Papers

George Newnes was the first to draw together these strands, testing and creating new territories for journalism in a wide range of journals including Tit-Bits (1881), The Strand Magazine (1891), The Million (1892), The Westminster Gazette (1893), The World Wide Magazine (1898), The Ladies’ Field (1898) and The Captain (1899). Of these, it was the first, Tit-Bits, which was to become the model that would have the most profound influence on the daily press.

Tit-bits from all the interesting Books, Periodicals, and Newspapers of the World was launched as a penny weekly on 22 October 1881, with competitions, statistics, historical facts, bits of news, editorials, correspondence columns, fiction, anecdotes, jokes, legal general knowledge, competitions and lots of adverts. Portraits of and interviews with celebrities were also a prominent inclusion in each edition. It was a triumph of promotion, formatting and editorial flair and soon boasted 400,000 to 600,000 in weekly sales, leading Jackson to claim that: ‘… far from lowering the standards of popular journalism, it undoubtedly raised them’ (2001: 55). It was widely imitated because of its success, most notably by Answers to Correspondents from Harmsworth, who had learned his trade on Newnes’ paper, and by Pearson’s Weekly which was published by the future proprietor of the Daily Express, both of which were aimed at the same market and towards securing similar sales figures, demonstrating the potential for this type of journal. Most importantly, Newnes developed a popular community within his paper though a ‘sympathetic intimacy’ (Jackson, 2000: 13) with his readers which anticipated much of popular journalism’s subsequent rhetorical appeal. He even found ways of extending that projection of community into other areas of his readers’ lives and he embarked upon an astute commercial branding of his product that went beyond simply selling papers. In May 1885, for example, he used the paper to launch a life insurance scheme for anyone found dead with a copy of Tit-Bits on them in a railway accident and in 1889 at the Paris Exhibition he set up a pavilion and enquiry office in an extension of the textual space of his paper. Some however have been less than appreciative of Newnes’ achievements:

Newnes became aware that the new schooling was creating a class of potential readers – people who had been taught to decipher print without learning much else, and for whom the existing newspapers, with their long articles, long paragraphs, and all-round demands on the intelligence and imagination, were quite unsuited. To give them what he felt they wanted, he started Tit-Bits. (Ensor, 1968: 311)

Stead – Pioneering the Popular Campaign

As economic forces were taking a larger role in the development of journalism, it was no coincidence that what became known as the New Journalism became crystallized in the practices of the London evening papers in their search for new readers. Competition in London had intensified as cheaper evening newspapers, such as the Pall Mall Gazette and the St James’s Gazette, reduced their prices from two pence to a penny in 1882, and it was in these papers, most notably the former, that the newer styles of journalism were introduced as a further commercial ploy to distinguish them from their more sedate morning relations. The genius of the Pall Mall Gazette (launched in 1865 by Greenwood) had been to bring the scope and variety of the more popular periodical reviews of magazines into daily journalism. It has been observed that ‘Greenwood brought lightness, polish and intellectual alertness into daily journalism at a time when the morning papers had become heavy and tradition-bound’ (Herd, 1952: 226).

The driving force behind this kind of journalism, which sought social commitment through a wider readership and aimed for an influence on matters of public concern, was the non-conformist and politically radical W.T. Stead. As early as 1880, writing on the Liberal Party’s political programme, he had stressed both the ‘political education’ of the electorate and the ‘prophetic character of the journalists’ vocation’ (Baylen, 1972: 373). He was a pioneer of investigative journalism being pursued for moral ends and saw the editor, as expressed in his article ‘Government by Journalism’, as ‘the uncrowned king of an educated democracy’ (1886). For him, journalism had to simply aim to change the world. Some commentators have located him within a longer tradition of radical journalism:

Stead’s mercurial, hellfire temperament was that of the great pamphleteers. In his boldness and versatility, in his passionate belief in the constructive power of the pen, in so many of his opinions, even in his championship of women, he resembled Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift. (Boston, 1990: 101)

It was as editor of the Pall Mall Gazette from 1883 to 1889 that he reached the pinnacle of his national prominence. During his tenure he brought cross-headings to the paper, together with popular developments such as scoops and a flair for self-publicity which drew attention to his newspaper, the development of investigative, campaigning journalism in the pursuit of socially progressive causes and the use of emotive and colourful writing. The cross-head was a presentational development that he copied from American newspaper practice. In contrast to the dense columns of the morning newspapers, the Pall Mall Gazette could be henceforth scanned at speed. He included the illustrations and line drawings that would further break up the monotony of the traditional printed page. He also employed specialist commentators to popularize knowledge of contemporary affairs and in his ‘Character Sketch’ he blended the interview, word picture and personality analysis. The social implications of these changes were clear, making ‘… the page accessible to less resolute reading at the end of the day and possibly by the family at home’ (Brake, 1988: 19).

The development of the interview was again an American import, but Stead deployed it with aplomb in broadening the popular reach of his journalism. One major coup was his interview with General Gordon in January 1884 before he embarked for the Sudan. As if to underline the growing importance of women to this newly personalized style of journalism, Stead employed Hulda Friederich as the chief interviewer for his paper.

His most famous exposé was the ‘Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’ story, which exposed Victorian hypocrisy on child prostitution in a series of articles from 6 July 1885. This synthesized all the ambition contained within Stead’s journalism and campaigning fervour. It was a sensation, boosting sales to 100,000, and its notoriety led him to be imprisoned for three months for the alleged procurement of the 13-year-old girl, Lisa Armstrong, who was used as the bait in the sting which exposed the realities of under-age sexual exploitation in his undercover investigation. Stead’s goal was both a moral and a political one. His passionate opposition to the wrongs of society was in keeping with much of the tradition of the ‘old corruption’ (Hollis, 1970), as it seemed to imply that there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the status quo that could not be resolved by the actions of good men and women. The ‘old corruption’ analysis tends to foreground individual failings and neglect deeper systemic issues, and critics such as Hollis maintain that it lacks any sustained political conviction. Onto his confidence in the reforming potential of the Victorian governing classes Stead grafted a moral purpose and wrapped this within a well-developed commercial pragmatism. He was a forerunner of a more personalized variety of what we might call today ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Fm
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Journalism and the Coming of Mass Markets
• 2 The Impact of Broadcasting and the Public Sphere
• 3 Patterns of Ownership and Control
• 4 Women as Consumers and Producers of Journalism
• 5 Technology and Journalism
• 6 Styling the Century: Tabloid Journalism
• 7 Journalism and Political Coverage
• 8 Alternative Journalism
• 9 Magazine Journalism: The Most Influential Genre
• 10 Hacks or Heroes?
• 11 Local Journalism
• Conclusion
• Chronology
• Bibliography
• Index