The English Press: A History 9781472523822, 9781472525635, 9781474219419, 9781472522627

Table of contents :
Cover page
Halftitle page
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Contents
Preface
Notes
Introduction
Notes
1 Origins
Notes
2 The growth of a press culture, 1695–1750
Notes
3 Maturity, 1750–1814
Notes
4 Steam and modernisation, 1814–61
Notes
5 Heyday, 1861–1922
Notes
6 New challenges, 1922–75
Notes
7 To the present, 1975–2019
Notes
8 Into the future
Notes
Conclusions
Notes
Selected further reading

Citation preview

The English Press

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The English Press A History

JEREMY BLACK

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BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2019 Copyright © Jeremy Black, 2019 Jeremy Black has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. ix constitute an extension of this copyright page. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN:

HB: PB: ePDF: eBook:

978-1-4725-2382-2 978-1-4725-2563-5 978-1-4725-2262-7 978-1-4725-2491-1

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For Alice

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Contents Preface

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Introduction

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Origins

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The growth of a press culture, 1695–1750

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Maturity, 1750–1814

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Steam and modernisation, 1814–61

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Heyday, 1861–1922

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New challenges, 1922–75

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To the present, 1975–2019

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Into the future

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45 77

91 121 141

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Conclusions 175 Selected further reading

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Preface B

eing a paper boy in the 1960s, before scaling the heights of serving customers in the newsagents, seems a world away. Such skills as marking up a round, or deciding what to do with the Sunday supplements and Radio or TV Times that somehow slipped out into the delivery bag, are, for me, long lost, although some still get their paper delivered this way. I can recall the headlines glimpsed in the hurry of delivery work, including the seemingly frequent ‘Bishop Speaks Out’ as a subheading in the News of the World. Not a world that has gone, but one now distant for me. Now, my Times comes on an iPhone and is updated during the day so that ‘London’ and ‘Final’ editions are gone or, rather, rephrased. I also glance at the BBC News on the iPhone. My wife, who takes the Times on her iPad, gets other newspapers at the local supermarket, Waitrose, both buying some and receiving others free in return for spending a certain amount on groceries. Our children simply use electronic means, our son being fond of FT podcasts. Yet the principle of getting the news remains important, not only a major part of the daily rhythm but also significant to feeling ‘in touch’. Indeed, whereas the mobile phone has completely displaced my now disconnected study landline, I still prefer to read a hardcopy newspaper and refer to the iPhoneborne Times as ‘the paper’. At the same time, there is no longer a weekly bill including delivery charges. Yet, it is far less clear that this pattern will continue. I, after all, am in my sixties. Endlessly optimistic, journalists are now among the many wondering about the decline and future of their occupation. Talk of demise for print journalism as a whole may be premature, but many newspapers have closed and more are in danger of doing so. A niche status for newspapers appears far more likely than ever before. This also offers continuities with, or rather a return, in a very different context to, the early years of the press. At the same time, this is part of a broader change. Relatively few among the young now follow the BBC despite it enjoying a massive state subsidy. Thus, if there is no room for a congratulatory history of the press, then that is not simply specific to the press, but also an aspect of a broader transformation in society, culture and politics. I have published two books and many articles on aspects of the subject before. The English Press in the Eighteenth Century (1987) was followed by ix

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my beginning work for a history of the English press as a whole, the genesis of this book, but I did not bring it to fruition. Instead, teaching a course on the English press from 1621 to 1861 led in 2001 to the publication of a book on that subject. Similarly, another course on the period to the present lies behind this book. Starting research on newspapers in 1977 with pen and paper, I am now in a transformed world of digital newspaper archives. They provide much of value, but there are also the same problems of scale and selection as in the past.1 I have benefited in thinking about this book from teaching courses on English newspaper history at the University of Exeter over the last twentyplus years, and from invitations to speak on many occasions, most recently at the University of Trondheim, the Daiwa Foundation and the Guildhall in London. I also profited from interviews with Andreas Whittam-Smith and Charles Wilson, from conversations or correspondence with Rodney Atwood, Kenneth Baker, Jonathan Barry, Gill Bennett, John Bew, George Bernard, Clyde Binfield, Tim Bouverie, Benedict Cadbury, Douglas Carswell, Peter Cleasby, Bruce Coleman, Eileen Cox, Eluned Dorkins, Daniel Finkelstein, Paul Griew, Denis Hamilton, Angus Hawkins, Damien Hyland, Simon Jenkins, Nick Lewis, Peter Luff, Andrew McHallam, Andrew Roberts, Peter Spiegel, Mike Stone, Margaret Thatcher and Michael Winter, from being a longstanding member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Newspaper and Periodical History and Media History, and from work for Cengage on microfilming newspaper collections. I would like to thank Joan Allen, Adrian Bingham, Steve Bodger, Bill Gibson, Keith Laybourn, David Lidington, Stephen Perring, William Robinson, Simon Targett and an anonymous reader for commenting on all or part of an earlier draft, and Maddie Holder and Dan Hutchins of Bloomsbury for all their help. It is a great pleasure to dedicate this book to Alice with much love from Sarah and myself.

Notes 1 A. Bingham, ‘The Digitisation of Newspaper Archives: Opportunities and Challenges for Historians,’ Twentieth CenturED text.docxy British History, 21 (2010), pp. 225–31; J. Mussell, The Nineteenth Century Press in the Digital Age (Basingstoke, 2012).

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he end of the line might seem apparent, and it certainly appears appropriate to consider today the state of the English press and, with that, its history. The competition from electronic media, competition that really dates from the beginning of public radio broadcasts in 1922 (hence the chapter divide between chapters five and six; not because it was the year in which Alfred Harmsworth, Viscount Northcliffe, the greatest of the press barons, died), has become a far more serious issue over the last two decades. Both circulation and advertising revenue have been greatly affected. The profitability of the press is in question. This is true for individual titles, whether free, such as the Evening Standard and Metro, each of which appear daily in London, or paid for. It is in question for newspaper groups and for the press as a whole. Individual titles have folded, notably the print version of the Independent in 2016, and more will have folded before 2019 is out. Writing in the Evening Standard on 6 April 2016, Roy Greenslade declared that, without journalism, ‘democracy itself is imperilled’. The future of the press was more generally proclaimed as dire. Social media was seen to provide a serious threat. The last point will be revisited in chapters eight and nine, and, as I write this latest draft, the current political row relates to a piece in the Daily Telegraph by Boris Johnson, a regular columnist and sometime Foreign Secretary; while the BBC is about to air a major BBC series, Press. Here, the intention is to argue that the press has always had an unsettled trajectory. Thus, the 1960s was also an era with titles ending or combining, for example the Sunday Graphic (1960), Reynolds News (1962), the Herald (1964), and the Daily Sketch (1971). Linked to this, the press has always had to adapt to indigenous (internal) and exogenous (external) changes and pressures. That, indeed, makes its history more interesting, but also more unsettled than might otherwise be the case. In place of any clear narrative account, or any ready analysis, there are a variety of accounts and analyses that are possible, and for long there has been somewhat partisan, even bitter, contestation among academics over the approach that should be adopted. This contestation is best considered by 1

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noting the extent to which, at the time, ‘there was clearly no homogeneous reaction to the spread of cheap print’,1 or to much else. It is all too easy to adopt a teleology focused on the scale and impact of the press, with developments treated as inevitable and, until the recent decline, largely desirable or, at least, necessary. In such a light, past episodes were frequently judged in accordance with this teleology, and notably the extent to which change was welcomed by newspapers. To argue, however, that development towards the press as a mass phenomenon was desirable risks adopting a circular position and treating alternative states as failures. There is also the problem of assuming that there was a great age of the press, which again risks becoming a circular argument.2 This claim, indeed, was a response to the situation following the end in 1861 of the specific taxes on newspapers. It also accorded with the Whiggish tendency that was more generally prevalent in the English understanding of the past, and notably in both official and popular accounts. Academic revisionism directed against this tendency had only a limited impact. The variety of ways in which the press can be considered also reflects the possible contexts in which both individual newspapers, and the press as a whole, can be approached, and, therefore, the need to consider how best to prioritise between them. Obvious instances include the press and society, a subject and approach which can be very variously defined; the press and politics; and the press as an information system. Each of these contexts sounds abstract but, repeatedly, they were crucial to the individual experience of newspapers and to the nature of collective memory. That, however, downplays the sheer interest of news and its variety. The English Chronicle of 11 October 1796, a tri-weekly London evening paper, included the odds-on horse races at Newmarket, details of ploughing matches at Petworth, and news of four whist players in Glasgow whose combined age was over 300; alongside political and economic news. There is also the question of how best to prioritise between the national and the provincial press. It is understandable that the first attracts attention, both as more important in its impact and as more innovative in its methods. That, however, should not mean that provincial newspapers are treated as also-rans. This was not so, and even more in the early nineteenth century than the eighteenth, because the relative role of London in the country declined as economic growth brought greater prominence to other centres, notably Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds. Competition between provincial newspapers and national dailies remained a major theme into recent decades when it was largely settled on behalf of the latter. So also, but even more, with electronic media which very much tend to adopt a national or international perspective, and not a provincial or local one. The press certainly benefits from having its history studied in terms of wider currents of national development. This is not least because of the major

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significance of newspapers in the public space of English society, politics, economics and culture. More specifically, the freedom of the press, or, rather, what was understood by that term, and proclaimed accordingly, both by newspapers and by others, played a major role in the English self-image and in contributing to, and thriving from, the development of a liberal society in England. Conversely, the press became a focus for critics of society. It offered a way to decry populism, consumerism and big business, and, more generally, to express concerns about aspects of democracy and capitalism, and, more particularly, on their combination. These concerns have brought together critics from what could be termed the left and the right, but their genesis looks back to older categories and worries, including opposition to the expression of religious heterodoxy in print, Tory opposition to the apparent social and intellectual agendas of Whiggism both in print and in oral transmission,3 anti-democratic hostility to ‘mechanical statesmen . . . all undone by following politics, instead of the trade they were bred to’,4 and, conversely, radical critiques of society. Over the last century, it is the last that have been most vocal. Indeed, the left has produced a consistent critique of the press. In August 2018, the Camden branch of Momentum criticised what it called the ‘corporate media’, when replying to attacks on Jeremy Corbyn over anti-semitism. The press, therefore, serves at the time as an important way to record and investigate broader developments in English society and politics, and subsequently to do the same for English history. At the same time, debating social developments was not the prime purpose of most newspapers. Instead, their distinctive feature was that they were produced in a capitalist context, for profit, and very much in competition with other newspapers. This outcome was not inevitable. Most obviously, had England developed in an authoritarian fashion, then the press might have included a greater component of state direction. Comparisons between newspapers and their contexts across European states in the eighteenth century make this readily apparent. Leaving that element aside, the maintenance for longer of the licensing provisions abandoned in 1695, or of the special taxation finally repealed in 1861, would have affected both individual titles and the sector as a whole. There has also been the impact of changes in competing sectors, such as the granting of permission for television stations airing advertisements. Beginning operation in 1955, these were the product of a Conservative government, and it is unlikely that Labour, with its more corporatist approach, would have so readily permitted this opposition to the BBC or the scale of its subsequent development. Histories of the press, therefore, balance the systemic with the individual; production changes with the pull of consumer preferences; a teleological

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assumption of inherent benefit with an understanding of options; and the attraction of long-term trends with the play of contingencies and the impact of conjunctures. Problems such as the reconciliation of pressures over content are longstanding, but also have varied in their contexts. Thus, Bell’s Weekly Messenger, a London Sunday, in its issues of 1 May and 12 June 1796, explained its small type by reference to the quantity of material that had to be printed. There is the internalist perspective that focuses on the organisation of newspapers and on how the commercial system responded to opportunities and problems. Some of these were very clearly ‘external’, most obviously the response to taxation. Yet, the focus is on a dynamic entrepreneurial culture that had its own internal ability to develop and to search out profit. There is much continuity in the world of the press: . . . a long pent-up, ever rising, flood of resentment against the practices of some newspapers. Intrusion, triviality, distortion, muck-raking, the inversion of values – the list of offences is long. They are real offences. The newspapers were warned years ago that if they went on the way they were going they would end by alienating those very sections of society upon whose good will the freedom and the working conventions of the press depend. This has now happened. What makes the business so grave is the degree of ignorance, complacency, and apathy towards the particular dangers threatening every free society that now stands revealed. Was this 2010? 2012? 2016? 2018? No, the Times of 18 March 1963 with reference to the Vassal tribunal and the imprisonment of journalists. So also with other comments on specific characteristics. Modern crises and warnings of doom about the press have a long provenance, one that goes back to its origins. There are still important aspects of the internal dynamics of the press that require examination. This is particularly true of the London press in the 1740s and 1750s, the decades after those ably covered by Michael Harris,5 for which there is no comparable work on organisational developments and entrepreneurial culture. Insufficient is still known about the processes by which news items were accumulated, validated and organised in the eighteenth century, and the impact of the new fiscal regime of the 1790s on the provincial press would also repay attention. The ‘external’ history of the press is also crucial. That does not indicate any sense that the internal account is unimportant, nor that ‘external’ and ‘internal’ are truly separable. However, change in the press can be related to contextual transformations. These can be general, affecting much of society, such as rising literacy in the late nineteenth century. There are also those that more

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specifically influence the press, either because they alter its modus operandi, for example the invention and spread of the railway and telegraphy, or because of their competitive impact, as with modern developments in radio and television. Furthermore, the press was greatly affected by changes in its regulatory framework, with legal developments determining what could be reported, and how, and with fiscal legislation, which could either directly alter the cost structure of newspaper, or, through tax changes, affect the conduct and profitability of newspaper businesses. Thus, the Leeds Mercury reported on 25 April 1795: ‘At the last assizes at Lincoln, it was determined by Mr Justice Rooke, that public advertised notices of any kind could not be legally admitted as such, unless printed in all the newspapers in the county, wherein such notice was intended to be given.’ The decision arose in a cause relative to navigation measures only advertised in one of the two Stamford and Lincoln papers. The ‘external’ dimension also requires re-examination because of the need to question some of the important teleological assumptions that continue to play a major role in the discussion of the press.6 These relate in particular to assumptions about the public and concerning the ‘public space’ within which newspapers operated. There has been excellent work, both theoretical and empirical, on both. At the same time, not all of this work can be readily linked to the fortunes of the press as a whole, still more that of individual newspapers. Moreover, there can be a teleology about the ‘public space’ that risks being as misleading as the earlier Whiggish one about the freedom of the press. At the same time, the press appears to collect facile descriptions and criticisms, and glib remarks, as with those about press barons. In practice, its variety, of, at once, contexts, political economies (not a single economy),7 contents, and impacts, does not lend itself to such an approach. Moreover, there can be a somewhat simplistic response to influences, one that enquiry dispels. For example, in the early 1990s, the editor of one of the two leading Newcastle newspapers told me that the group that owned the paper, although Conservative by political preference, was happy for him to take a clearly Labour editorial line as long as the paper returned a profit. Rivalries can also be between newspapers of a similar political persuasion. Such points indicate the continuity of key elements of the press world. So also do the claims that newspapers make. Thus, on 4 April 1769, the St James’s Chronicle claimed: ‘By the following marks or notes, the reader will be able, at any time, to discover a wicked administration . . . the visible dread of examination, and constant endeavour of men in power to keep their actions in the dark.’ Yet, so much else is involved in why people read newspapers. There is turning to the paper for what Mary Chapin Carpenter, an American singersongwriter, in her song ‘I feel Lucky’ (1992) from the album Come On

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Come On, termed ‘my daily dose of destiny’, the horoscope. This is an item that appears to have interested Rupert Murdoch, certainly judging from the change in the Sun after he took it over in 1969. The weather is another staple. So are pictures, including photographs and cartoon/caricature commentary on events. Alternatively, there was the James Bond strip cartoon in the Daily Express from 1958 to 1977. A friend, who usually reads, if anything, the i, remarked to me ‘I sometimes like the Guardian (online) because I can do their concise quick crossword’ and the system informs you if an answer is incorrect; adding ‘It’s a good way into seeing the paper.’8 Astrology performs the same function in several of the tabloids. This variety offers some hope for the press. It certainly provides an alternative to the focus on politics that engages so much attention in the discussion of the press, and especially so as some newspapers, notably at the national level the Daily Star and at the local level many freesheets, offer little on their political views. In essence, the focus on politics at present involves two potent campaigns, each of which presents itself as anti-establishment. On the one hand, comes the Daily Mail, the Sun, and other supporters of BREXIT, keen to attack what is presented as a liberal establishment dominated by ‘Remoaners’ that is allegedly centred in the BBC and the Guardian. On the other, comes a Corbynista argument focused on social media, but supported by the Guardian, that attacks a conservative establishment which, crucially, serves the cause of ‘press barons’ and is backed by them. The first campaign is in decline as its readers age and fall, but the latter is also a minority view. Samuel Johnson, over dinner at Allan Ramsay’s on 29 April 1778, adopted a wider cultural position: We must read what the world reads at the moment. It has been maintained that this superfoetation, this teeming of the press in modern times, is prejudicial to good literature, because it obliges us to read so much of what is of inferior value, in order to be in the fashion . . . But it must be considered, that we have now more knowledge generally diffused; and our ladies read now, which is a great extension.9

Notes 1 C. Sumpter, ‘The Cheap Press and the “Reading Crowd”: Visualizing Mass Culture and Modernity, 1838–1910’, Media History, 12 (2006), p. 246. 2 For a measured critique of the early stages of the standard narrative, A. Pettegree, The Invention of News: How the World came to know about itself (New Haven, CT, 2014).

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3 P. McDowell, The Invention of the Oral: Print Commerce and Fugitive Voices in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago, IL, 2017). 4 Daily Courant, 30 Apr. 1734. 5 M. Harris, London Newspapers in the Age of Walpole: A Study in the Origins of the Modern English Press (London, 1987). 6 J. Van Horn Melton, The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge, 2001). 7 R.R. John and J. Silberstein-Loeb (eds), Making News: The Political Economy of Journalism in Britain and America from the Glorious Revolution to the Internet (Oxford, 2015). 8 Eluned Dorkins to Black, 8 Sept. 2018. 9 J. Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LLD , vol. 7 (London, 1835), p. 188.

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ewspapers were an eventual consequence of the spread of printing and the development of a culture of print. England was certainly not at the front of this process. It was China that played a key role in the spread of printing. Movable type was employed with ceramic type pieces, wooden movable type following in the fourteenth century, while, in the thirteenth, the use of metal type appeared in Korea. However, the number of characters in both languages made it very time-consuming to set type. In contrast, European alphabets were more convenient for printing. The stress in China was on xylographic printing with texts carved onto woodblocks, a relatively simple technology that permitted the frequent reprinting of books once their blocks had been cut. In contrast, if movable type was used for other purposes, individual books would then have to be reset to be reprinted. As there were plentiful labourers in China, woodblock printing was inexpensive and easy.1 In both China and Korea, there was a focus on bureaucratic requirements and controls. In China, the main source of books was commercial publishers, but the registration of households led to the production of printed forms, while the scale of government fiscal requirements helped to ensure a degree of technological innovation, notably with the state salt and tea monopolies, which required the printing of large numbers of licences annually. Their licences were printed at state workshops at Nanjing with the use of iron plates, rather than woodblocks, as the wood could not have withstood the demands posed by the large scale of the printing. The use of national imperial printed texts to communicate edicts and information was matched by the publishing of texts by local magistrates, including gazetteers that provided an official record of county life. By the sixteenth century, the publication of books in China was on a great scale and, covering a number of purposes, for a range of milieux. Commercial publishing expanded significantly, for the first time dwarfing both government and private publishing. The degree to which people, even ordinary people, were informed about developments because of the spread of printing and the widespread availability of books was most impressive. In the sixteenth and 9

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early seventeenth centuries in particular, there was an explosion of popular, unofficial texts about all kinds of current and historical events and more people than ever were writing and reading this material. These texts also reproduced a huge amount of gossip and rumour, thus disseminating popular stories. Literacy rates in East Asia were higher than the rest of the world until probably the mid-nineteenth century. Part of that was because so many books were in print in East Asia which encouraged a widespread use of the written word across society.2 This situation ensured that Gutenberg’s innovations in fifteenth-century Europe have to be considered in a wider comparative context. Until the use of the steam engine to power the printing machine in the early nineteenth century, the speed of printing with a European hand-press did not have much advantage over Chinese printing using brushes. Text in China was printed from the block by using a brush over the paper, so that the ink was transferred onto the paper. Indeed, Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), who went to China in 1582, founding the Jesuit mission, was surprised by the speed of Chinese printing and commented that the cutting of a block by a Chinese carver required less time than typesetting a folio after proofreading. The scale of activity in China was impressive, but Gutenberg profited from the convenient relationship between movable type and the limited number of characters in Western languages. He also benefited from the availability of information about the properties of tin, lead and antimony, the metals used for type.3 The rapid spread of innovation was a central characteristic of the Western system. By 1500, there were presses in 236 towns in Europe. William Caxton was the innovator in England. This distribution was linked to the decentralisation of innovation and change that was so significant for its impact. In turn, a subsequent restructuring of the publishing industry, through a concentration of production, proved the most effective and profitable way to meet a growing demand, such that, by 1600, over 392,000 separate titles had been published in Europe.4 In the absence of significant amounts of capital, printers had to focus on the search for profit. They were primarily businessmen, and the search for entrepreneurial advantage encouraged them in fostering a degree of change that can be seen as helping usher in a different world. In China, there was a major overlap between written and printed forms of information. In the West, there was a significant overlap, at first, between manuscript and print, with printed books produced in limited numbers, with similar purchasers for both and understandably so as they met different needs, and with printers using a Roman font that was similar to the appearance of manuscripts.5 At the same time as the rise in the printing of books, much of the profit in printing derived from the production of ephemeral items such as proclamations

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and broadsides, ephemera for which, unlike books, there was no secondhand market. Such jobwork helped create a flow of money. Successful book publication was more difficult as it required a more substantial investment, while sales would be slower than for (far less expensive) ephemera. As a result, benefits for book publication accrued from sales over a considerable area, which helped ensure that publishing focused on the centres of already prominent commercial networks, such as Venice, Antwerp and Nuremberg, which attracted Europe-wide purchasers.6 Printing in the West had a major impact with the Protestant Reformation of the early sixteenth century. Its theology was firmly based on the Word as represented in the Bible. The Reformation was heavily dependent on the ability of publications to overcome traditional constraints on discussion and the spread of ideas, and, in doing so, opened up a situation very different to that in China where a far greater degree of homogeneity and control could be maintained in the world of print. The populist purposes of the Reformation meant that larger audiences were sought than in the case of the Renaissance. The opportunities of print were brilliantly exploited in Germany by Martin Luther who wrote a series of accessible pamphlets and also benefited from the degree to which his supporters encouraged their dissemination. It was scarcely surprising that Luther was committed to the ability of people to read the Bible. In turn, the Reformation helped provide great opportunities for the publishing world, notably, but not only, in Germany. The printing of the Bible in the vernacular enhanced the reputation of both printing and the vernacular. It was also seen as a way to protect the faithful from Catholic proselytism. The combination of printing and the Reformation was also significant for the development of proto-nationalism, not least because information on religious matters was now offered in the vernacular. In England, Protestant worship was introduced under Edward VI (r. 1547–53) by means of the Book of Common Prayer (1549), which contained forms of prayer and Church services for every religious event. Parliament passed a Uniformity Act decreeing that the Prayer Book alone was to be used for Church services, which were to be in English. In turn, during the Catholic reaction under Queen Mary (r. 1553–8), Catholic church literature, such as Mass books, was produced in large quantities. The Bible and the Book of Common Prayer were also translated into Welsh. The persecution of English Protestant leaders under Mary provided a key theme for John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments of Matters Most Special and Memorable Happening in the Church with an Universal History of the Same (1563). Popularly known as the Book of Martyrs, this was an extremely influential account of religious history that propagated an image of Catholic cruelty and Protestant bravery that was judged to be of value to the Protestant government of Elizabeth I (r. 1558–1603) as it sought to define and defend its

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notions of identity, and therefore loyalty. Foxe provided an account of England as a kingdom that had been in the forefront of an advance towards Christian truth, and depicted the Catholic alternative to Elizabeth as wicked. After an order of Convocation (the clerical parliament of the established Church) of 1571, cathedral churches acquired copies and many parish churches chose to do likewise. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs was to have a resonance into the twentieth century and was central to the Protestant martyrology that was important to the national role of the Church of England and to the sense of Protestants as needing to be vigilant against Catholic persecution.7 Printing was an important part of the process by which information in the West, as in China, became increasingly impersonal, and ensured that more information was communicated in the written rather than spoken form. However, again as in China, the written form did not have to involve printing, and manuscript newsletters produced by commercial news-writers remained important in the West late into the eighteenth century. They are much understudied and discussed. In England, Wye’s Letter, the leading newsletter, was a major source for the printed press in the early decades. Wye’s also commented on the press. For example, the issue of Wye’s Letter of 26 December 1728, which was used by the York Courant on 31 December, commented: ‘The Craftsman of Saturday last is as much, if not more, taken notice of than any of the former; and, we hear, it was with some difficulty that they got them delivered out.’ So also with other newsletters such as Stanley’s which supplied most of the Ipswich Journal of 11 April 1730, Miller’s, Jackson’s, Calcroft’s and the General Post-Office Letter. In 1723, Nottingham’s Weekly Courant cited both ‘Jackson’s Letter’ and ‘Miller’s Letter’. At the same time, the source was not always indicated. Thus, the Kentish Post of 16 August 1727 cited news ‘From a Written News Letter’. However, a key sign of change was that the manuscript press then collapsed. Although there were textual variations with printing, notably with errors, changes in new editions, and as a result of censorship, it, nevertheless, represented a way, as in China, to fix the text in a fashion different to the textual instability arising from the continual alterations offered by hand-copied texts and, even more, by the oral transmission of information and opinion. Thus, the character of textual memory, and of memory as a whole, changed. The more fixed character of print was linked to the more public response to what was published. This response was to be encouraged by advertising and seen with the development of reviewing.8 At the same time, printing, like the modern Internet, opened up big social and geographical contrasts, and, for this and other reasons, has to be historicised in terms of particular contexts. Without any connection to printing, education had already played a major role in late medieval Western cities, but its importance as a means to approach and use the world of print led to a

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greater emphasis than hitherto on education, as well as enhancing the place of learning in education. However, access to the information offered through education developed in terms of existing social structures. As books, treatises, pamphlets and other printed forms became an important media for public dispute and individual consumption, a process encouraged by rising literacy, the majority of the population was excluded for reasons of cost and/or limited literacy.9 The culture of print brought new authorities and new processes of authorisation. This was a matter in part of censorship which served a range of goals, from religious and political control to attempts to regulate the book trade.10 The intensity of censorship varied, with the United Provinces (the Dutch Republic; Netherlands) initially the laxest in Europe, although printers could be punished, for example for printing obscenity. Moreover, censorship did not so readily extend to manuscript newsletters, which were both harder to control than printed works and also excused from the same degree of control because they were seen as more exclusive and thus more clearly focused on élite readers. Censorship and licensing were not simply a means of restriction, but also one of legitimation that marked the boundary of what was respectable. Thus, use of the licensing process, including the granting of privileges, by the authorities influenced a ‘middle ground’ in which such legitimation was sought, as in early Stuart England.11 This aspect of the moulding of public information was arguably as significant as the suppression of material through censorship, the topic that tends to engage greater attention. A similar point can be made about the control and licensing of sermons and other forms of public speech; and is more generally true of the regulation of information systems. Governments also influenced publishers by placing official contracts, and the nature of the business could make this an important source of income. In the late seventeenth century, three-tenths of the output of Scottish publishers was of official declarations, acts and proclamations. Censorship was the cause of the development of illegal networks of publication and distribution, networks that were to be important not only for the propagation of religious dissent, but also for political, intellectual and social counterparts. Thus, the world of the radical Enlightenment of the later eighteenth century, as well as subsequent iterations of radicalism, looked back to the opposition to Reformation-era censorship. This opposition was most frequently expressed by Protestants, but there was also dissent to Protestant established churches on the part of Catholics and of Protestant sectarians, such as Anabaptists, Socinians, and, later, Quakers. The way in which the contents of books reflected social expectations, in the sense of the expectations of the élite, was significant in establishing

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authorisation. Thus, the concerns and experiences of the bulk of the population were excluded. However, the development of cheap print challenged this process as it led to an interaction of new with traditional mediums. For example, printed texts and illustrations overlapped with ballads which could be recited, sung, or pinned up and thus read. As a result of such activities, ideas expressed in particular genres had a wide resonance, helping to create shared values.12 Moreover, print spread phrases, proverbs and stories, while chapbooks recycled love-stories, myths and legends. The standardisation that printing brought to writing imposed additional norms. Works produced in regional varieties of languages such as Italian were revised and standardised, and the role of patois in speech was not matched in print. This was a longstanding situation with written works, also seen for example in China, that did not begin with printing. Nevertheless, standardisation was encouraged by printing. In 1604, James I of England (r. 1603–25) established the teams that in 1611 produced the King James or Authorised Version, a translation of the Bible that was to prove very important to the development of the English language. There were hopes as well as anxieties about the possibilities of the new, the printing press, as well as about the decline or loss of the old, notably manuscript culture, but also the lessening of an emphasis on oral expression. At the same time, this is debatable, as there are many instances of works read aloud to local people. A tension between the old and the new can also be found across history with other changes in the technology of expression, and, indeed, is readily apparent in modern debates about new media and the forms of expression that are adopted. The disposability of both the past and the present is a theme in this concern.13 Whatever its content, information in the West was increasingly shaped as a commodity by the culture of print, which, in turn, ensured its wide dissemination, although, as stated, written newsletters also played a similar role in this spread of information and continued to be significant in the English press into the mid-eighteenth century, although, increasingly, with only Wye’s Letter cited. Rather than treating this process of spreading information as an unproblematic aspect of modernisation, it is important to note the extent to which information was of the old order as much as of new ideas, while news was as much about strange providences, for example interventions by divine or diabolical agencies, or sightings of peculiar animals, as about a more secular account of life or one of apparently general validity grounded on universal knowledge. The writings of James VI of Scotland (r. 1567–1625, James I of England) were an aspect of the way in which news of witches was spread in the new

ORIGINS

15

culture of print: in learned treatises, chapbooks, printed ballads and engravings. Such works included Reginald Scot’s The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), George Gifford’s A Dialogue Concerning Witches and Witchcraftes (1593), and John Cotta’s The Trial of Witchcraft (1616). The world of print also predicted the future. The publications of popular astrologers, such as, in England, William Lilly, author of The Starry Messenger (1645), sold thousands of copies and continued to do so into the nineteenth century.14 Belief in witchcraft, astrology and providentialism were all aspects of the interaction of human and sacred space, and of the extent to which this interaction was continual, and therefore a subject for regular report and commentary. Information in the shape of news helped to explain life. The link with ecclesiastical developments was clear, for this was an aspect of a religious culture that put a greater stress than prior to the Reformation on explanation, not least through use of the vernacular and of print. Much news was not as we would know it today. Instead, it could be repetitive and cyclical (as with the cycle of days on which parish bells were rung), telling and retelling familiar tales and superstitions. Perhaps this process afforded some security in an insecure world. A sense of news as frequent, even diurnal, did not represent a secular rejection of a religious world view, but, instead, was a common theme in society, offering explanation in the form of narrative continuity. Both print and greater interest in recording and ‘telling’ time, however, were aspects of a significant cultural shift in the early-modern West. The development of time-based forms of publication, such as astrological publications, news pamphlets and newspapers, were part of this shift, which was shaped by government regulation, entrepreneurial activity, and the purchasing and reading decisions of many, for whom purchase and reading were acts of political and/or religious affirmation as well as signs of interest.15 Branches of knowledge fed by new information, such as astrology and the journalistic genre of ‘strange newes’, were used as vehicles for articulating topical grievances.16 On 30 May 1723, the Weekly Courant of Nottingham carried a London report of five days earlier: For several nights last week, a bird was heard to sing in the Dissenters Burying Ground in Burnhill Fields; it began at 11, and continued its song for most of the night. This drew a great concourse of people that way; and some of the old women would needs have it the spirit of a female child that was found there a few days before, supposed to have been murdered. On Thursday it ceased its note, and the old women in the neighbourhood being assembled, according to custom, were puzzled to assign a cause for the loss of their feathered songster, one of more age and gravity than the rest, declared she thought he had absented on account of Mr Layer being to be hanged next day.

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Christopher Layer, a Jacobite, was executed at Tyburn on 17 May for his role in the Atterbury Plot. However expressed, the information and opinion that circulated in the West were not confined to a system of government-directed control, nor to hierarchic patterns of deference. Attempts to control the flow and dissemination of unwelcome material stemmed from concern about the political and religious possibilities of print, including its influence on those who could not read but who might be influenced by those who could. The nature of intelligencegathering required by governments was affected by print. The development of pamphlets and newspapers was located within a wider cultural shift that focused attention on what could be presented as news, news from elsewhere. This information became more prominent in the West in the sixteenth century, not only with the increase of public or semipublic forms, such as manuscript newsletters, but also as a result of an apparent greater internalisation of news with the larger number of diarists, many of whom recorded public news. This process of engagement with clearly defined news, especially from a distance, was related to institutional developments, such as the growth of public postal links and of mercantile correspondence systems, as well as to cultural change. Entrepreneurial activity helped foster a process in which different mediums joined, overlapped or separated. In England, the genre of ‘strange newes’ was used to provide accounts of providential tales, and this possibility attracted entrepreneurial publishers.17 However, although providential tales remained an important topic for report as an important instance of the continuities represented by cheap print,18 news and fact were increasingly differentiated from exemplary prose in which morality was seen as defining accuracy.19 Indeed, political information became a valuable commodity that was turned into profit by the writers of newsletters. Linkage within the West was a means as well as theme of this news. Items of news inserted in one periodical were readily placed in others as well. The first newspapers in Europe, published in Wolfenbüttel and Strasbourg in 1609, encouraged, and reflected, debate about the value of publishing news. As the regularity, frequency and volume of news, and other forms of information, increased, so it became easier to compare accounts, in order to establish plausibility, while a sense of contemporaneity developed, one in which news seemed close and a form of present experience. News helped foster a shared experience of events in the West, a process that was to be significant in the response to scientific advances. The depersonalisation of news sources also became more significant, which contributed to the possibility of news management.20 London rapidly followed Continental centres. Reflecting the extent to which printing in the United Provinces was relatively cheap and an established source

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of material for England,21 the earliest English-language newspapers appeared in Amsterdam in 1620, but were replaced by London titles in 1621. The common theme was a reporting of Continental news during the recently started Thirty Years War (1618–48). War on the Continent both encouraged interest in news and provided the items accordingly. Political and entrepreneurial strategies could thereby be satisfied, and with the English news world as an aspect and beneficiary of a more far-flung and urgent network of political commitment, communication and publication. The route to profitability was a subscription base, for that provided the cash-flow to support composition costs. Publication once a week reflected the demand for frequent news: more frequent publication would not have been feasible given the time taken for printing, the extent of the market, and the rate of news transmission from the Continent. By 1622, newsbooks were appearing in a numbered sequence. This helped create a sense of location in time: news was placed in a sequence, and later items in a sequence qualified what had gone before and therefore clarified the accuracy of fears based on earlier reports.22 Location in a sequence also contributed to a sense of the enduring character of news and thus of newsbooks as important to the establishment and configuration of historical memory and awareness.23 Inherently, however, this proved a contentious matter, as there were histories, not history on offer, histories that shaped the response to the news. To an extent not seen in China, news fed into political debate and contention, helping lead to current discussion of such activity in terms of the modern idea of the public sphere. Their speed of publication ensured that pamphlets, a form, seen as inherently ephemeral, which developed in the sixteenth century, became a means of public speech.24 The interest in developments abroad, notably due to confessional conflict, ensured that information circulated widely, a process encouraged by governmental and ecclesiastical activity and by translations of items. However, this circulation also led to contradictory reports as well as hostile government action. In 1632, as a result of a complaint from a Spanish diplomat, ‘corantos’ (newsbooks or newspapers) were prohibited by the Privy Council.25 The abolition of the Star Chamber, a prerogative court in July 1641, part of the collapse of Charles’s authority and power, led to an explosion of publications, one further inspired by the outbreak of rebellion in Ireland that November. Publications contributed to (and drew on) the development and polarisation of public opinion in England in the 1640s,26 bringing to a new intensity the political contention already seen there, notably in the 1580s, 1590s and 1620s. The variety of means available for the dissemination of news and opinion in England there helped reach a socially wide-ranging audience and permitted a major challenge to monarchical royal accounts.27 Such challenges encouraged enhanced concern with the image of monarchy in the

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world of print. As a result, political information was a field of contention, and information as commodity or commercial enterprise was in part constituted accordingly. The appearance of newspapers, as of specific titles, reflected political transitions. Serialisation was both the means most appropriate to report the lengthy civil war that began in 1642 and also an increasingly important organising principle within the trade in print. The war saw the production of works directly linked to the competing regimes. Charles I supported the newsbook Mercurius Aulicus produced by Sir John Berkenhead from 1643, and this helped ensure a good supply of news. Reference to the god Mercury emphasised speed, novelty and fast-moving events. The leading Parliamentary competitor was Mercurius Britannicus, which was run between 1643 and 1646 by Marchamont Nedham, selling 750–1,000 copies weekly. Berkenhead and Nedham questioned each other’s veracity, news being subsumed to propaganda. This helped polarise public opinion, as the newsbooks of both sides demonised the other and focused on atrocities and sinister schemes. They also exaggerated the difficulties of the opposing side.28 At the same time, the melange of news and abuse provided opportunities for defining and signalling not only current controversies, but also longer-lasting differences. Disenchanted by the growing radicalism of the Parliamentary regime, Nedham switched to produce a Royalist newsbook in 1647–9. However, imprisonment, in turn, led him to switch back to the Parliamentary side, in order to produce Mercurius Politicus, the most prominent newsbook of the 1650s, and one subsidised by the government from 1650. Other Royalist journalists, such as John Crouch, also turned to back Cromwell.29 Mercurius Politicus was one of the two authorised newsbooks permitted in 1655: in 1649, 1652 and 1655 most of the press was banned and a licensing system was restored. This inhibited the ability of newspapers to finance a world of commercial print. Governments sought to control the press, a view supported by commentators who saw a free press as part of a world of disorder. In his Leviathan (1651), Thomas Hobbes pressed the need to control public opinion. It was not surprising that control over the world of print in England was reimposed after the republican Interregnum (1649–60) were ended with the Restoration of monarchy in 1660 in the person of Charles II. Under legislation of 1662, printing was strictly limited to the master printers of the Stationers’ Company of London, which had a monopoly on the supply of paper, and the university printers. Only twenty of the former were permitted, and vacancies were filled by the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, who were troubled enough by the dissemination of heterodox opinions not to support a relaxation in the control of printing.

ORIGINS

19

The Secretaries of State were given authority over publications dealing with ‘affairs of state’, and this authority was delegated in 1663 to Sir Roger L’Estrange, who undertook it in return for the profitable patent for the exclusive publication of all newspapers. This led, from 1665, to his publication of what became the Gazette, a biweekly ‘published by authority’. It mostly contained news from abroad that had been provided by the offices of the Secretaries of State, the predecessors of the Foreign Secretary. The English system broke down in the political chaos and government weakness of the Exclusion Crisis of 1679–81 in which the opposition Whig movement produced a mass of propaganda hostile to Charles II and his brother James, Duke of York, later James II.30 The Licensing Act expired in May 1679. The first unlicensed newspaper made clear its didactic nature in its title: The Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Rome . . . in the process of which, the Papists arguments are answered, their fallacies detected, their cruelties registered, their treasons and seditious principles observed. Newspapers sought to break through to reveal what were believed to be the secret histories of the period.31 By the end of 1679, more papers were being published than at any time since 1649. The establishment of the Penny Post in 1680 facilitated the transmission of information and the distribution of publications. In response to the spread of unlicensed newspapers, the circulation of the Gazette fell greatly.32 A Tory press was founded in response to opposition publications, but Charles II wished not to conduct a propaganda war but to terminate one. A resumption of royal control over the press was an aspect of the strengthening of royal authority as the Exclusion Crisis was brought to a close. The judiciary supported the power of the royal prerogative to control the press, and prosecutions for seditious libel were launched. Chief Justice Scroggs directed that juries were only competent to determine whether the defendants had published the libel; judges alone could decide whether it was seditious, a ruling that greatly limited the role of juries. Certain of government support, officials of the Stationers’ Company and of the Secretaries of State enforced the law against illegal printers. The Company dealt with Richard Baldwin, the Whig publisher of the Protestant Courant in 1682. In 1685, James II had Parliament revive the Licensing Act. The ministerial success in stamping out Whig newspapers contrasted with the situation the following century. Contrasting circumstances were important. The press in the 1680s was newer, smaller, confined to London, with a lessdeveloped distributive network and smaller financial resources, and without the loyalties of a long-established readership. However, the key contrast was that in government attitudes. No eighteenthcentury ministry sought to suppress the press with the thoroughness and vigour of Charles II and James II. The Civil War, the Popish Plot, and the

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Exclusion Crisis engendered a fear and a desire for action in ministerial circles that had different consequences to the subsequent situation. Ministries became more accustomed to the expression of various opinions, often antagonistic, in the press, and also responded to circumstances. The system of press control was greatly weakened when William III (of Orange) seized power from James II in the Glorious Revolution of 1688–9. William brought a mobile printing press with him when he invaded in 1688: he knew the importance of the press. As a consequence of the Glorious Revolution, it was possible to relate the rise of press freedom to the end of Stuart authoritarianism. Nevertheless, once in control, William moved to revive the machinery of press control. The Glorious Revolution had led to the appearance of newspapers, all of them favourable to William, but the revival led to attacks on unlicensed works. Richard Baldwin found himself in trouble with both Secretaries of State and Parliament in 1690–1, despite his Whig credentials. In 1695, however, the Licensing Act lapsed. It was felt that the existing system for the supervision of printing was inadequate, and plans were drawn up to prepare a new regulatory act, only for it to be killed due to parliamentary divisions and a lack of parliamentary time. Linked to this, it is readily apparent that newspaper development could have gone on a number of different paths in England. No one was inevitable. Instead, the key context explaining English distinctiveness was that of politics. This provided the context for the independent initiative of entrepreneurs, and thus for a press focused on free market, liberal principles. Moreover, much of the discussion of political issues in the English press, and particularly by the late seventeenth century, was handled in pragmatic terms, with detailed, specific instances, reasons, and means of cause and effect playing a major role accordingly in the discussion. At the same time, the context was generally that of moral factors presented in terms of Christian values, while religious partisanship was also an important filter of information. The development of a relatively unregulated press in England after the lapsing of the Licensing Act helped lead to a form of political culture, very different to that earlier, one in which, in a newly uncensored context, there was an expectation of news and thus of novelty, if not change. A major increase in the press followed, including, in 1702, the launch of the Daily Courant, the first English daily newspaper. This development was an instance of the extent to which the political and social power of print technology, as with other information technologies, depended on particular conjunctures. The most specific in the 1690s was the massive interest in foreign news linked to the Nine Years War, in which England participated from 1689 to 1697. This war was crucially important to the survival of the new political

ORIGINS

21

order. This helped the Gazette to achieve considerable sales, but it also was part of a system of news management, and, from 1695 that had to engage with legitimate independent newspapers which added to and complicated an already highly active world of print.33 In England, the result was the development of what has been termed a ‘public sphere’ in which printed opinion played a major role.34 This is an exaggeration as many were not comprehended in such a sphere. Instead, it was more an ‘élite and some others sphere’. Nevertheless, allowing for that, this process was true not only for politics but also for other branches of fact and discussion such as medical knowledge. The press in the West also handled economic information, and as part of a world in which links between people who would not otherwise have known each other were of greater significance. Thus, alongside advertisements in newspapers, ‘offices of intelligence’ brought together buyers and sellers. Although some Protestant countries, notably Denmark and Sweden, were not centres of press freedom, it is notable that the three leading centres of a freeish press in the eighteenth century were all Protestant: Britain, the United Provinces (Netherlands) and Hamburg. The situation, especially in the first half of the century, was very different in Spain, which underlines the need, alongside use of the West as a unit for discussion, to consider more specific areas for comparison. In China, there was no (partial) freedom of the press, nor commitment to such a freedom, comparable to that in Britain or the Netherlands. In Britain, in contrast, press activity was very much part of the new system of parliamentary government that followed the Glorious Revolution. Reporting on Parliament was to become an important aspect of the politics of this system. There was also a governance aspect. On 27 August 1742, the Weekly Worcester Journal published an Act against counterfeiting under the heading ‘The following clauses are published for general information, to prevent persons from offending through ignorance.’

Notes 1 K.T. Wu, ‘Ming Printing and Printers’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 7 (1943), pp. 203–60. 2 T. Brooks, ‘Communications and Commerce’, in D. Twitchett and F.W. Mote (eds), The Cambridge History of China, vol. 8. The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644, part 2 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 637–62; C. Brokaw, Commerce in Culture: The Sibao Book Trade in the Qing and Republican Periods (Cambridge, MA, 2007). 3 S. Füssel, Gutenberg and the Impact of Printing (Farnham, 2005). 4 A. Pettegree, ‘Centre and Periphery in the European Book World’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 18 (2008), pp. 101–28.

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5 D. McKitterick, Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, 1450–1830 (Cambridge, 2003). 6 A. Pettegree, The Book in the Renaissance (New Haven, Conn., 2010); J. Raven, The Business of Books: Booksellers and the English Book Trade, 1450–1850 (New Haven, CT, 2007). 7 W. Haller, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and the Elect Nation (London, 1963); E. Evenden and T.S. Freeman, Religion and the Book in Early Modern England. The Making of John Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’ (Cambridge, 2011). 8 P. Gael, ‘The Origins of the Book Review in England, 1663–1749’, Library, 7th ser., 13 (2012), pp. 63–89. 9 E. Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1993); T.C. Barnard, ‘Protestants and the Irish Language, c. 1675–1725’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 44 (1993), pp. 270–2. 10 C.S. Clegg, Press Censorship in Elizabethan England (Cambridge, 1997), Press Censorship in Jacobean England (Cambridge, 2001), Press Censorship in Caroline England (Cambridge, 2008). 11 A. Milton, ‘Licensing, Censorship, and Religious Orthodoxy in Early Stuart England’, Historical Journal, 41 (1998), p. 651. For a nuanced discussion of the sophisticated practice of censorship under the Cromwellian state, J. McElligott, ‘ “A Couple of Hundred Squabbling Small Tradesmen”? Censorship, the Stationers’ Company, and the State in Early Modern England’, Media History, 11 (2005), p. 99. 12 T. Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640 (Cambridge, 1991); A. Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1999). 13 J.J. O’Donnell, Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to Cyberspace (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1998); D. Sudjic, ‘The Digital Age is Wiping our Memories Clean’, Times, 4 Sept. 2012, p. 18. 14 C. Blagden, ‘The Distribution of Almanacks in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century’, Studies in Bibliography, 11 (1968), pp. 107–16; B. Capp, Astrology and the Popular Press: English Almanacks 1500–1800 (London, 1977); M. Harris, ‘Astrology, Almanacks and Booksellers’, Publishing History, 8 (1980), pp. 87–104. 15 S. Sherman, Telling Time. Clocks, Diaries and English Diurnal Form 1660–1785 (Chicago, IL, 1996); K. Sharpe, Reading Revolutions. The Politics of Revolution in Early Modern England (New Haven, CT, 2000). 16 A. Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1999), p. 218. 17 J.L. Lievsay, ‘William Barley, Elizabethan Printer and Bookseller’, Studies in Bibliography, 8 (1956), pp. 218–25. 18 W.E. Burns, An Age of Wonders: Prodigies, Politics and Providence in England, 1657–1727 (Manchester, 2002). 19 C.J. Sommerville, The News Revolution in England. Cultural Dynamics of Daily Information (Oxford, 1996); M. McKeon, The Origins of the English Novel, 1600–1740 (Baltimore, MD, 1987); B.J. Shapiro, A Culture of Fact: England, 1550–1720 (Ithaca, NY, 1999); D. Randall, Credibility in Elizabethan and Early Stuart Military News (London, 2008).

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20 B. Dooley (ed.), The Dissemination of News and the Emergence of Contemporaneity in Early Modern Europe (Farnham, 2010). 21 K.L. Sprunger, Trumpets from the Tower. English Puritan Printing in the Netherlands, 1600–1640 (Leiden, 1994). 22 K. Rolfe, ‘Probable Pasts and Possible Futures: Contemporaneity and the Consumption of News in the 1620s’, Media History, 23 (2017), pp. 159–76. 23 N. Millstone, ‘Designed for Collection. Early Modern News and the Production of History’, Media History, 23 (2017), pp. 177–98. 24 J. Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge, 2003). For the Dutch situation, C. Harline, Pamphlets, Printing and Political Culture in the Early Dutch Republic (The Hague, 1987). 25 L.F. Parmelee, Good Newes from Fraunce: French Anti-League Propaganda in Late Elizabethan England (Rochester, NY, 1996); J.E.E. Boys, London’s News Press and the Thirty Years War (Woodbridge, 2012); S.K. Barker, ‘ “Newes Lately Come”: European Newes Books in English Translation’, in S.K. Barker and B.M. Hosington (eds), Renaissance Cultural Crossroads: Translation, Print and Culture in Britain, 1473–1640 (Leiden, 2013), pp. 227–44. 26 D.A. O’Hara, ‘English Newsbooks and the Outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641’, Media History, 9 (2003), pp. 179–93; J. Raymond, The Invention of the News: English Newsbooks, 1641–9 (Oxford, 1996); D. Zaret, Origins of Democratic Culture: Printing, Petitions, and the Public Sphere in Early-Modern England (Princeton, NJ, 2000). 27 C. Nicholl, A Cup of News: The Life of Thomas Nashe (London, 1984); P. Croft, ‘The Reputation of Robert Cecil: Libels, Political Opinion and Popular Awareness in the Early Seventeenth Century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 1 (1991), pp. 43–69; A. Bellany, The Politics of Court Scandal in Early Modern England: News Culture and the Overbury Affair, 1603–1660 (Cambridge, 2002). 28 J. Peacey, ‘The Management of Civil War Newspapers: Auteurs, Entrepreneurs and Editorial Control’, Seventeenth Century, 21 (2006), pp. 91–127; L. Bowen, ‘The Bedlam Academy. Royalist Oxford in Civil War News Culture’, Media History, 23 (2017), pp. 199–217. 29 J. McElligott, ‘John Crouch: A Royalist Journalist in Cromwellian England,’ Media History, 10 (2004), pp. 144–9. 30 P. Hinds, ‘The Horrid Popish Plot’. Roger L’Estrange and the Circulation of Political Discourse in Late Seventeenth-Century London (Oxford, 2010). 31 R. Bullard, The Politics of Disclosure, 1674–1725: Secret History Narratives (London, 2009). 32 J. Childs, ‘The Sales of Government Gazettes During the Exclusion Crisis, 1678–81,’ English Historical Review, 102 (1987), p. 105. 33 N. Glaisyer, ‘ “The Most Universal Intelligencers,”: The Circulation of the London Gazette in the 1690s’, Media History, 23 (2017), pp. 256–80. 34 P. Lake and S. Pincus (eds), The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England (Manchester, 2007); E.L. Furdell, Publishing and Medicine in Early Modern England (Rochester, NY, 2002).

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2 The growth of a press culture, 1695–1750

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ewspaper readership developed after the lapse of the Licensing Act in 1695. Despite attempts in 1697, 1698, 1702, 1704 and 1712 to revive a licensing system, the press remained free of pre-publication supervision. This led to major changes. The end of control over the number of printers by the Stationers’ Company meant that the number of printers increased. Moreover, many moved out of London to seek work, which was to be crucial for the development of the provincial press. Hitherto, printing had been limited to Cambridge and Oxford, but other cities now followed, such as Exeter in 1698. Newspapers at this juncture were mostly founded and controlled by their printers who were the key entrepreneurs as befitted a small-scale production system requiring only modest investment. Crucially, this usually involved general-purpose printers choosing to try a newspaper as well. As it was clear that the new situation was not going to be similar to previous lapses in the licensing system, so there was a sounder basis for investment. A spate of new titles rapidly followed the lapse, including, on 17 May 1695, the Post Boy, an Historical Account of the Public Transactions of this Nation, a tri-weekly which was published in London on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays when the Penny Post left London. This enabled the new papers to meet both metropolitan and provincial demand and to establish their claim to be a national voice. One of the leading newspapers in the second quarter of the eighteenth century was a tri-weekly, the London Evening Post. In 1722, Thomas Townshend, then seeking election at Winchelsea, was sent ‘a London Journal to amuse you’.1 Writing from Windsor Lodge in 1734, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough observed: ‘As I am in the country, I can know nothing but what one sees in the prints.’2 Henry Fox, then an MP and the Surveyor-General of Works, in 1742 informed Lady Townshend that he had the Gazette sent regularly.3 Provincial figures, such as Sir George Fleming, Bishop of Carlisle from 1734 to 1747 and therefore a member of the House of Lords, had newspapers sent 25

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from London.4 Such references to individual subscribers are uncommon, however, and require exhaustive work in the archives. The industry grew rapidly. The annual sale of newspapers in England was about 2.5 million in 1713, 7.3 million in 1750, 12.6 million in 1775 and 16 million in 1801. Such expansion was not restricted to England. In Europe, the press both increased in circulation and number of titles in countries where it was already established, such as France and the United Provinces, and spread to other states. However, the press came to play a particularly important role in England. The aggregate rise in press sales was matched by that for specific newspapers. Moreover, there were particular peaks that indicated the active role of individual stories: The Daily Journal having published the mystery of the Freemasons, which it seems was found in writing among the papers of one of the brotherhood lately deceased, and people believing it to be genuine; several thousands of the said papers have been sold in this city and suburbs.5 Increases in sales did not mean guaranteed profitability, and especially so in England where anybody could start a newspaper, and it was relatively simple for printers, many of whom were in practice ‘jobbing’,6 to test a market by doing so, especially where no widespread distribution network was required. This lack of specialisation reflected the absence of any need for specific equipment or trained staff for newspaper production (although, thanks to the 1712 Stamp Act, there was a need for a supply of stamped paper), and therefore the relatively limited investment required when founding a paper. This contributed to a highly competitive atmosphere and a large number of failures. By raising prices and depressing demand, Stamp Duty may have served to create market saturation at certain junctures. Failures are sometimes under-recorded, as short-lived newspapers are those that survive less frequently. So also with unstamped newspapers, those that evaded taxation. Moreover, newspapers that concentrated on advertisements survive less well, and attract less attention, than those that focused on news, especially if the latter were written by figures of literary repute and/or political weight. Newspaper rivalry was an economic imperative that ignored political affiliations, such that newspapers with similar political views competed with each other. Indeed, a characteristic feature of most newspapers was the centrality of commercial purpose. Profit was the key means and mode. In particular, advertising played a crucial role. In contrast, advertising was less central to the French press of the period.7 Whatever their politics, English newspapers competed for advertisements, unless they were simply essay

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sheets. This competition focused on advertising the value of the individual title, notably by mentioning the scale and quality of the readership. Newspapers were different to other forms of printed news or commentary, such as pamphlets, because they were regular and frequent. They therefore offered a predictable sequence of communication for which the only real counterpart was the weekly sermon. The English newspaper world saw qualitative and rapid quantitative growth and also, and more so than elsewhere, a diversification of type with the foundation of the first daily, the Daily Courant in 1702, the first provincial paper, probably the Norwich Post in 1701, although possibly Farley’s Exeter Post-man the previous December;8 and the first evening paper, the Evening Post in 1706. This diversification contributed to a sense of dynamism. At the same time, both the Daily Courant and the Evening Post were published in London. Diversification was more limited elsewhere. There was also a marked growth in the number of titles. There were twelve London newspapers by 1712, when the First Stamp Act put several out of business, and about twenty-four English provincial papers by 1723. Some cities, such as Bristol, Exeter, Newcastle, Norwich and York, acquired more than one title, and these competed with each other both commercially and politically. In provincial areas, the establishment and then improvement in distribution networks helped to increase sales while also bringing newspapers into competition. These networks focused on newsmen who served rounds selling newspapers as well as other products, such as books, medicines and toiletries, that had been advertised in the newspapers. The relative absence of companies providing services on a national scale helped to ensure that individual advertisements (except those for medicines and books) were generally specific to particular newspapers or to papers published in a single town. The provincial papers appeared weekly, usually on market day, Saturday in Cambridge, as that was when the largest number of outsiders were in the town and could buy the paper from the printer’s shop without the cost and delay of distribution.9 In 1733, the Suffolk Mercury or Bury Post noted that it was: Printed by T. Baily in the Butter-Market; where may be had bibles and common prayerbooks of all sizes; all sorts of school books, books of devotion, history, law, physick etc. Shopbooks, pocket-books, paper, pens, ink, sealing-wax and all sorts of maps and fine prints for parlours, staircases, chimney-pieces; and all sorts of printed blanks. Where may be had also the London and Gentleman’s Magazines. Most of those who sold Nottingham’s Weekly Courant in 1738, including in Chesterfield, Derby, Doncaster, Gainsborough, Sheffield and Uttoxeter, were

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also booksellers. The Stamford Post noted in 1712 that its printers also printed or dyed linen and woollen cloth. Advertisements were highly significant for the economics of local culture in its public dimension. In Brice’s Weekly Journal on 22 March 1728, there was an advertisement: For the benefit of Mr Francis Wellington: At the large room, at the HalfMoon, in the High Street, Exon [Exeter], Wednesday April the 3rd (being the Assize Week) will be held a consert of vocal and instrumental music taken from the most celebrated masters. NB Tickets may be had at Mr Score’s bookseller, Moll’s coffee-house, Rummer tavern, and at the place of performance, at 2s 6d. Swinney’s Birmingham and Stafford Chronicle, in its issue of 1 June 1775, advertised both that ‘a good band of music’ would be provided during the public breakfast in Birmingham, and that the printer took subscriptions for ‘The Musical Entertainments’. The issue of 11 April 1770 included an advertisement: ‘On Wednesday the 1st of May 1776, will be performed at the court-house in Warwick, a concert of vocal and instrumental music, under the direction of Mr Hobbs, organist. After the concert will be a ball.’ Newspapers also advertised themselves. Thus, the Cambridge Journal of 18 May 1745 proclaimed: ‘By means of the great expedition used in this undertaking, we are two days before the Northampton Mercury, with the same post; and all Sunday’s post before the Ipswich paper.’ Provincial newspapers, like their London counterparts, offered much news from other areas. It appears to have been assumed that, if you lived in a town, you probably knew the news there. In particular, provincial newspapers provided items that had been obtained from the London press. There was therefore a symbiotic relationship between the two. The North Country Journal in 1737 and the Northampton Mercury in 1742 employed abbreviations, such as GEP for General Evening Post and LEP for the London Evening Post, to show where its items came from. The Weekly Courant in Nottingham noted in 1739 that subscriptions were ‘taken in for all the weekly and monthly papers’.10 Problems occurred when the post did not bring fresh mail creating a ‘deficiency’ for the York Courant of 30 July 1745. At the same time, reprinting items from the London press did not mean that there were no issues of selection, and by type of news, as well as source. Thus, the Newcastle Weekly Mercury of 2 February 1723 explained: ‘The following Letter to Cato we have inserted in our paper, for the entertainment of our readers, and think it will be much more acceptable than so many pages of insipid news; we shall for the future give Cato’s political letters a place in our weekly paper.’ Some news came from further afield, as with the price of

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grains at York and Hull published in the Newcastle Courant on 1 June and 6 July 1728, respectively, and the Lichfield, York, Westminster and Southwark instructions in the Weekly Worcester Journal of 12 and 19 November 1742. At the same time, there was also news from the region in the provincial papers. On 26 August 1727, Farley’s Bristol News-Paper published the Gloucester Address to the new king, George II. The Cirencester Flying-Post in late 1742 provided news of local crime, notably of a highwayman.11 Between 4 May and 14 September 1749, the Worcester Journal carried news about Shrewsbury, Birmingham, Stratford-upon-Avon, Cheltenham, Benson, Breedon, Stow-on-the-Wold, Droitwich, Cardiganshire, Gloucester, Hereford, Warwick, Pershore, Lichfield, Horton and Marlborough. Booksellers at a number of towns, including Bridgnorth, Shrewsbury, Warwick, Stourbridge, Stafford and Evesham, took in advertisements or sold this newspaper. As a consequence of the taxation structure created by the Stamp Acts, the number of pages remained fixed at four. However, neither the Stamp Act of 1712, nor that of 1725, put a limit on the size of the sheet that bore the tax. The 1712 Act made it possible for papers to register an entire issue as a pamphlet and thus reduce their tax liability. They were printed on a sheet-anda-half folded into six pages, which was a significant expansion in size. The tax made it unprofitable to publish cheap newspapers. The 1725 Act imposed the half-penny stamp on every half-sheet, and thus made the six-page papers too expensive. Proprietors were still able to present increasingly large four-page newspapers as half-sheets, but, as a consequence of the Act, the price of most papers rose to 2d and the expansion in the number of titles temporarily stopped. The larger size of the half-sheets provided more space and, when combined with a reduction in type size over the century as a whole, a reduction that can make the newspapers hard to read, led to an increase in the number of columns per page. The importance of taxation, rather than the reimposition of pre-publication censorship, underlined the nature of the newspaper as a commercial product. This control could be countered by entrepreneurs gaining more revenue. At the same time, the law did set the basic parameters. Because low-price newspapers were more seriously affected by Stamp Duty, as it was a higher percentage of their price and their readers could not so readily bear higher prices, unstamped newspapers developed in London in the 1730s. Their success led in 1743 to legislation and action against street hawkers, the principal method by which such papers were distributed. It was effective and this sector came to an end. A major unstamped press was not to revive until the following century. Newspapers in the eighteenth century changed but there was also much continuity in content and format. Reports were derivative, anonymous and impersonal. There was little role for a journalist as later understood. This was

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scarcely surprising as most newspapers were produced by a ‘scissors-andpaste’ technique, drawing heavily on other papers, generally, although not always, without due acknowledgement. This led to a lack of consistency, one referred to by the Weekly Register on 11 April 1798: As the Weekly Register will not be a mere selection, serviley copied, as is the usual manner, from the public prints; but will contain a great variety of original articles, and the whole be entirely recomposed, it is hoped it may preserve a consistency, both of style and fact, not very usual in a newspaper. The process of newspaper composition reflected both the nature of verification and a newspaper world that was far less sophisticated and capitalised than that of the late nineteenth century. The difficulty of checking items, given the slow nature of communications in the period, ensured that many items were inaccurate, unchecked and conjectural. This was especially so due to the role of rumour and conjecture in a semi-closed political society, one in which many politicians had a highly ambivalent response towards the world of public politics. Errors included the premature announcement of the death of public figures. There was little in-depth analysis in the newspapers: events were the focus of attention, and the background was rarely described adequately. Most items were short, without explanation or introduction. At the same time, there were many fine pieces of writing in the form of extended essays. These were often published as letters, as in the attacks on Walpole in the Champion of 13 May 1740 and the Westminster Journal of 18 December 1742. Moreover, there were background pieces of information. Thus, the Cirencester Flying-Post of 8 November 1742 provided an account of the situation, history and economy of Flanders preceded by: ‘As we have often occasion to mention places in our paper, that, perhaps, many of our readers may be unacquainted with, and as it will tend greatly to their better understanding what they are reading of, we shall take proper opportunities to oblige them in that particular.’ This was somewhat different to the local item in the issue of 21 March 1743 about the allegedly magical night-time movement of a church-bell to another church. Alongside the trickle-down practice of news, that which resulted from, and encouraged, the ‘scissors-and-paste’ technique, there was another aspect of ‘reactive’ news-construction, namely the extent to which most newspapers relied on contributions from interested readers. This process of response helped ensure a measure of differentiation between individual titles. Most pieces were anonymous. Many were sent in as poems. G.C. from Enfield applauded the return of John, Duke of Marlborough to military command after George I replaced Anne’s Tory ministry in 1714. The Flying-Post: or The

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Postmaster of 2 November 1714, a leading London Whig newspaper, carried his contribution: These following lines are wrote by a lover of loyalty, courage, conduct, and the present ministry, and a soldier’s friend. I need not sing what is already known, Of what bright jewels sparkle in the crown; How lately sullied, now it will appear Which were the true, and which the false ones were, Marlborough’s return unto the soldiers sight, Welcome to all their eyes as wished for light; Renowned for Council, and for courage great, And merit only made him fortunate. Louis in earnest never would have mourned Great Anne’s death, had Marlborough not returned: He loyal, true, and trusty ever was, And, now for rightful George his sword he draws, The same his courage, and the same his cause. Louis ’tis thought, laughed in his sleeve to see, Mardyke imposed on our late ministry. The times are changed, no more his laughing day, Great George now reigns, and Marlborough doth obey. Nine days later, the same newspaper illustrated the national sway of partisan poetry when it published an article from Frome criticising the strength of Tory sentiment in nearby Bristol. The piece ended with a description of an hypocrite: Among the beasts that range the hills and woods, Or scaly fish that shame the liquide floods; The treacherous crocodile the worst appears, That aims at mischief with deluding tears: So if mankind in various forms we view, The hypocrites appear a dreadful crew; Who, juggler-like, surprise us with delight, Yet cast a cheat upon our easy sight, If in the state these double gamesters play, Their thoughts are different to whate’er they say; In boasting words their loyalty reveal, Yet the false traitor in their hearts conceal; A thousand different tongues their conscience keeps,

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And every tongue a different language speaks; So artificial glasses fall, or rise, As fair, or cloudy weather rules the skys. ‘A New Ballad to an Old Tune’ followed in the issue of 26 February 1715, offering an account of politics and the struggle between George I and ‘James III’, the Stuart Pretender, which ended with the Pope making the latter a cardinal (which did not occur although James’s younger son, Henry, later became one). The advertisements also recorded not only the role of songs, but also the extent to which political partisanship overlapped with the world of print. Readers of this Whig newspaper would have known what to expect from the following, advertised in the issues of 24 March, 14 April and 23 April 1715: Political Merriment: or Truths Told to Some Tune; being a collection of above 150 of the choicest songs and poems that were composed and writ during the four last years of the late reign, many of which never before appeared in print. Perkin’s Cabal . . . A satirical poem on [the Earl of] O[xfor]d . . . A key to the Lock; or a treatise proving beyond all contradiction, the dangerous tendency of a late poem, entitled, The Rape of the Lock, to government and religion. By Esdras Barnivelt. Facetious notices also played a role, as with the paper’s suggestion on 30 January 1714 that Jonathan Swift, author of The Tale of a Tub, was both an opportunist and a Jacobite: The newest edition of the T---le of a T---b, so long reprinted and modestly laid by in sheets, will be published very swiftly by that famous hand who has boasted in one of the former editions, that he wrote fourscore and eleven pamphlets under three reigns, and for the service of six and thirty factions, subscriptions are carried on in Italy, France, Lorraine [seat of the Jacobite court] and Lancashire [an area with many Catholics], and as soon as the books are ready to be delivered out to subscribers, notice will be given in the Examiner of London [Swift’s newspaper], and at Pasquin’s statue in Rome. Tone was a key aspect of difference between newspapers. On 19 September 1719, the Weekly Medley disparaged Nathaniel Mist’s Weekly Journal: or Saturday’s Post by referring to Mist’s ‘vast success among the lower class of readers’; itself an instructive distinction among the literate. However, Mist preferred to regard his popularity as due to tone and not to a particular social

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appeal. In his issue of 6 February 1720, Mist identified a major section of his market in a letter from Timothy Trifle: ‘To me it is not one farthing matter who you are for, what king, what church, what party: it is enough that you write the Journal, where we expect something to please us or displease us, make us laugh, or make us frown.’ Political impartiality, general utility, and the satisfaction of their readers were the general goals pronounced by newspapers, whether new or wellestablished, provincial or metropolitan; although claims for impartiality frequently disguised pronounced political allegiances. Moreover, there could be direct political intervention, notably through subsidies. Major politicians could and would also write for the press. In 1729, John, 1st Earl of Egmont noted in his diary: The British Journal of this day, or Censor, pretended to be writ by one Roger Manby, Esq., but published by a writer for Sir Robert Walpole, and supposed to be dictated by him on extraordinary occasions, contains a clear succinct account of the grounds of the present disagreement among the princes of Europe, and deserves to be kept and read more than once.12 Commercial pressures encouraged a focus on marketing, as the limitations of the wooden hand-press provided few opportunities for less expensive production. Capital provision was significant. Thanks to it, entrepreneurial printers by mid-century were less important in the metropolitan press than groups of bookseller-shareholders, a tension, in ownership and direction, that can be seen repeatedly, albeit in different forms. In contrast to most of the Continent, and also to the situation in England in the 1660s, the eighteenth-century English press was essentially independent of government and most newspapers lacked official support. The principal exception to the dominance of commercial factors, the political essay paper, were subsidised newspapers produced for specific political purposes and without any or many advertisements. Though of political importance, and a source of news items for other newspapers, they were frequently (although not invariably) not high-selling papers. They were also a feature of the metropolitan press, and not of its provincial counterpart. Dependent on sales and advertisements, the non-subsidised press was important to England’s development as a commercial society. The relevant politics was that of a world in which public discussion and consideration between equals was crucial, rather than personal relationships with reciprocal links of obligation, deference and patronage. As with other aspects of an anonymous marketplace, papers permitted the dissemination of opinion that was not linked to the corporate ritual of urban life, with its heavy stress on group activities, traditional hierarchies, the importance of anniversary

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celebrations, and the role of religion in defining groups and their values. Each issue of the Nonsense of Common-Sense, a London weekly of 1737–8, carried the caption: ‘To be continued as long as the author thinks fit, and the public likes it.’ Papers legally selling in their thousands, carrying informed political comment, advancing party views, and containing pieces by eminent politicians, were an innovation in the 1690s. In 1695, the returns in the general election and the parliamentary addresses in favour of supply were printed by the newly founded papers. Some politicians sensed new opportunities, and the medium of press was used with great effect to stir up or channel feelings over a series of issues. Certain papers were felt to be worth subsidising. As one party sponsored a paper, another felt it necessary to reply. The major personal political role of some writers greatly encouraged political activity by the press. Newspapers also served as a way to communicate information. The Newcastle Courant of 8 June 1745 published an item from Edinburgh: The following letter came down to the officers of the Highland Regiment absent, from Sir Robert Munro [Colonel of the 37th Foot]: ‘I am commanded by his Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland, to order you to join the regiment, and to inform you that no excuse will be accepted . . . And to apprize all the officers of his Royal Highness’s pleasure, I have ordered a copy of this letter to be put in the Edinburgh newspapers.’ Public politics had been far from unimportant in the early decades of newspaper history in the late seventeenth century, but in the early eighteenth century there was a change in the modes of political communication with the characteristic high political forms of private letter, parliamentary speech and discussion in élite circles, supplemented, in the open forums of the coffeehouse, theatre, pulpit, and the expanding ‘public spaces’ of Augustan England, by public discourse. In this process, political printing – ballads, flysheets, caricatures, pamphlets and newspapers – played a major role, both articulating views and, themselves, providing subject matter for the world of print. Just as publishers sought the patronage of the public, so did politicians and political groups that sought to use the mechanism of print to their own profit. This process was taken further by the deliberate cultivation of the possibilities of print by political groups, enlisting newspapers ‘for good pay’.13 Foreign diplomats forwarded newspapers with their reports.14 However, in time, as the generation of politicians, such as Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, who had been active in the politics of the reign of Queen Anne (1702–14) died, they were replaced by others with experience of Whig ministries under George I (r. 1714–27) and George II (r. 1727–60) enjoying substantial parliamentary majorities whose longevity made opposition

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newspapers, whether Tory or opposition Whig, or seeking to be both, appear as an irritant. The success of the government in the general elections of 1716, 1722, 1727, 1734,15 1747 and 1754 indicated the limitations of opposition campaigns and of the ability of critical newspapers to shape the course and nature of political life. That was also true, however, of the impact of the electorate due to the nature of representation and the practice of elections. However, the London Evening Post of 29 August 1754 claimed that opposition newspapers, particularly itself, had thwarted the Jewish Naturalisation Act the previous year. Indeed, the paper affected opinion in the East Midlands via the Northampton Mercury, which reprinted items from it.16 If the direct influence of the press was limited, it offered the possibility of pluralism of opinion and public debates that challenged any notion, contemporary or scholarly, of ideological coherence or homogeneity. It was in the nature of the dynamic relationship between press and public that, just as some papers challenged élite hegemony, government authority, and/or social practices, so many others did not. A relatively unfettered press permitted the publication of a range of opinions, although those that were politically radical, in the sense of opposed to the establishment, were denied a voice. This was most particularly the case with Jacobite views, those in support of the exiled Stuarts. Religious heterodoxy also lacked expression in the press. Instead, there was much anti-Catholic material. Some was sensational, as with the extensive reporting of the Cadière case, the trial of the Jesuit at Aix-enProvence for seduction.17 However, in format, content and tone, the press reflected public interest in the sense of that of the newspaper-paying public. This interest, however, had to be defined and guided. So also with the conventions linked to the reading of newspapers. This included their reading in public, notably in coffee-houses, and was a parallel to the contemporary discussion of conduct at assembly rooms, and a precursor to later discussion about the response to telephones and to social media. In the London tri-weekly the Champion, or the Evening Advertiser, for which Henry Fielding did some of the writing, a letter was published on 18 September 1740: I am one of those who are curious enough, as often as the day comes, to learn how the world goes; and, therefore, generally resort every morning to a coffee-house in my neighbourhood, where all the daily and most of the other papers are taken in, and the Champion among the rest; but, notwithstanding this plentiful stock of intelligence, it very rarely happens, that I can lay my hands upon any more than one paper, which is commonly the Gazetteer (being the only one which is suffered to lie upon the table), unless I had patience and leisure enough to wait an hour, or sometimes an hour and an half, for that purpose, which is more time than a person in

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business, as I am, can always spare for such amusements. Now, Sir, as I am not the only one served thus; nor the coffee-house I am speaking of, the only place where the like grievances prevail, I dare say you will not think these complaints impertinent; especially when I inform you that it is now become a common practice, at many of these places, for a set of persons (who by the help of coffee and tobacco have made themselves familiar to each other) to form a sort of morning-club, and engross all the papers to themselves; their complaisance extending no farther than to hand them from one to another, by way of exchange (as the phrase is) so that, if one who is not of their tribe calls for a particular paper, ’tis great odds but he is answered, ‘Sir, the paper is bespoke,’ or ‘I have promised it to Mr Such-a-one.’ But this is not all, for a man might, now and then, run across the room, and have some chance of snatching up a paper in a reasonable time, if these gentlemen would content themselves with barely reading the news, and let alone their ingenious comments and applications, till they had gone through the paper and delivered it to another; but, unhappily the contrary practice prevails amongst them, and I have actually seen one of these gentlemen, who, including the drinking his chocolate, has so deliberately cast his eyes over the several articles of news, and entertained those who had ears to hear, so amply with his own sage remarks and conjectures, that one single paper has held him in play full three quarters of an hour; after which, when one that sat near him, asked him if he had done with it, he modestly begged leave just to run over the advertisements . . . another grievance . . . when persons are so unreasonable as to take up two papers at once. Two days earlier, the newspaper had noted the criticism it experienced from readers who disliked its comments or its contents, for example writing on the theatre rather than on the war, which led an individual in a coffee-house to call instead for the London Evening Post. On 5 April 1742, the Cirencester FlyingPost reported that it had been criticised for not tackling political topics. Conventionally, the press has been seen as significant for the creation of a ‘public sphere’ of newly-informed activity and discussion, such that private correspondence did not need to tackle political topics,18 and as a key means for the operation of this ‘public sphere’.19 However, the extent to which that is an accurate analysis, of what was in practice a more circumscribed and partisan process of debate, has been queried.20 This academic discussion is more generally significant because much weight, both descriptive and analytical, has been placed upon the concept of a ‘public sphere’. It has frequently, whether explicitly or implicitly, been presented as in interaction with the ‘rise of the press’, both cause and consequence, push and pull. Leaving aside the progressivism and teleologies bound up in this analysis,

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there is a tendency to assume an almost automatic process of change, as well as to endow the ‘public sphere’ with transformative effects, if not a totemic character. As a result, if there was not more of a ‘public sphere’, then this was due to malign contexts and interventions, whether government powers, élite attitudes, capitalist practices, or taxation. The ‘public sphere’ was always there and, yet, allegedly, should have been greater. In practice, there were ‘public spheres’ and not all of them matched this model. The most significant exception was that offered by religious activity. This was not only highly important in itself but also played a major role in the culture of print and an appreciable role in periodical literature. It is indicative of more general problems with the standard approach to the subject, that this aspect of print culture has received singularly little attention from nonspecialists. That is not only an issue for the eighteenth century, when, indeed, it undermines the idea of a secular Enlightenment.21 It is also important for the nineteenth century, the twentieth, and the present period. The extent to which religious activity continued to provide copy is too readily underplayed. So, even more, are the role of religious assumptions. The newspaper report in the London Evening Post of 12 February 1743 included a poem on laying the foundations for a new church in Honiton, possibly by the rector, Charles Bertie. This is an uncommon example of provincial poetry in the London press: When Salem’s house (the pride of all the Earth) By flames destroyed, was doomed a second birth; The aged eyes with briny tears beheld Its bounds confined, and ancient glory veiled. A kinder fate, All Hallows, thee befalls, Which totterest but to rise with nobler walls; Firm on its base the sacred pile shall stand, And brave the assaults of time’s devouring hand. So the bright Phoenix, when with age oppressed, Pines and expires within his spicy nest; But strait it does with brighter plumes return, And blooms with endless vigour in the urn.22 Newspapers were heavily dependent on public interest in political news. Aside from domestic politics, there was indeed strong interest in foreign news, especially, but not only, when Britain was at war. Indeed, to modern readers, that is what is most surprising about the newspapers of the period. The interest reflected prudential concerns, notably a strong dependence in the world of commerce on news from abroad, and news as a qualification of rumour. Thus, Wye’s Letter of 1 April 1729, carried for example by the York

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Courant on 8 April, noted: ‘There was a report yesterday, that the Spaniards had again besieged Gibraltar, but it was the lie for the day raised by some of the vile jobbers.’23 So also with Wye’s Letter of 3 October 1727 which refuted the ‘strong report’ that Philip V of Spain had abdicated for the second time, which was highly significant due to the poor state of Anglo–Spanish relations. It could be very difficult to provide accurate information even when sources were given. The Newcastle Courant of 1 June 1734 carried a report from London of 25 May: ‘Tuesday there was a current report of the death of King Stanislaus, the foundation of which it seems was a letter, wrote by the Postmaster of Emmerick [Emmerich], that a courier had passed through that place and declared he was going to the French court to carry that news.’ Such a death would have been crucial then, as Europe was embroiled in the War of the Polish Succession, but Stanislaus did not die until 1766. In its issue of 8 June 1745, the Cambridge Journal noted: All the accounts lately received at the Hague of a victory gained by the Prussians in Silesia, came from Hamburg, and say that it happened on the 4th, near Schweidbergh, which however admits of some dispute, since we have letters from Berlin, where the King of Prussia’s court is kept, dated the 6th, which do not mention so much as the least probability of a general engagement. The engagement with abroad that was inherent to the press, arose from political links, most particularly the legacy of a series of wars that stretched through the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This legacy could affect the works advertised in the press, as with Dutch Alliances, a critique of the War of the Spanish Succession, in the Stamford Post of 30 June 1712. That paper also informed its readers of regional views on the international situation, as in the issue of 17 July 1712 when it printed Addresses from the towns of Newark, Northampton and Cambridge. The press could provide locational information about abroad. Thus, the Northampton Mercury, in its issue of 30 April 1722, added brief descriptions of places, as of Cadiz – ‘a strong, rich, and famous city of Spain’ and Constantinople – ‘one of the most famous cities of Europe, and the chief of Turkey’. There was also an awareness of relationships and parallels with the Continent, not least in religious matters. The Craftsman, in its issue of 15 September 1739, drew on the well-established opposition and popular hostility to a large army, arguing that ‘whilst there is an equal division of power amongst the Princes of Europe, there will be no occasion for a numerous standing [permanent] army’.

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Foreign policy and war led to discussion of the wider world and provided a major item in the printing of London news in provincial newspapers.24 Editors thought that readers would be interested in world affairs. There was much editorialising, most of it political. Thus, the Westminster Journal of 6 February 1748, an opposition newspaper, argued that the British navy provided security for Britain from invasion, but did not protect the North American colonies: Whatever the creed of some persons may be, mine, that of the British Americans . . . is that to people and secure New Scotland [Nova Scotia], to reduce Canada, and open a communication betwixt our settlements in Hudson’s Bay and those on the ocean, should be one of the principal objects in view in a war against France. Let us turn out these bad neighbours while we have power and lawful authority, lest they in time cause us to remove. It is of much more concern to us than who had the possession of Italy.25 This bold prospectus was to be fulfilled in the next war, but some newspaper strategising took political partisanship and military speculation too far. Opposed to the dispatch of British forces to join the army under Ferdinand, Crown Prince of Brunswick, an army that, with reason, it presented as designed for Hanoverian goals, the Monitor, in its issue of 12 August 12 1758, suggested, instead, that British forces should have invaded France in order to link up with Ferdinand. The paper added, over-optimistically: The difficulty of our carrying the war into the heart of France, at the time when their main army was totally routed and dispirited, and their best troops were engaged at the distance of Bohemia; and when the allies, flushed with victory, had nothing to fear, could they have made good their junction with an English army, depended entirely on its landing upon the coast of France; which, experience convinces, is practicable on almost any part, under the cover of our fleets. War news could be exciting and could also enable individual newspapers, including provincial ones, to provide specific items, as with the ‘copy of a letter from on board the Mary’ published in the Newcastle Courant of 9 January 1742 about an attack by a Spanish privateer, and that in the Leeds Mercury of 15 November 1743 of a letter to a correspondent there from the zone of conflict on the Mediterranean coast of Savoy-Piedmont. War news also came from newspapers other than the London ones. Thus, the Cambridge Journal of 31 August 1745 reprinted items from the Edinburgh Courant and the Caledonian Mercury about the Jacobite rising in Scotland. On 8 June, that paper boasted that its articles were collected from the following:

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Amsterdam, Utrecht, Hague, Leyden, Brussels, Paris and London Gazettes; the Paris-Ala-Main; London, General and St James’s Evening Posts; London Courant; Daily Advertiser; General Advertiser; Daily Post; Daily Gazetteer; Universal Spectator; Old England Journal; Craftsman; Westminster Journal; Dublin and Edinburgh newspapers; and Wye’s, Fox’s and other written letters; besides private intelligences. The greater popularity of newspapers depended in large part on the remainder of the culture of print, which familiarised the public with the idea that print was both attractive and authoritative. In terms of novelty, the magazine was the key development in the second quarter of the century. Newspapers interacted with other media. Thus, the Post-Man and the Historical Account, a Whig London newspaper, in its issue of 6 November 1722, noted the response of London’s theatre world to the Jacobite Atterbury Plot: ‘The players of both houses being willing to show their loyalty, the Tragedy of Tamerlane was last night acted both at Drury Lane and Lincoln’s Inn Fields: the character which gives that play its name was drawn from nature for the character of King William.’ This was a reference to the Whig hero William III as depicted in the 1701 play by the Whig Nicholas Rowe. Another transfer item of political significance was seen, in the poem ‘On Reading Cato’ printed in Brice’s Weekly Journal, an Exeter newspaper, in its issue of 2 July 1725. Newspapers commented on and published excerpts from pamphlets. In turn, the latter could refer to ‘the paper war’ between newspapers.26 As newspapers accustomed much of the population to experience news through print, this lessened the role and sway of foci of oral culture. Yet, while the press helped to stretch the social and geographical boundaries of the political nation as well as to affect, even change, its nature, these developments did not necessarily or directly threaten traditional forms of politics. In part, this was because the latter, in turn, changed. The press, moreover, probably only touched the lives of a minority.27 At the same time, arguing against too bold a prospectus of change is not the same as doubting ambition and influence. Moreover, linked to that, there is the need to note a variety in both, and in the provincial as well as the London press. Thus, alongside the approach to both that emphasises commercialism, profit, printers’ motivation to expand their business, advertising, and an apolitical stance as a consequence, can come an emphasis on political commitment. So also, as an overlapping, but separate, drive can come that of an attempt to extol virtue for all,28 as with Robert Goadby, who took over the Sherborne Mercury in 1749,29 and Robert Raikes the younger, a noted philanthropist, who, in 1757, inherited from his father the Gloucester Journal. Extolling virtue was accompanied by other forms of can-do advice. Thus, the Newcastle Journal on 30 January 1742, ‘for the benefit of the public’, provided an extract of a letter

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from a local correspondent about possible cures for rabies after a boy had been bitten. The York Courant of 16 July 1745 reported the work of Stephen Hales, a clerical scientist, on winnowing grain: ‘The following is a letter from that Hales; published in one of the London prints last week; and since it contains a new and an useful experiment for all cornfactors and county farmers, we think it deserves the first place in this paper.’ In social and cultural as well as political terms, the emphasis on guiding as opposed to responding to the public could be a vexed topic. This was particularly the case given the bitterness of political contention, with the ministry frequently accused of ignoring the public. In turn, the ministerial press could criticise popular ignorance and presumption. Thus, the Daily Courant of 19 October 1734 facetiously referred to opposition ideology: Wonderful indeed is the power of Patriotism. It opens and enlarges all the faculties of the mind! . . . Inspired by this illustrious passion, the attorney’s clerk will talk like an oracle on the nature and origin of government, on the power of kings, and the liberties of the people, and fancy himself capable of holding the Great Seal [being Lord Chancellor], before he knows how to fill up a bond. The Craftsman, the leading opposition newspaper, sought, on 17 February 1727, to sketch out a position that covered its bases: The vulgar multitude judge honestly of public affairs, as far as they come within their knowledge; and, having no hopes of sharing in the administration themselves, desire only to live quietly and easily in the free enjoyment of what they daily earn . . . But they are so liable to be imposed on by false shows and artful pretences, that we are not always to look upon their favour as the badge of real patriotism and a truly public spirit.30 In a stance that is still relevant today, the London Mercury noted on 11 February 1721: ‘to render a journal acceptable to everybody is one of the most difficult things in nature; for if it is inclining to one party, it displeases another; and if to none, it then becomes very often indifferent to all’.

Notes 1 Stephen Poyntz to Thomas Townshend, 27 Oct. 1722, New Haven, CT, Beinecke Library, Osborn Shelves c.201. 2 Marlborough to Alexander, Earl of Marchmont, 23 Aug. 1734, in G.H. Rose (ed.), Selections from the papers of the Earls of Marchmont (3 vols, London, 1831), I, p. 37.

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3 Fox to Lady Townshend, 6 Sept. 1742, Bodleian Library, Ms. Eng. Letters d 85 fol. 1. 4 Henry Rooke to Fleming, 2 July 1745, Carlisle, Cumbria Record Office, D15/Fleming, 17. 5 Wye’s Letter, 18 Aug. 1730. 6 J. Raven, Publishing Business in Eighteenth-Century England (Woodbridge, 2014). 7 S. Botein, J.R. Censer and H. Ritvo, ‘The Periodical Press in EighteenthCentury English and French Society: A Cross-Cultural Approach’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 23 (1981), pp. 464–90. 8 I. Maxted, Bibliography of British Newspapers, Devon and Cornwall (London, 1991), p. 40. 9 Recent work on provincial newspapers includes D. Newton and M. Smith, The Stamford Mercury (Stamford, 1999); H. Berry, ‘Promoting Taste in the Provincial Press: National and Local Culture in Eighteenth-Century Newcastle upon Tyne,’ British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 25 (2002), pp. 1–18. 10 Weekly Courant, 18 Oct. 1739. 11 Cirencester Flying-Post, 18, 25 Oct., 1 Nov. 1742. 12 HMC, Egmont III , pp. 323–4. 13 Grub Street Journal, 12 Aug. 1731. 14 For the Craftsman and Common Sense respectively, De Löss, Saxon envoy, to Bruhl, Saxon foreign minister, 26 Feb. 1734, Dresden, Staatsarchiv, Geheimes Kabinett, Gesandschaften 638 IIa fols 156, 160–3; Cambis, French ambassador, to Amelot, French foreign minister, 11 Sept., 21 Oct. 1738, Paris, Archives du Ministère des Relations Extérieures, Correspondance Politque Angleterre 399, 146, 168–71, 209–14, 246–9. 15 For the impartiality of the Kentish Post, A.N. Newman, Elections in Kent and its Parliamentary Representation 1715–54 (Oxford, DPhil., 1957), pp. 60–1. 16 Philip Yorke to Thomas Birch, 12 July 1753, BL. Add. 35398. 17 Daily Post Boy, 10 Nov., St. James’s Evening Post, 11 Nov., Fog’s Weekly Journal, 13 Nov. 1731; Flying-Post, 3 Feb. 1732. 18 Nathaniel Cole to James Brockman, 12 July 1746, BL. Add. 42591 fol. 18. 19 J. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, 1989); T.C.W. Blanning, The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture; Old Regime Europe 1660–1789 (Oxford, 2002). 20 J.A. Downie, ‘Public and Private: The Myth of the Bourgeois Public Sphere’, in C. Wall (ed.), A Concise Companion to the Restoration and Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 2005), pp. 60–81, and ‘Periodicals, the Book Trade and the “Bourgeois Public Sphere”, ’ Media History, 14 (2008), pp. 261–74. 21 J.M. Black, Eighteenth-Century Europe (2nd edn, Basingstoke, 1999). 22 For another clerical poem, Newcastle Courant, 4 Sept. 1742. For a local panegyric on spring, Transactions of the Universe: or the Weekly Mercury [Norwich], 17 July 1714.

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23 Stockjobbers. 24 Newcastle Courant, 14 Feb. 1730, taking material from Craftsman and Fog’s Weekly Journal, and 29 Nov. 1729 from London Evening Post. 25 Paris, Archives Nationales, Archives de la Marine, AN. B7 359. 26 Anon., The Doctrine of Innuendos Discussed (London, 1731), p. 23. 27 B. Harris, Politics and the Rise of the Press. Britain and France, 1620–1800 (London, 1996). 28 B. Harris, ‘Praising the Middling Sort? Social Identity in Eighteenth-Century British Newspapers’, in A.J. Kidd and D. Nicholls (eds), The Making of the British Middle Class? (Stroud, 1988), pp. 1–18. 29 J. Barry and G. Tatham, ‘Robert Goadby, the Sherborne Mercury and the Urban Renaissance in South-West England’, in J. Hinks and C. Armstrong (eds), The English Urban Renaissance Revisited (Newcastle, 2018), pp. 57–95. 30 For a more hostile view of ‘the vulgar’, Daily Courant, 20 Apr. 1734. See also Daily Gazetteer, 28 Oct. 1736.

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ith time, the newspaper became an even more accepted means for the pursuance of disputes; a matter of familiarity rather than in accordance with a later teleology. Boundaries were tested, but this acceptance contributed to a more peaceful and more public means of conducting political, social, economic and religious disagreements. Yet accessibility or democratisation, whether or not focused on the press, did not mean the same as democracy, and publicity did not entail the public nature of all politics. There was change, notably in the growing weight and increased respectability of the press. Moreover, growth, in the number of titles and in combined sales, was considerable. However, compared to the changes that were to come later in the nineteenth century, these were years of essential continuity. Developments were essentially within existing forms, and, although these developments, including professionalisation, deserve attention,1 it was mostly a case of more of the same. Alongside changes, this continuity was the case for production, distribution, ownership, content, and types of newspapers. For example, the newspaper press was not at the cutting-edge of industrial change, in either organisational or technological terms. Familiar methods of printing continued, with such tasks as the inking of the press and the drying of sheets of print, as did the generally small-scale nature of newspaper production, including in terms of print runs, and the size and differentiation of the labour force. At the same time, both apprenticeships to newspaper owners and the movement of editors between titles helped to encourage specialisation in this form of publication. So also with the procedures necessary in order to deal with the particular characteristics of the newspaper world including taxation, libel, and the transmission of news. The parameters of distribution techniques did not alter until the creation of a national railway network in the mid-nineteenth century. Prior to that, human and horse-power remained crucial, both in the local distribution patterns of all papers and in the national distribution of a number of London titles. Yet, the scale could be considerable. Like other successful newspapers, for example, the Salisbury Journal had a complex administrative network that radiated from 45

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the hub of the newspaper printing office. Underlying this was an associated system of smaller news agency centres.2 On 16 January 1773, the Newcastle Journal claimed: ‘The circle of this Journal’s distribution is near 600 miles, within which circumference are upwards of 250 towns.’ Diaries and accounts shed further light on the process. For example, in 1745–6, Arthur Jessop, a Holmfirth apothecary, and, in 1791, Thomas Fenwick of Burrow Hall, Lancashire were reading the Leeds newspaper.3 Advertising, where newspapers displaced older forms of advertising, was an important source of revenue, which provincial papers sought to attract by claiming widespread networks of agents. The national distribution of London newspapers depended on the mail service, initially horse-mail, and then the mail-coach. Major improvements in the road system in the eighteenth century, thanks to turnpiking and more bridges, and in the provision of Post Office services, ensured that distribution by the traditional methods became more rapid and reliable. Better communications accentuated the appearance of more frequent newspapers in the provinces, notably by increasing the speed and frequency of the distribution of the London press. At the same time, careful attention to the press qualifies such a bland teleology. There are many pieces of the type carried in the St James’s Chronicle on 14 January 1796: ‘We are extremely chagrined at receiving continued complaints of the irregularity with which our Chronicle is delivered in the county, through the channel of the Post Office.’ Well before the railway and the telegraph, newspapers contributed to, and sought to benefit from, a sense of news as a crucial aspect of a speeded up, and increasingly linked, world. This process was commodified and made attractive by reference to accessibility to speedy news as a reason for the purchase of particular titles. Growing sales were chased by more titles and, although the sales of some individual titles rose markedly, those of many titles did not. This reduced the capital resources available for investment in new work processes and technology, but also the need for such investment. The lack of rising profits, however, made taxation a major burden. The contents of the press, both London and provincial, changed relatively little in the second half of the eighteenth century. This reflected the combination of only limited changes in the market with an essentially constant newsgathering system, especially in so far as the general absence of reporters was concerned. News was still predominantly political, and the reports derivative, anonymous and impersonal, and notably so in the coverage of foreign news. Events, rumours, speculation, and manifestos were printed, for example the account of a Somerset county meeting to choose a MP, carried in Bonner and Middleton’s Bristol Journal on 29 August 1795; but not interviews. Most items were short and without explanation or introduction, and there was a relative

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absence of pieces providing background information, which reflected a more general world of knowledge that was piecemeal and readily digestible. It was not a situation unique to the press, although one that newspapers accentuated.4 News, moreover, was still usually produced without the benefit of illustrations or maps, although there were some, for example to illustrate an account of the semaphore telegraph, a new technology, offered by Bell’s Weekly Messenger, a new Sunday, on 1 May 1796. Events-based background information remained the pattern. Thus, in 1791, responding to interest in the town after the Priestley riots, the London Chronicle of 23 July printed an account of Birmingham ‘from a correspondent who has long resided there’. On 6 February 1759, the first issue of the Union Journal: or, Halifax Advertiser carried a description of Gorée, a West African slaving base captured from France. The issue of 13 February 1759 similarly published an account of Guadeloupe, an island lately seized from France. The context was clear-cut. Thus, the St James’s Chronicle on 16 September 1762 reported: ‘They write from Newfoundland that the French have been so cruel as to commit all manner of barbarities, as well as burn and destroy everything they could find.’ Events-based news also characterised the reporting of the Industrial Revolution and the Scientific Revolution. J.F.’s ‘Song On Obtaining the Birmingham and Worcester Canal Bill’, printed in Swinney’s Birmingham and Stafford Chronicle of 4 August 1791, urged that the digging begin. The issue of 13 April 1775 had provided a poem on an orrery: ‘On Seeing the Microcosm, Now Exhibiting in the Red Lion Assembly Room.’ Yet, there were changes, including the increase in the physical size of newspapers and their use of smaller type. The double-column folio half-sheets of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were replaced by larger and more densely printed papers, with more columns. This was the case for both provincial and London newspapers. Thus, in 1792, the Chelmsford Chronicle increased the number of columns per page. There were certainly issues focused on content. The four-page format and, more generally, the cost constraint on length encouraged by newspaper taxation, accentuated and focused the problems of balancing conflicting demands on space, demands that were important throughout the hardcopy period of newspaper content. At times, editors explained their process of selection, but usually (and still today) such decisions were not discussed or explained, and the pressures affecting content can only be gauged from the surviving copies. These are a source that provide little indication of the ease with which items were obtained. There is evidence of criticism from readers or advertisers, notably when some items were set aside or when advertisements were delayed in order to insert other material. However, this evidence is patchy and no more than suggestive. It is unclear how widespread these complaints were.

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The change in style in this period was limited. Some opposition figures, however, sought to broaden the appeal of opposition writing, by adopting a popular style, but so did some ministerial publicists. John Wilkes in his radical London weekly the North Briton (1762–3) was the most conspicuous instance of the former. Papers were widely available and were consulted at coffee-houses and taverns. These were places where commercial transactions took place, and they were especially important because of the general absence of specialised offices in many commercial, industrial and agricultural businesses, and because of the practice of handling most transactions through face-to-face meetings. On 11 April 1798, the Weekly Register divided the newspaper readers into seven groups: Interested, Anxious, Curious, Hasty, Idle, Party and Judicious. All could find something in the press, both London and provincial. Readers of the Morning Post on 10 May 1811 could read an account of Lady Warburton’s Masquerade under the section-heading Fashionable World, as well as war news. This variety reflected the nature of society, not least areas of expanding commercialisation, as with sport. The short notices and advertisements for horse races, which had dominated the occasional references to sport in the first half of the eighteenth century, were replaced by lengthy advertisements, sometimes highlighted by illustrations, and by notices for, and results of, a variety of sports. Vivid accounts of boxing matches became a feature, notably in the early nineteenth century, particularly with the development of a star system around boxers. Sport, like crime and cultural activity, was a sphere in which news and advertisements interacted. Indeed, the advertisements were news, while sports news was often a form of advertising, as also with its theatrical counterpart. Indeed, this helped explain the character of both, and notably of the latter. Information was important to all these activities, and had not only an economic dimension, but also a wider cultural impact as these activities were increasingly precisely located in time and place, and publicly described and commodified. More generally, advertising was central to the information culture and economy. Medical advertisements were particularly significant. Advertising could create new commercial possibilities, for example for London undertakers. As the volume of advertising increased, it became more important for a paper to ensure that it was in the top tier in order to obtain more business. The large number of papers that included the term advertiser in their title was significant. Increasingly, successful provincial papers carried advertisements inserted by London firms, which represented an attempt by London businessmen to penetrate provincial markets via the existing urban provincial

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hierarchy. This was part of the growing national integration of the press, with provincial papers being regularly obtainable in London. In general, advertisements displaced political essays from the front page. Launched on 4 December 1791, the Observer promised that advertisers could rely on their advertisements being ‘dispersed to the remotest parts of the three kingdoms.’ Press advertising was an important tool for those seeking to inculcate, elicit, or influence, consumer demands. Advertisements became a central and dynamic facet of a consumerism built upon making services and certain goods normative for the newspaper-reading public. Advertisements became much more significant in England with the growth of the press. Newspapers were seen as more effective than handbills as they could operate at a distance. Advertisements also captured social nuances. When a new theatre opened in Exeter in 1787, the newspaper advertisement proclaimed: ‘By desire of the Rt Hon. Lord Viscount Courtenay . . . will be opened the New Theatre,’ but, in a sign of the precedence of commercial considerations over hierarchy, the previous year the advertisement for a London showing of Loutherbourg’s dramatic backdrops noted: ‘Ladies and gentlemen desirous of taking places, are required to send their servants early to keep them, otherwise it will be impracticable to assist then.’5 The newspaper advertisements for the Handel concerts at Westminster Abbey in 1791 were headed: By command and under the patronage of their Majesties; and under the direction of the Earl of Uxbridge, Honorary President [of the Royal Society of Musicians] Honorary Vice PresidentsDuke of Leeds Earl of Exeter Earl of Sandwich Viscount Fitzwilliam Lord Grey de Wilton Joan Bates. Bates was the expert. This was the social politics of the age. Luxury products, such as coffee, tea, wine, medicines and books, were best able to bear the costs of advertising because the percentage cost of the advertisement was low, the profits in selling the products high, and they were branded goods. Commonplace products, such as ordinary foodstuffs or beer, were rarely advertised. There was less need to encourage consumption of everyday products, individual sales outlets were too small-scale to justify advertising, and the newspaper was not the most effective way of notifying the often rapidly altering availability or price alterations of products that were generally local and frequently sold in markets. Similarly, services were

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advertised that were either new to an area or, more commonly, occasional, such as the visit of an oculist.6 There was also an increasing number of advertisements inserted by organisations, many of them official or quasi-official, such as turnpike trusts. This process, moreover, was an aspect of lobbying. The press was used extensively by prosecuting associations, and printed advertisements and notices from those seeking criminals were frequently published. A separate form of commercialism was that of economic news. The price of commodities was a key element. By the 1790s, London papers which in no way specialised in economic news, such as the Express and the Telegraph, were providing, in every issue, nearly a column of information on London markets. This information focused on the prices. Provincial newspapers also carried market news including, crucially, that from London. In contrast, news of developments in transportation were contentious due to disputes between conflicting interests about routes. There were more advertisements than in the past, and they occupied both a larger and a more prominent proportion of the papers. There was also more non-political news, especially items devoted to social habits and fashions, crime and sport. There was a contrast in London between dailies, which tended to be more political in content, and weeklies, which increasingly diversified and became more like magazines. Yet, with the exception of the essay papers that carried no news or advertisements, even papers with a strong political slant had to include other material. Thus, there was a continuum of content between different types of newspapers. So also with political coverage. This coverage was affected by the fracturing of political groupings from the mid-1750s, at the same time that senior politicians and indeed George II took an interest in the content of individual newspapers and what they might be held to indicate.7 Symbols of public politics, most prominently John Wilkes in the early 1760s greatly benefited from press coverage. This use of the press helped to ensure that the procedures of government regulation and intervention became more prominent, and this, in turn, sustained both newspaper activity and public interest in the press. Issues of press regulation had always been seen as part of a debate over the nature of the governmental system. In the 1760s, the political weakness of government and the particular features of the North Briton affair, helped to ensure that issues of press regulation became symbolic of the essential public issues at stake in what was presented as the (not a) struggle between ministry and opposition. So also with the related coverage of parliamentary news, as right not privilege. Wilkes was central to both. The growing independence of the press was linked to a clearer sense of its own purpose that reflected a political world in which public opinion was felt to have a more pronounced and acceptable role. There was not, however, a public

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for which different papers competed, but rather several, each represented by a different style of political consciousness. Political opinion was not treated as an essentially democratic political phenomenon. There was a moral dimension to politics or rather public consciousness, one in which terms such as obligation and obedience acquired meaning, and the press helped to define and express it. Nevertheless, the popular moral dimension or dimensions explored by recent scholars through concepts such as the moral economy of the crowd found only a limited echo in the press of the late eighteenth century. Thus, the Reading Mercury of 15 March 1773 complained: ‘The ridiculous notion of witches and witchcraft still prevails amongst the lower sort of people.’ Instead a more socially specific moral resonance was struck by the press, one more in keeping with a medium whose circulation and social range was restricted in comparison to that of genuinely popular written forms: almanacs and chapbooks. That would not have disturbed advertisers offering high-value goods and services, which required advertising and justified the cost in a world where most goods and services were not advertised other than orally; nor writers calling for the moralising of a supposedly dissolute people. There is an understandable tendency for those who work on the press to assume that it had a great political impact, an assumption that also draws on the willingness of political groups to subsidise newspapers. In addition, the press appears as the prime constituent, and indeed creator of, a ‘public sphere’ of politics that, in a teleological perspective offers much of interest. The role of the press in spreading information about parliamentary debates provides an obvious instance of its role as creator of a ‘public sphere’ of politics. Furthermore, there is the more general point that by spreading information and comment, newspapers encouraged people to look for public sources of both and thus enhanced their importance. In 1746, the London lawyer Nathaniel Cole wrote to a rural correspondent, James Brockman, from the capital: To be acquainted with the occurrences here is I am sensible what Gentlemen who reside at a distance are generally desirous of. But the papers which are daily exhibited furnish every advice both foreign and domestic within 12 hours after it is known so as to leave nothing of that kind for the subject of a private letter to a particular friend.8 Thus, the press can be seen as both cause and effect of heightened public political consciousness. In the prism of the metropolis this may indeed have been a reasonable assumption. Newspapers were indeed an important part of the capital’s socio-political fabric. London had one daily paper in 1702, four in 1760, nine in 1783, and sixteen by the end of 1792. In so far as there was both a cheap and an illegal, because unstamped, press, they existed in London

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only. Most of the references to newspapers being read in coffee-houses refer to the capital. However, this situation was peculiar to London. No daily, cheap or unstamped newspapers were produced elsewhere. Until the founding of the short-lived Yorkshire Freeholder in 1780 it is arguable that no influential journal of opinion that was independent of other newspapers for its views existed outside London. Many provincial papers had a limited circulation only. Therefore, the impression created by the London press is arguably a misleading one if it is used to define the newspaper world of the period. The relationship of the public and newspapers was less close than is sometimes suggested. Although the English press reached what contemporaries considered the ‘political nation’, most people did not read a newspaper and, indeed, many who were literate do not appear to have done so. Aside from this general point, newspaper culture in the sense of the regular reading of papers and the discussion of their contents (as opposed to episodic reading) was less extensive than might be suggested by reference to coffee-houses. This culture existed, and greatly interested some contemporary comments, but it was far from universal among newspaper readers. Cost and literacy both hindered press readership, but the former was crucial to the profitability of the press, as well as being a response to taxation. More generally, the press was marginal to the bulk of the population. That reflected the failure to develop the inexpensive press, which contrasted so markedly with the situation in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Unstamped newspapers were squeezed out of existence by an Act of Parliament in 1743, while the cut-price London papers of the second quarter of the century disappeared for reasons that are obscure. Booksellershareholders were especially attracted by the advertising possibilities and revenues of newspapers, and this led in mid-century to a period of commercial stability and continuity in titles; rather than the search for a mass market seen from the nineteenth century. The latter might appear scarcely feasible in the economics or technology of the period, but there were also questions of social ‘placing’. In the eighteenth century, newspapers were largely read by upper- and middle-class consumers, a readership they shared with books and magazines. In contrast, chapbooks and ballad sheets enjoyed a larger, but less exalted, readership. This social positioning was very important for the development of the press and for its social politics. Attempts to broaden the readership were not made to different social groups, and the character, tone and voice of the press had a particular social timbre, which is not always clear to modern readers. The resulting social politics of the press was very much that of a moral politeness, to which both the information and the opinion printed in the press contributed. The extent to which newspapers favoured a programme of social

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improvement can be related to the manner in which politics was generally discussed. There was little difference between upbraiding food hoarders, as the cause of riots, and declaiming against drunkenness or slavery: political discussion, thought and reflection were not divorced from their ethical context. This morality drew on the major cultural themes of the middling orders in this period, especially Christian conduct, polite behaviour, and moral improvement, and it was important to the shaping of that body of society, and, by exclusion, of the rest as well. Many items in the press served as secular sermons and were clearly intended as such. The admonitory tone characterised both much of the discussion of politics and that of society. A complaint in the General Advertiser and Morning Intelligencer of 16 August 1777 about the drunkenness of a coach driver on the Brighthelmstone stage coach began: It is with the utmost pleasure that you give admittance, in your sensible and impartial paper, to every complaint that affects the public. It ought, and you have most judiciously made it the business of your paper, to hold up to exposure whatever is rendered obnoxious or hurtful by crime or malice. The Middlesex Journal of 21 October 1783 complained about the number of prostitutes on the streets of London and their shocking obscenities, and proposed that they should be taxed and restricted to certain streets. No such restrictions were proposed for their clients. The shaping of the middling orders in terms of a set of practices and opinions required their agreement, and thus entailed the striking of resonances to elicit a process of identification. An emphasis on the importance for the entire community of the values of the middling orders also helped focus attention on the press. A sense of what was appropriate, and thus respectable, was inculcated through print. In part, this reflected the success of creating a common code of behaviour for what was termed ‘polite’ society, one that spanned town and countryside. The frequent attacks on popular superstitions, drunkenness, and a range of activities that were held to characterise a distressingly wide section of the population, such as profanity and cruelty to animals, does not suggest that the press was asserting values shared by all. Instead, the press offered a socially specific moral resonance, appropriate for a medium with restricted circulation. This would not have disturbed writers calling for the moralising of a supposedly dissolute population, subscribers to good causes wishing to see their names, causes and prejudices recorded for posterity, or advertisers offering high-value goods and services that required advertising in a world where most were not advertised other than orally. More broadly, the press reflected the interests and views of the middling orders. Thus, Jackson’s Oxford Journal of 3 July 1790 reported:

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The riots so usual at contested elections have been uncommonly violent in many of the county boroughs, but none perhaps have been so dangerous as those at Leicester and Nottingham. The four candidates at the former town, imitating the example of greater men, on Wednesday last entered into a coalition to return one Member for each party. This junction was no sooner made public, than it became the signal for one of the most mischievous riots we ever heard of. The mob were so exasperated at being bilked of further extortion on the several candidates, that they broke open the town-hall, and completely gutted it. They made a bonfire of the Quarter Sessions Books, and the records of the town, burnt the public library, and would have murdered the Coalitionists, could they have got at them. Several persons have been most severely wounded, and one man is killed. It was not till after the military were called in, and the Riot Act read, that the mob was dispersed. Criticism in this case, therefore, was directed not at the agreement among the élite to prevent a contest but rather at the popular response. This was an aspect of a political, social, economic and moral paternalism that was, for example, opposed to worker activism. The Salisbury and Winchester Journal of 3 May 1790 reported the dispersal of what was presented as a mob near Pewsey threatening to cause devastation unless wages were raised: We are happy to find that the bad example of these reprobate fellows, and not real necessity, was the sole cause of these tumultuous proceedings. We are further told that many of the farmers of that part of the country have very humanely supplied their labourers with wheat at 6 shillings per bushel, and that with equal humanity and good policy, they have now agreed to a temporary increase in the wages of those who have large families. May these laudable examples be everywhere followed! The present sufferings of the labouring poor deserve commiseration; and we hope that some effectual and lawful means will be found to relieve them; but we can by no means approve of those riotous proceedings amongst them; – they are contrary to the laws, and subversive of the good government established in society for the mutual advantage of the whole, and for the immediate protection and redress of every individual. The frequent stress in the press on charitable acts by the fortunate was symptomatic of this ‘top-down’ approach. Paternalism grounded in moral behaviour and religious attitudes, rather than economic dominance, was the justification of the social policy required for the well-ordered society that was presented by the press as a necessary moral goal. Public opinion was not

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treated as an essentially democratic political phenomenon. The contents of newspapers was part of a polite sociable sphere that was not totally separate from its popular counterpart, but that was recognisably different in tone. This helps explain the contrast that can be readily noted with late nineteenthcentury popular newspapers. Thus, the eighteenth-century press catered for a narrower range of public opinions than its successor was to do. That does not mean that it was without consequence. Instead, the press had a positive and negative importance, in so far as such judgements can be offered. In the former case, newspapers played a major role in disseminating and sustaining fashions among those who possessed the interest, knowledge and funds to pursue them. Fashions entailed not only clothes, but also ideas and opinions, fads and hobbies, goods and services; and indeed newspapers themselves. There was a growing appetite for fashions in this wider sense among the middling orders, and this appetite was facilitated by their growing wealth. Thus, news and advertisements performed a complementary function, just as, more specifically, they did for the economics of individual papers. The ‘negative’ importance of the press can be seen in a number of respects. For example, the provincial press did not serve to foster feelings of regional identity, while the Scottish press offered only a very limited platform for separatist attitudes. In the English provincial newspapers, there were occasional items, particularly at election time, in which preference was voiced for local individuals or interests, but, in general, a striking feature of these papers were the absence of a distinctive sense of place, political culture and local society, or of accompanying hostility towards either London or other places. This offers a parallel to the general ‘enlightened’ character of most of the European press: provincialism and parochialism clearly being dismissed alongside popular superstition. Instead, the provincial press in England helped to create a national awareness of public politics, so that issues and arguments resonated through the political community. The political objectives and histories of particular newspapers has been the subject of impressive scholarship for many decades, notably in the second half of the last century, but this could lead to a downplaying of the pursuit of profit. It was crucial to the press that politics was profitable: the public was willing to pay for political news, speculation and discussion and this both set the parameters for newspaper development and helped provide its dynamic. In the early eighteenth century, there was a change in the modes of political communication, with the characteristic ‘high political’ forms of private letter and, to a lesser extent, speech supplemented in the expanding ‘public spaces’ of Augustan England, such as coffee-houses and theatres, by public discourse. Political printing played a major role in this process, both articulating views and providing subject matter for the world of print. Just as publishers sought

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the patronage of the public, so also did politicians and political groups that sought to use the mechanism of print to their own profit. At the same time, it is important not to exaggerate the interest shown by politicians. Possibly the small-scale nature of individual papers, combined with scepticism concerning their impact, was responsible for the relatively limited attention devoted to subsidising or intimidating most newspapers. Such a statement might appear surprising. Some newspapers were subsidised, and much excellent work has been devoted to the relationship between papers and politicians. However, most papers were not subsidised, and many politicians revealed no particular interest in the press. In addition, in so far as some were involved, it can be suggested that a lack of clarity about the influence of the press increased the sense that it was influential, or that politicians sought to influence the press because it was there, but that their interest did not reflect any informed conviction of its efficacy. This cannot be proved nor disproved, but is a qualification to the common thesis that political concern with the press arose from a certainty of its importance. Yet it was interesting. George III had little interest in, or commitment to, the adversarial character and popular aspect of the British political system, but he was a reader of the press and of American and Irish newspapers.9 Readers, in turn, turned to newspapers for what they knew would be in them, and hoped to be interested and entertained accordingly. However, that did not mean that their views were swayed, while they were far from dependent solely on the press for the formation of their beliefs. All of these points are still pertinent today. Political printing did not solely involve newspapers. Indeed, ballads, flysheets, caricatures and pamphlets also each played an important part. To a considerable extent, the history of print in the eighteenth century involved definition and differentiation, as different forms developed, competed and took on particular roles. There was a process of overlap, particularly between pamphlets and newspapers, although the nature of the available technology largely prevented any overlap between newspapers and visual material. The possibilities of the various media were probed by political groups, as they sought both symbolic potency and to convey particular messages. The press was thought of great value because it offered the possibility of propagating material through the format of a regular serial: newspapers were daily, tri-weekly or weekly. This use of the press helped to ensure that the procedures and intentions of government regulation and intervention became more prominent and controversial. This, in turn, sustained both newspaper comment and public interest in the press. Indeed, regulation helped not only literally to define a ‘public space’ for the press in terms of prohibition, but also to create such a space by encouraging interest in newspapers.

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This was particularly seen in the case of parliamentary reporting, which was far more extensive than in current British papers. Such reporting enabled newspapers to provide distinctive information, and, in particular, to take a role that pamphlets could not match. Thanks to such reporting, politics to a major extent became public, while such politics became well established in the press. More generally, the press was both the principal medium of public politics and able to report and comment on it. Newspapers therefore benefited from the spread of secular associational activity. Reports of meetings played a major role, providing national publicity for a myriad of causes. By providing information, the press played a major role in making the political process more accessible. It is important to stress both the role of the press and also its response to developments. In the case of the latter the most important was the working through of the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688–9 so that from 1694 there were annual sessions of a Parliament elected at least at regular intervals and with defined powers. This made possible a major change in the political culture. Parliament was important not so much as a forum where government could be defeated, a relatively rare occurrence, but as one that encouraged a change in the nature of political debate, by creating a regular agency for publicly representing political views. A greater awareness of the possibilities of print was part of a more widespread concern to influence public opinion and the opinion of those interested in politics. Public opinion developed as a category in political thought, although there was uncertainty about what constituted such opinion and about its impact on high politics. The press was central to politicisation, the strengthening, sustaining and widening, if not of a specific political consciousness, then at least of national political awareness. It is appropriate to use the term ‘public politics’, but not that of ‘mass politics’. A smaller scale of activity does not, however, suggest a lack of consequence, and the press played a major role in fostering and sustaining a political world very different from that of the calculations of borough patronage: it was public and with regular opportunities for publicity. A political world was being created in which public discussion and consideration between equals was crucial, rather than personal relationships with reciprocal links of obligation, deference and patronage. In this new civic society, newspapers offered a means for the dissemination of opinion that was not linked to the corporate ritual of urban life, with its heavy stress on group activities, the importance of anniversary celebrations, and the role of religion in defining groups and their values. Instead of the hierarchical world of different social orders in town and country, newspapers offered a sphere in which all readers were equal. The gaze of the press was not closed to the doings of ordinary folks – for example,

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the long account in Berrow’s Worcester Journal of 6 February 1766 of a local race between two naked butchers was scarcely a vision of a society defined by élite politeness – but, as already indicated, appropriate behaviour was the ethos actively propagated. Material such as the coverage of this race tended to express distance from such activities, thus reinforcing a sense of separateness between newspaper readers and the ‘lower sort’. Another aspect of the public character of the press was provided by the extent to which many newspapers were surprisingly open to the expression of different opinions. This owed much not only to the fact that many papers sought to maximise sales and advertisements by avoiding excessively partisan stances, but also to the extent that under-capitalised newspapers lacked reporting staffs and required the submission of material to fill some of their columns. Yet, the press did not simply report as a passive spectator. In addition, newspapers played a more active role in seeking to influence, if not mould, the political process. The growing independence of the press was linked to a clearer sense of its own purpose that reflected a political world in which public opinion was felt to have a more pronounced and acceptable role. For example, the press played a major role in the rise of petitioning. In part as a result of the rise of extra-parliamentary associations, the presentation of petitions on national issues to Parliament rose considerably in the last quarter of the century. In the boroughs, the number of signatories was almost double that of electors, a clear indication of the extent to which the ‘political nation’ was not limited to the electorate. Instead, politics encompassed a considerable amount of activity by the more humble members of the community (the vast majority men), and, thus, to an extent, directed, expressed and contained their views. There was a symbiotic relationship between the press and public politics, and the latter provided an opportunity for the press that was commercial as well as political. The consequences, however, of this nexus, sphere or space (terms vary) of opinion and activity are more problematic. It is necessary to free the concept of public opinion and the related treatment of the press from the teleological context in which they are commonly presented. The hold of the Whig myth of history ensured that the development of the modern political system, successively parliamentary government, democracy and democratisation, seemed the major theme in British history and was thus automatically associated with progress. In such a schema, the ‘long’ eighteenth century was the period between the establishment of parliamentary government, thanks to the Glorious Revolution of 1688–9, and nineteenthcentury extensions of the franchise, beginning with the Great or First Reform Act in 1832. The place of opinion ‘out of doors’, outside the world of Court and Parliament, apparently was similarly clear. Its development indicated the

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limits of the representative system and, in turn, helped eventually to secure its failure on behalf of whichever groups are supposed to have displaced it. Such an analysis was, in part, an aspect of the important role of history as public myth, a facet that the press readily lends itself to, but this approach has serious limitations. Aside from the strength of its teleology, there is a questionable attempt to treat a struggle for change in the political system as the central political issue. While it was indeed important in the 1790s, those active in politics and the press generally chose to work within the system. The press, indeed, was important to the process by which politics was channelled. Furthermore, it is important to appreciate the degree to which support for government policies was as common as opposition to them. Thus, by concentrating on crises in which public manifestations of opposition to the government were notable, it is possible to present a misleading view of the difficulties that ministries encountered, one that concentrates on the relationship between policy and public, especially popular, opposition. As the crises are automatically defined by the strength of the latter, an impression is created that the central political problem was that of defending policy in such contexts, and that the political chronology of the period can readily be traced from crisis to crisis. A structure of politics, based on urban institutions, sociability, clubs, petitions, newspapers, instructions and addresses, has been advanced for this public opposition; as well as an ideology involving patriotism, nationalism and commercial expansion. In practice, public opinion was more diverse and less decisive. Debate was certainly important, but the powerful sense that the ‘public sphere’ – Parliament, the culture of print, and the world of campaigns, agitation, propaganda and public opinion – must somehow have been central to the processes of decision-making is too often an act of faith rather than an assessment based on an understanding of the steps by which political and governmental decisions were usually taken. The strength of support for the government became more clearly the case in the last quarter of the century, with backing for a firm line towards America followed by pro-Crown loyalism in the election of 1784 and then by the antiRevolutionary loyalism of the 1790s. The last crisis was important to the development of the press, as it led to a reconceptualisation of the political and social positioning of many newspapers. The typecasting of unacceptable reform as class-based accorded with a long tradition of differentiating between the people and the mob, just as criticism of reaction echoed populist Whig critiques and more specific criticism of élite manners, but both were given a new clarity in the early 1790s. This helped create a matrix of associations in the culture of print that was to continue to be influential after war with France ceased in 1815. In this matrix, the populist press was associated with a bitter critique of government and society, while ministerial protagonists emphasised

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the threat to ministry and society. This alignment was to be challenging as the growing and increasingly urban population explored new practices of political power. An emphasis on the early 1790s underlines the importance of changes in particular periods; changes that can be seen as discontinuities. This undercuts the use of organic and teleological terms such as developed. Instead, an emphasis on discontinuities, in this case in political and social positioning, but not in technology nor in fiscal context, returns our attention to the need for an understanding of the dynamic process by which ‘internal’ factors, especially entrepreneurship, responded to changes in externals. Alongside contrasts through time were those by place and type. Contrasts between the London and provincial press are readily apparent. London newspapers carried more advertising, and were the first to increase in size and number of columns, while reducing the size of the type. The London press was specialised. It included Sunday, business and comment-only newspapers. Many London papers were bi- or tri-weeklies; there were very few in the provinces. Thus, it might be suggested that in assessing the press, modern historians should devote more attention to the contrasts between the London and the provincial press. Such an approach has been neglected. Instead, newspaper historians have tended to look at either the London or the provincial press, but to neglect the point of reference provided by the other. Clearly, London newspapers were not sold in the metropolis only. Owen’s Weekly Chronicle in its issue of 7 March 1761 named agents in Cambridge, Chelmsford, Eton, Farnham and Maidstone. The post spread the London papers as well as London news. London opinions were thus communicated. In 1753, Philip Yorke wrote from Wrest in Bedfordshire: We do not talk quite so much about the Jew Bill as you do in Town and yet I find upon enquiry that people have received the same bad impression of it. How should it be otherwise? The London Evening Post is retailed in the Northampton Mercury and the riders who are employed by the dealers in town to transact with the country shopkeepers, bring down with them specimens of their politics as well as their goods. It is therefore wrong to suggest that London and the provinces were somehow hermetically sealed, but equally it is by no means clear that the London newspaper world and the impression of a public debate created by and in the London press are the best bases for an understanding of the national situation. London was the seat of Court and Parliament and the focus of the political action, but it is by no means clear how far the political world was affected by the culture of print. Clearly this varied by issue, occasion and politician. In general, it appears to be the case that the press seemed most important and

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maybe self-conscious at times of real or apparent high political crisis. Thus, for example, the 1760s contrasts with the 1770s, in that the attitude of individual newspapers and of the press as a whole aroused more interest in the earlier period of ministerial instability. Similarly, there was more interest in, and ministerial concern about, the press in the period 1755–60 than in 1747–54. This point does not, however, imply that newspapers could create political instability. As ever, evidence from and about newspapers requires contextualisation. Thus, in January 1770, Earl Harcourt wrote from his Parisian embassy to Charles Jenkinson, a key official: ‘The infamous Junius has astonished everybody. The lengths he has ventured to go are really amazing, and may in the end occasion the greatest disorder if the means taken by Government to stop the career of that treasonable libel should prove unsuccessful.’ Junius was never identified and in the next general election, that of 1774, the ministerial candidates were defeated in London and Bristol, while no candidates could be found for Middlesex. However, far from there being ‘the greatest disorder’, a cautious assessment of the number of ‘Pros’ made by Lord North, the Prime Minister, for George III suggested a figure of 321 out of 558 MPs. The electoral inconsequence of public opinion is not thereby demonstrated. Contemporaries were aware that only a minority of constituencies were ‘open’, not of course that considerations summarised by the term ‘public opinion’ did not affect an unknown number of electors in ‘closed’ constituencies. However, what the results in 1774, or for that matter a number of other general elections, such as 1734, demonstrate is that public opinion if measured by the opposition press had a limited effect only. The caveat is important. There is a tendency to write the history of the eighteenth-century British press around prominent metropolitan newspapers of opinion such as the Craftsman, Fog’s Weekly Post, London Evening Post, Monitor, North Briton, Public Advertiser and Morning Chronicle. It is far from clear that this process is helpful, either as a means for assessing the press or for establishing the nature and views of public opinion. Prominent opposition writers did not necessarily claim that they were supported by much of the rest of the press, though the hostile or indifferent attitude of other newspapers could always be blamed on corruption. In September 1771, Junius, the pseudonymous critic of George III’s government, wrote to John Wilkes: I am not properly supported in the newspapers. One would think that all the fools were of the other side of the question. As to myself it is of little moment. I can brush away the swarming insects, whenever I think proper. But it is bad policy to let it appear in any instance, that we have not numbers as well as justice of our side.

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Junius’ complaint draws attention to an obvious feature of the culture of print, its ‘pluralistic nature.’ Pro-ministerial provincial newspapers, such as, in the 1770s and early 1780s, Jopson’s Coventry Mercury and the Leeds Intelligencer, can be found. Many papers carried items that supported the government of the day. These do not necessarily reflect any political bias but may indicate a need for news or simply a willingness to publish any interesting items. Thus, in 1780 the Reading Mercury, and Oxford Gazette printed: The substance of the charge given to the Grand Jury by Lovelace Bigg, Chairman at the late Quarter-Sessions of Marlborough . . . that destructive levelling idea so universally prevalent. Their pernicious effects are too strongly marked, even in the most quiet and recluse districts; nay, almost in every family. Whence is it we hear so frequently of disobedient, untractable, dishonest manufacturers, servants, and labourers? Many papers sought to avoid controversy, in order to maximise their sales and advertising revenue. When partisan newspapers adopted obviously partisan attitudes that tended to reflect and often exacerbate local competition, and thus ensure that local readers had a choice of opinion which restricted the market share of individual papers. This was certainly the case in the West Midlands in the 1770s and in Suffolk in the 1790s. In the latter case, the Bury and Norwich Post was more sympathetic to the cause of reform, whilst the Ipswich Journal was more an ‘establishment’ paper. Furthermore, much of the opposition case, especially attacks upon alleged corruption, and the consequent threat to the constitution, was sufficiently unspecific to have any direct or particular political reverberations. This became even more the case in the 1780s when the ministry of William Pitt the Younger showed that the government itself could seek reform. In addition, the relatively stable political world of the Walpole years, which had allowed opposition newspapers to attack Walpole consistently and to argue that ministerial performance reflected corrupt practices, was followed by a long period when leading opposition figures joined successive ministries. It became less credible, as well as less interesting, to link the general ideological point of corruption to the specific details of high political manoeuvres. The broader politics of the press are also worth considering. Thus, on 11 December 1762, the Briton, a London newspaper, argued that gaining St Augustine in northern Florida from Spain would prevent ‘the desertion of our Negro slaves’ from Georgia across the border. A stress on the pluralistic nature of the press does not necessarily imply that newspapers were without influence, but it does entail a need to consider the specific nature of the individual conjuncture, rather than to assume a

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general relationship between ‘the press’ and society, government or public opinion. Contemporaries certainly felt that newspapers could be effective. In June 1789, Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville wrote to a J. Philips, possibly the bookseller James Phillips, concerning the fight against slavery: I desire immediately our Secretary M. Gramagnac to get a copy of [Henry] Thornton’s letter and of the answer our Society has sent to him . . . if you print it in the newspapers, it will perhaps raise the spirits of your countrymen. They will see that when the question about the abolition of negro trade will be determined we will pay serious attention to Thornton’s scheme. In 1790, the diplomat Joseph Ewart wrote from Buxton: ‘I fear Opposition is too busy and too successful, in spreading the country, in order to alarm the public on the subject of the armaments and their object.’ The opposition Morning Chronicle commented on the Priestley riot that summer: ‘. . . certain it is that those who filled the newspapers with inflammatory letters and paragraphs previous to the 14th, and those who countenanced the practice, may be justly charged with pre-disposing the minds of the people to whatever mischievous impulse they might on that day receive.’ However, although it seems reasonable to suggest that the press made the public more conscious of the notion of public opinion, the theory rests on questionable assumptions. The press grew essentially because more people purchased newspapers. Their decision to do so obviously reflected individual preferences, but it is as valid to speculate that these arose from a desire to read the increasing number of advertisements or magazine-type material, as to suggest that they were due to a heightened consciousness of the actual and potential role of public opinion. Certainly, newspapers advertised themselves to readers on a number of counts, and the editorial opinion they offered was not generally one of them. Editorial statements of opinion were not always a good guide to subsequent content, but it is striking how rarely newspapers presented themselves as campaigning organs, although individual journalists such as William Cobbett did. More common in the eighteenth century was a general agenda similar to that offered in the first number of the Leeds Intelligencer on 2 July 1754: Whatever may be proposed for the support of Virtue and Religion amongst us, for the Improvement of Trade and Manufactures of this Part of the Country, for the Encouragement of Industry, the better Maintenance or Employment of the Poor; in short, whatever may usefully Instruct, or innocently Amuse the Reader, will be suitable Matter of Intelligence for this Paper; And whatever is proposed to this End, in a Way not likely to give

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Occasion of Offence, will be thankfully received; and faithfully and impartially communicated to the Public. Even had papers sought to act as campaigning journals, there was only a limited amount of material that could be thus presented. More important, arguably, is the evidence, offered by the changes in newspaper content, that, as the century progressed, readers wanted more non-political news. By the 1780s, theatrical and literary news, and reports from the world of fashion, were a regular feature of many newspapers. That did not preclude the reporting of political news, but between the end of the American War of Independence in 1783 and the French Revolution, which broke out in 1789, there is a certain sense that political interest had slackened. On New Year’s Day 1785, the first issue of the Daily Universal Register referred to parliamentary reporting in a disparaging fashion: ‘long accounts of petty squabbles about trifles in Parliament, or panegyrics on the men and measures that he most disliked; or libels on those whom he most revered’. It would not be too fanciful to suggest that the response in Britain to the French Revolution helped, by increasing interest in politics, to shift attention back towards political news and comment. The editorial reviews published in the first issue of each year of the St James’s Chronicle make this clear. The newspaper felt it appropriate in the self-advertising account of its own activities to stress its political attitude, as well as its political news. On 2 January 1800, the newspaper announced: We have increased the channels of our Intelligence, we have endeavoured, in several instances, to add to our usefulness; nor have we been unmindful of our Literary department, a department in which The St James’s Chronicle has ever stood unrivalled. Our Political Observations, replete with local and personal knowledge speak for themselves; their merit is fully acknowledged by our contemporaries, since they are generally copied verbatim in to their columns. These exertions have not passed unrewarded; we have increased in numbers and reputation; the surest pledge of the continuance of our efforts . . . Through the whole of the contest hitherto, it has been the endeavour of the St James’s Chronicle, to persevere in the support of order and good Government; to show an uniform detestation of the French usurpations; and to resist every attempt, open or secret, towards the overturning of our valuable Constitution at home. In this line of conduct we are resolved to persevere; and though we are determined, with candour and impartiality, to afford Truth every opportunity of justifying itself, we do not thereby find ourselves called upon to be the advocates of Folly, Treason, or Atheism, however disguised.

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The following 1 January, the paper declared: It is with the greatest degree of satisfaction that we can now look back, for so many years, on the steady course which his paper has ran, amidst all the collisions of party, the vicissitudes of public opinion, and the horrors of revolutionary violence. It was originally published on the best maxims of the best Constitution, and uniformly devoted to the real interests of Society, Religion, Morality, and rational Liberty. He laments to say, however, that there was a time when those principles were not considered as the readiest passports to general favour. But that time, thank Heaven, is now passing away. The warmest votaries of false Philosophy begin to hide their ‘diminished heads’ . . . Amidst the din of Wars, however, and the intrigues of Cabinets, The St James’s Chronicle will, as usual, be found open to the communications of Literature, such as may tend to elevate and embellish the human mind, promote the sphere of our commerce, extend our agriculture, and enlarge the arts of peace. Such comments reflect the nature of the post-Revolutionary press. In drawing attention to the difference between the newspapers of the mid-1780s, and those of the 1790s and 1800s, one is advancing not only the obvious point that newspapers were influenced by political circumstances, but also the more forceful claim that these circumstances changed the press, rather than the press circumstances. This suggestion rests on an impression created by the difference between newspapers’ claims concerning their strengths in the 1790s. For example, the first issue of the Daily Universal Register in 1785, and the prospectus for the Star in 1788, placed less of a stress on political news. However, this impression is qualitative. One of the problems with the methodology of newspaper history is that comments such as this rest on an informed reading of the texts that offers conclusions that are in general difficult or impossible to demonstrate statistically. By stressing the role of circumstances in the content of the press, attention is necessarily directed to the relationship between readers and newspapers through which these circumstances influenced the content of the latter. It is a mistake to assume that reader interests were constant, but very little is known about the manner in which they developed. In addition, a stress on circumstances directs attention to their importance in providing easy copy for the press. The relationship between events and newspapers was thus a dynamic one. Little is known about how content was influenced and affected either by the news available or by the preference of readers. However, the advantage of drawing attention to both is that it locates newspapers more accurately in their context as part of a fluctuating system of demands and requirements, rather than as an independent agency creating and

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directing public opinion, and being able to assume sufficient readers, profits and news. The dependence of newspapers on their environment was sometimes made painfully apparent. In 1770, Berrow’s Worcester Journal informed its readers: ‘Our late Publication Today is owing to our Express having been greatly retarded by the excessive Badness of the Roads, and the Severity of the Weather; yet we presume our Readers will think themselves fully recompensed for waiting, on finding we have inserted his Majesty’s Speech on the Opening of the Parliament.’ Harder to assess than the consequences of adverse winds or bad roads were the pressures exerted by precarious funding, the range of material available, and the demands of readers and advertisers. The scale of most newspapers remained small throughout the century, their organisation simple. These factors must have affected their contents, but as yet there is little guide to the consequences or to the processes by which they operated. Some newspapers expressed scepticism about the influence of the press. The first issue of the Parrot discussed the newspaper world of 1728: the Weekly Papers . . . Anybody may observe they are usually marshalled into two parties, plaintiff and defendant . . . one side accuses and aggravates with all the energy of passion and prejudice; the other excuses and palliates with an interested zealous concern . . . Whatever the affection of these paper combatants may be to their several abettors, yet to the people it’s all a sham quarrel; such partialists are never to be credited. Who can believe the clamorous Caleb [Craftsman], that is always croaking against a certain Great Man [Sir Robert Walpole], and will not allow him one single virtue. There is as little regard to be paid to obsequious Roger, who is constantly bowing to his Idol. As a result, the Parrot announced that it would be neutral. This did not save it from a fairly rapid demise and from obscurity. However, not all such papers shared this fate, and the Parrot’s general point, that readers were unconvinced by newspaper wars, may well have been correct for many. Indeed, readers may have read Fog’s Weekly Journal, the North Briton, and the Public Advertiser, because they enjoyed seeing figures such as Walpole, Bute and North criticised and mocked, but that does not mean that they agreed with what they read, still less that it led them to support the opponents of these ministers. While it is therefore necessary to criticise exaggerated claims that might be made about the press as an agency for mass politicisation, it is, nevertheless, clear that it was crucially important for the reconfiguration of the ‘public sphere’ away from the predominantly oral culture and community and

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ecclesiastical agencies of earlier times, towards a culture in which oral transmission was seen as less consequential than that of the culture of print. Furthermore, print was inherently different as a medium for, and sphere of, control than earlier means of transmission. In some respects, it was freer, more open to individual interpretation by readers in a context in which they could not be coerced by the presence of others. The press was, and is, an external agency that mediated between individuals and the outside world, in particular creating or sustaining expectations, hopes and interests that were not those of the locality. External agencies therefore offered and offer a source and means for independence, individualism and, on at least the local level, democratisation. Knowledge is not so much freedom, as a cause of the demand for freedoms. That might include the freedom to support the existing social, political and religious order, but such a conservatism is very different to a conservatism that is otherwise informed and more specific and local in its loyalties and interests. Thus, on the European scale, one of the principal consequences of the developing culture of print in the eighteenth century was not only the rise in radicalism but also a transformation of conservatism. Conservatism entered a ‘public sphere’ in which it enjoyed genuine popularity as an expression of xenophobic, provincial, proto-nationalist and nationalist attitudes and as an ideology that was sceptical about the possibilities of secular improvements and internationalism and, instead, emphasised historical continuity. The culture of print did not therefore lead in one political direction, but it did transform and widen the sphere of public debate. Politics was a sphere of activity that suited the technology of print with its capability for producing new accounts rapidly. It thus offered much, in particular, to newspapers. The press could make politics if not immediate at least diurnal by publishing fresh accounts, offering new angles on current controversies and creating new issues. It thus offered a new medium for political discussion and one whose essential character was framed not just by the capitalist structure of the newspaper world but also by the extent to which this was not a capitalist structure with concentrated ownership. Newspapers existed to make a profit, but, as yet, the technological and organisational structure of the press was not such as to facilitate a concentration of control and thus to threaten a reduction in the multipolarity that numerous titles offered the public sphere. The situation was to alter in the early nineteenth century with the rise of the Times. By 1840, the sales of the Times exceeded those of its next three metropolitan rivals; by 1850 those of the next five. This preponderance clearly affected the public sphere, although it did not prevent the publication of other opinions; it did, however, create a context in which they were automatically regarded as less important. In the eighteenth century, there was no such

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preponderance and the large and growing number of titles, particularly in London, encouraged diversity. Nevertheless, this has to be set against a background in which the other impact of the press on the ‘public sphere’ is noted. Britain was a society where literacy (as a measure of reading, not writing), while greater than in most of Europe, was nevertheless far from universal. The national average of brides and grooms making a mark (in place of a signature; suggesting illiteracy) for English towns in 1754–62 was 52.5 per cent and in 1799–1804 still 49.9 per cent. The percentages were higher in rural England, and among women. Thus, the culture of print can be seen as contributing to, indeed a crucial aspect of, the historiographical orthodoxy on cultural change in the eighteenth century. There is a powerful analytical tradition centred on the theme of élite control and the attempt to suppress or marginalise popular culture. Popular culture is presented often as sharply differentiated from high culture, being under assault from the moral didacticism of the middling orders. New intellectual and cultural fashions and codes of behaviour are held to have corroded the loyalty of the upper and middling orders to traditional beliefs and pastimes. In this analysis of cultural politics, religious revival, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment and the cult of sensibility marginalised the common culture and pushed it down the social scale. Given such an analysis, it is unsurprising that attention has been devoted to the apparent contrast between popular and élite culture. The analysis and presentation of relationships have been influenced by the use of words and phrases such as manipulation, control, oppressive, superstition, enlightened, and protective mechanisms. Such an emphasis on cultural conflict, different mentalities, worlds in collision, on control, manipulation and policing, is too crude. It is, however, clear that the spreading impact of print and the consequent change in the nature of the ‘public sphere’ affected those who were unable to participate directly and regularly in this new world. To this extent, the social resonance of the developing ‘public sphere’, and the very character of print, were arguably divisive, rather than liberating. Turning to the late eighteenth century, political news was no longer so dominated by the affairs of the Continent. Instead, colonial news and that from the newly independent United States of America were discussed, affecting the balance of the foreign policy; while, from the early 1770s, there were, during the session, regular and lengthy reports of parliamentary debates. Censorship earlier in the century had been inspired by the Jacobite threat and it eased with the collapse of Jacobitism. Later controversies over the press in the 1760s and 1770s in part reflected the ministerial defence of an established system of regulation that was no longer greatly required, as was shown by the liberalisation of parliamentary reporting. The relative success enjoyed by those who pressed then against regulation may have

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stemmed in part from the lessened stress on defending the system. The perceived need had altered faster than the legal situation. That is not the approach taken by those who focus on the idea of a triumphal move towards liberty as a consequence of the actions of newspapers and their backers. The increase in the number of words per paper meant that there could be more local news in provincial newspapers, even though political news remained dominated by metropolitan sources of information, and the exciting events of the period. The American War of Independence and the French Revolution were best covered from the metropolitan perspective. Separately, the liberalisation of parliamentary reporting at the beginning of the 1770s further increased the importance of items about London, as did the greater interest in the fashionable world that was reflected not just in items about fashion or London society, but also in those about the theatre or books. Fashions entailed not only clothes, on which items appeared in newspapers, but also opinions and ideas, fads and hobbies. Norms were set and expressed. On 17 April 1787, the Morning Chronicle criticised the production of the tragedy Julia: ‘On Saturday evening, it was half an hour after nine o’clock before the curtain dropped, after the Epilogue was delivered; nine o’clock ought to be the period of conclusion.’ The following year, the advertisements for the daily London evening paper the Star offered: ‘the occurrences of the present day . . . drama and the opera and every fashionable place of public amusement’. There was a growing appetite for fashions in this wider sense in the middle class, and this appetite was facilitated by their growing wealth. The provincial press helped to keep these people informed, to ensure that the metropolitan world did not appear remote, and, in this respect, news and advertisements performed a complementary function. The widely held notion of the newspaper writer as taking the role of instructor and guide to the reader presupposed that didacticism was as central to the function of press comment as this comment was to journalism. Indeed, the tone of the press was primarily exhortatory. Both in politics and in other matters, newspapers served as moralists, essentially offering guidance to an English Enlightenment. The language was usually secular, but that was not always the case, and the tone could overlap with evangelical themes in English Protestantism. The overall effect was that of the press as appealing to a concerned readership who would be able and willing to act accordingly.10 This theme, which was not that of the press as entertainment, was particularly marked in many provincial newspapers. There was no real change in the format of the press, bar an increase in the number of columns. This meant more words, but this increase was not accompanied, in either the London or the provincial press, by an improvement in the organisation of the news and in the layout of the paper. Although ‘stop press’ sections developed on back pages, newspapers could not respond to

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particular upsurges in news by printing longer issues. The absence of pictures meant that there were no captions to guide the reader, while, unlike some magazines, there were no tables of content. By the 1790s, the position had improved, with some papers, notably the Argus, Evening Mail, Oracle, Star and Sun, employing reasonable headlining. It seems fair to term such a qualitative change improvement, while accepting that such a vocabulary can be problematic. This change was accompanied, in some papers, by a system of sub-headlines that helped to define the organisation of the news. The once largely amorphous mass of news was increasingly differentiated and organised into new categories. The introduction of these categories enabled newspapers to appear to be providing new types of news and to stress aspects of their coverage that they felt were especially good or distinctive. Moreover, by the 1790s, most London papers had clearly defined editorial sections, as did some provincial papers. Many features of the press changed in this period, from improved distribution to larger staff, the foundation of more Sunday papers to the increase in the country section of London papers. There were also more frequent London editions. At the same time, there was only limited resources in terms of staff and little access to individual sources of news. Foreign correspondents were exceptional figures. The growing independence of the press was linked to a clearer sense of its own purpose that reflected a political world in which public opinion was felt to have a more pronounced and acceptable role. This was a public with different styles of political consciousness, as well as a range of political commitments.11 Criticism of government therefore could appear appropriate. Thus, on 12 January 1760, in the midst of the Seven Years War, the Westminster Chronicle strongly attacked appointments to military command based on political connections. Writing in the London Evening Post on 21 September 1762, ‘Britannicus’ argued that the government should not push through the Preliminaries of Peace ‘in open contradiction to and defiance of the universal sentiments and desire of the People’. In turn, pro-government papers, such as the Briton of 18 September 1762, emphasised popular support for peace. A week later, that paper captured the tone of opposition reproach: ‘those who, at this juncture, publish their remonstrances to the ministry . . . instead of offering their opinions, they convey instruction’. The provincial press rose in scale, from thirty-two papers in 1753 to fifty in 1782 and over 100 in 1808. Some newspapers did not last, but others have remained to this day, the Berkshire Chronicle, founded in 1771, now being the Reading Chronicle. An idea of the local impact of the press can be gauged from the notice in Swinney’s Birmingham and Stafford Chronicle of 11 April 1776: ‘Through the neglect of the London carrier, we are under the necessity

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of printing upwards of two-thousand of this day’s publication on unstamped paper.’ The network of agents of individual newspapers became more dense and comprehensive as the century progressed, with obvious consequences for the system as a whole. Circulation zones were put under competitive pressure. Syndication was one response, but not the general one. There was also greater competition within individual towns.12 For advertising reasons, agents in London and other major towns were of great importance: they were the point of access to the world of national commerce and, therefore, advertisements from outside the region. Arrangements between newspapers were also important for transmitting news items and advertisements.13 Thus, local networks of circulation were integrated into national networks of information, for both news and advertisements, while the postal system offered an increasingly sophisticated system of circulation for non-local sales. The details of circulation and distribution, much of which was very farflung, for example Newcastle papers in the North, Bristol papers in Wales, and the Sherborne Mercury across the South-West, underline the extent to which most provincial papers were regional rather than local. Indeed, many were not to develop in such a direction until after the mid-nineteenth century. Necessary for commercial and advertising reasons, this regional character was helped by the limited nature of local news. As a result, the provincial press was often more a regional vehicle for national news than for its regional counterpart. Nevertheless, increasingly, there was a discussion, variously partisan or balanced, informal or otherwise, both of issues of local importance and of local perspectives on national matters. There was a dynamic relationship between the growing local political coverage of the provincial press and the increasing sophistication and public dimension of provincial politics. Provincial papers were used to express provincial opinions. In particular, they advertised and recorded the events, such as meetings, petitions and demonstrations, that constituted the crucial process by which such opinions could be articulated and developed in order to produce an impact, both locally and nationally. Opposition to the slave trade, which occupied much space in the late 1780s and early 1790s, was a prime example. Allowing for this, the dominance as a news source of the London press continued. This was accentuated by the significance of international news, which largely arrived in England via London. However, during the American War of Independence (1775–83), west coast ports proved a significant source of news. A new Anglo-American news world developed or was strengthened even as the political link was broken.14 The war, a civil war within the empire, divided the British press, and newspapers took sides. Thus, the Nottingham Gazette, launched in 1780, supported the American Patriots.15 Competition

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encouraged the mustering of evidence. For example, Leeds items in the Leeds Intelligencer of 8 May and 17 July 1781 provided details of West Riding cloth production in order to refute opposition claims of economic crisis in the region. News of the progress of the war was also contested, as in the issue of 29 May 1781 which, inaccurately as it turned out, refuted opposition claims that Pensacola, the major centre in West Florida, had fallen to Spain. The war helped increase the total circulation of the press. In Britain, it rose from 12.7 million sales in 1775 to 15.3 in 1782, while the number of titles also rose. The French Revolution was a classic instance of news arriving via London, and one that was underlined by the subsequent outbreak of war with France in 1793. With two brief gaps, the conflict continued until Anglo-Prussian victory at Waterloo in 1815. It witnessed a transformation in politics, notably with the state-backed consolidation under the pressure of war of a new conservatism in reaction to a radical challenge at home and abroad. The 1790s saw a revival of the marked ideological partisanship that had characterised the struggle with Jacobitism, an assault upon the radical press, the development of government sponsorship, and an increased politicisation of the provincial press. In opposition to the government, social groups whose role in public politics had hitherto been episodic sought to have their voice heard. Understandably, the press essentially viewed events in France in British terms, but this process was more pronounced than today due to the shortage of foreign correspondents, which removed the consistent focus of a coherent and informed approach. In contrast, the role of unpaid correspondents in England increased the stress on comment, because it was that in which they were principally interested. This comment centred on English politics and tended to treat French developments in a simplistic fashion, either as a dreadful warning, as with many would-be emulators of Edmund Burke, or as a source of inspiration. The expression of radical sentiments increasingly led to conservative disquiet, notably from 1792 as the revolution in France became more radical and fears about developments in Britain increased. Action against radical newspapers followed. In 1792, the Argus, a radical London paper, was brought to an end, its printer, Sampson Perry, having been outlawed when he fled to France to avoid trial for libel. The presses were used for the progovernment True Briton, founded in January 1793. The Sun had been funded with government support the previous October. The printer and editor of the Morning Chronicle were tried and acquitted of seditious libel in 1793, the year in which the Leicester Chronicle and the Manchester Herald ended as a result of government action. Daniel Holt, the printer of the former, was convicted of seditious libel and sent to Newgate Prison. Thereafter, there was a marked slackening in action, although that did not save the Sheffield Register in 1794, nor prevent the imprisonment of James Montgomery, the editor of the radical

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Sheffield Iris, for political libels in 1795 and 1796. The paper became more supportive of the government, for example on 2 November 1798 printing a poem about a recent naval victory and providing an account of the presentation of a standard to a volunteer unit. Government repression was not, however, the sole element at play, although it has sometimes suited others to argue differently. First, radical opinions continued to be expressed in the press, for example the Bury and Norwich Post and the Cambridge Intelligencer. Moreover, two major London newspapers, the Morning Chronicle and the Morning Post, were seen as proFrench by the ministry and its newspaper supporters, such as the True Briton, and criticised accordingly, not least in terms of what would today be called ‘fake news’, which is a rhetorical as much as a descriptive term, and certainly more so than an analytical one. The Morning Chronicle certainly continued to criticise the war, not least its rationale, cost and economic impact. As a result, it was criticised, as in the St James’s Chronicle of 1 January 1799: ‘The Morning Chronicle today, in its address to its readers at the commencement of the year, declaring that it must become useful to the country, by its rigorous inquiry after truth, when the multitude of falsehoods and misrepresentations contained in that Frenchified print are so notorious.’ The Morning Post, Morning Herald, Star and Courier were also criticised as Jacobite, not least as misrepresenting parliamentary votes.16 Secondly, disillusionment with France and concern about the tendencies of radicalism helped lessen the expression of radical sentiment in a number of papers including the Morning Post. Moreover, it was difficult to see Napoleon in as apocalyptic terms as the French Revolution. Thirdly, suggestions of an increase in government control, whether by establishing a regulatory office of suppressing Sunday papers, got nowhere. Instead, Stamp Duty was raised, but not until 1797 and then at a time of serious fiscal crisis affecting government as a whole. Two years later, it was made compulsory to record the names and addresses of printers and publishers on every copy of a paper, and a compulsory registration of printing presses was introduced. Clearly the ministry could live with a degree of criticism from a legal press that was greater than was commonly the case in Europe. The cause for that lay in national history, specifically political culture. Although the 1790s posed a serious challenge to the assumptions of the political élite, notably in the creation of a language of class conflict, this challenge was substantially faced using traditional methods. Indeed, the stress on continuity, precedent, privilege and law in response to the example of revolution lessened the pressure for new practices. The libertarian heritage shared by all members of the political class was also important. There was to be more government control in the two world wars.

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The period also witnessed an upsurge in loyalist writings. The British Critic, Anti-Jacobin, Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine, Loyalist, Anti-Gallican and Annual Register thrived. The Star, Sun, Observer, True Briton, York Courant, Liverpool Phoenix, Manchester Mercury, Leicester Journal and Newcastle Courant were among many that backed the system, and in Leicester, Manchester and Newcastle, where there were both radical and conservative newspapers, the latter triumphed. Loyalism was potent in British public culture, but criticism of successive ministries continued, and newspapers played an important opposition role in the 1800s and even more early 1810s. In 1812, Brougham remarked that the press was the real opposition to Robert, 2nd Earl of Liverpool’s newly-established Tory government. In the provinces, the demand for peace with Napoleon was led by the Leeds Mercury under Edward Baines. Most of the eleven individuals who funded his acquisition of the paper in 1801 were Dissenters. Other newspapers which supported the call included the Nottingham Review, founded in 1808 by a Methodist printer Charles Sutton, and the West Briton launched in 1810. Other papers critical of the government included the Leicester Chronicle, Liverpool Mercury, and Manchester Exchange Herald. John Drankard, who emphasised political news in the Stamford News, which he edited, was imprisoned in 1811 as a result of his attack on flogging in the army. The basis for later peacetime press criticism was already well-laid. Yet, as a reminder of the multiple narratives that are possible, the Times, from 1805, adopted a different form of radicalism in breaking with the previous conventions by which the words of the theatre and the press mutually benefited with uncritical reviews published in return for free tickets. Instead, in 1805, a new candour and more professional relationship began in theatrical reviews. Meanwhile, the war was a key background, one that provided a reader interest that had to be satisfied, as well as a range of information that had to be organised and validated, not least as mails from the Continent could fail.17 Each sphere and stage of the war had to be covered but posed different problems with obtaining and verifying news, as with that about military developments in Cape Town in 1795 ‘said to have come through a private channel, by way of Holland’.18 On 5 February 1797, Johnson’s British Gazette, a London Sunday newspaper, noted: ‘The report brought on Thursday by a foreign vessel, that the Court of Spain had declared war against Portugal is proved to be false, a fruit-ship having arrived on Friday from Lisbon, the letters by which are silent on the subject.’ Wellington won a great victory over the French at Salamanca in Spain on 22 July 1812. On 3 August, the Times reported that dispatches bringing the news of a victory had reached Falmouth, the major port in Cornwall and the closest to Spain and Portugal, but that no confirmation or details were

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available. Two days later, the paper could offer a fuller report, but the official dispatches did not arrive until the morning of 16 August. Newspapers made major efforts to match reader interests with distinctive sources of information, the True Briton of 1 January 1799 announcing that it had: opened new sources of information both in Ireland and on the Continent . . . As we understand it to be decided that the question of an Union with Ireland will be the first important question discussed after the approaching recess, we have taken steps to insure the most accurate statement, both of the measures taken there relative to it, and of the opinions and disposition of the people of that country upon that important point.’ Newspapers had initially adopted many of the stylistic conventions of manuscript newsletters, not least an epistolary manner. The reader was addressed as if an individual. The conventions of author–reader relations were different by the early nineteenth century, although the earlier approach continued in some cases, and for more than reasons of convention. Alongside the difficulties facing both the press as a whole and individual newspapers, there was no doubt that the press was both the key source of news and an integral and an important part of the political debate.

Notes 1 V.E.M. Gardner, The Business of News in England, 1760–1820 (Basingstoke, 2016). 2 For the networks of the Bath Chronicle, Bristol Mercury, Chester Chronicle, Cumberland Pacquet, Drewry’s Derby Mercury, Liverpool Advertiser, Harrop’s Manchester Mercury, Shrewsbury Chronicle and York Chronicle for 1777–99, Gardner, Business of News, p. 149. See also J. Black, Geographies of an Imperial Power. The British World, 1688–1815 (Bloomington, IN, 2018), pp. 137–41. 3 C.Y. Ferdinand, Benjamin Collins and the Provincial Newspaper Trade in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1997); C.E. Whiting (ed.), Two Yorkshire Diaries. The Diary of Arthur Jessop and Ralph Ward’s Journal (Leeds, 1952), pp. 112, 123; J.S. Holt (ed.), The Diary of Thomas Fenwick (4 vols, London, 2011–12). 4 E.T. Bannett, Eighteenth-Century Manners of Reading. Print Culture and Popular Instruction in the Anglophone Atlantic World (Cambridge, 2018). 5 E.R. Delderfield, Cavalcade by Candlelight: The Story of Exeter’s Five Theatres (Exmouth, 1950), p. 31; The Morning Post, and Daily Advertiser, 17 Mar. 1786. 6 For the last, London Daily Post, 17 Jan. 1743.

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7 With reference to the Test and Henry Fox, Thomas, Duke of Newcastle to Sir Thomas Robinson, 27 Dec. 1756, BL. Add. 32869 fol. 402. 8 Nathaniel Cole to Jones Brockman, 12 July 1746, BL. Add. 4291, fol. 18. 9 Remarks on the press in George’s handwriting, 1760, BL. Add. 36796 fol. 56; George to William Pitt the Younger, 30 Jan. 1784, 9 May 1804, NA. PRO. 30/8/103 fol. 444, 104, fol. 336. 10 U. Heyd, Reading Newspapers; Press and Public in Eighteenth-Century Britain and America (Oxford, 2012). 11 H. Barker, Newspapers, Politics and English Society, 1695–1855 (Harlow, 2000). 12 V.E.M. Gardner, ‘Competition and Cooperation: Business Strategies and the Division of News-Reading Markets in Newcastle upon Tyne, 1760–1820’, Northern History, 50 (2013), pp. 285–306. 13 J. Hinks, ‘John Gregory and the Leicester Journal’, in B. McKay et al. (eds), Light on the Book Trade (London, 2004), pp. 85–94; V.E.M. Gardner, ‘John White and the Newcastle Newspaper Trade, 1711–69’, in C. Armstrong and J. Hinks (eds), Book Trade Connections from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Centuries (Winchester, 2007), pp. 71–92, ‘John Fletcher (1756– 1835) and the Chester Chronicle Account Books,’ in C. Armstrong and J. Hinks (eds), Periodicals and Publishers: The Newspaper and Journal Trade 1740–1914 (Winchester, 2009), pp. 97–120, ‘Humble Pie: John Fletcher, Business, Politics and the Chester Chronicle’, in J. Hinks et al., Periodicals and Publishers (London, 2009), pp. 95–118, ‘Newspaper Proprietors and the Social Stratification of the News-Reading Market in North-East England, 1760–1820’, Northern History, 50 (2013), pp. 285–306, and ‘The Communications Broker and the Public Sphere: John Ware and the Cumberland Pacquet’, Cultural and Social History, 10 (2013), pp. 533–57. 14 W. Slauter, ‘Forward-Looking Statements: News and Speculation in the Age of the American Revolution’, Journal of Modern History, 81 (2009), pp. 759–92. 15 T. Bickham, Making Headlines: The American Revolution as Seen through the British Press (DeKalb, IL, 2009). 16 See also True Briton, 3 Jan. 1799. Cf e.g. 8 Jan. 1796, 22, 31 Jan. 1799. 17 St James’s Chronicle, 3 Jan. 1799. That issue and that of the Express on 5 Ap. 1796 considered the accuracy of foreign newspapers. For impatiently awaiting late Hamburg mails in the summer, Sun, 14 June 1796. 18 Star, 25 Aug. 1795.

4 Steam and modernisation, 1814–61 ‘

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he greatest improvement connected with printing since the discovery of the art itself’ announced the Times on 29 November 1814. It was, of course, praising itself, a crucial process in product-placement. Newspapers had to be adept at self-advertisement. The largest-selling newspaper, the Times had switched to a steam-powered flat-bed press, becoming the first English newspaper to do so. This switch allowed the production of 1,000 impressions an hour, as opposed to the 250 hourly from an unmechanised hand-press. Prefiguring the move of the Times to new production facilities in Wapping in 1986, the machinery used in 1814 was secretly prepared to prevent the opposition of workers, who had already mounted a strike in 1810. The new machinery permitted the Times to go to press later in the day, and thus to contain more recent news than its competitors. This was a key advantage in London, which was the crucial market for daily, morning and evening papers and the major source of news, advertisements and investment capital. Moreover, the new steam Times was launched soon after Britain had begun its first period of peace with France since 1802–3. This helped create a need for a new initiative, at the very same time that the Congress of Vienna and the War of 1812 (to 1815) with the United States ensured that there was still distant news to cover that was important in both political and commercial terms. The steam press also enabled the paper to dispense with duplicate composition on the larger number of presses required before the switch to steam, and this change cut wage bills. The state of individual newspapers was keenly scrutinised, as in James Savage’s An Account of the London Daily Newspapers (1811). The Times had had the largest sale by 1801, but that was less than 3,000 copies daily. Twenty years later, helped by the new production method, it was 7,000, whereas its nearest rival, the Morning Chronicle, the leading Whig newspaper whose owner from 1790, James Perry, died that year, was only 3,100. In turn, there was further development. Friedrich Koenig’s flat-bed press was eclipsed in 77

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1828 with the arrival of Augustus Applegath’s flat-bed press which produced 4,200 impressions per hour. Applegath, a London printer, in turn, developed in 1848 the first workable vertical-drum rotary printing press. It could produce 8,000 impressions per hour. However, due to the cost involved, there was no rush elsewhere to introduce steam presses. Instead, for most newspapers, and their current and likely circulations, the Stanhope press sufficed. Introduced from 1800, and using an iron frame, the press permitted a clearer impression than previous presses and doubled their output, but, with a capacity of 480 pages per hour, had a slower rate of production than the Koenig steam press which had been patented in 1811. The type was on an iron bed or carriage that was moved into and out of the press by human effort, and not by steam power. The Stanhope press was an example of accretional improvement, that within an existing system, a process that was more generally significant for the newspaper world. Moreover, the Stanhope press was also more generally true of the ‘Industrial Revolution’ at this stage. Alongside factory-type production, notably in textiles, much manufacturing continued to have a smaller-scale, workshop character. This was particularly the case in London and Birmingham. It was not until the 1820s that some titles began to follow the Times, for example the Morning Herald in 1822, the Manchester Courier in 1825, and the Manchester Guardian in 1828. Steam was particularly totemic and significant of the new order in Manchester. Other papers followed far more slowly. The Times also led the way in having a larger staff: printers, compositors and writers. This staff could be afforded due to its larger circulation, and thus illustrated the important synergies of development and market share. Other production technologies were also significant. Mechanised papermaking, which became commercially viable in the 1800s, led to the steam-powered production of plentiful quantities of what became cheaper newsprint. The first patent for the Fourdrinier process was awarded in 1801. However, the value of any fall in prices was restricted until the tax on paper ended in 1861. Prior to then, paper was the most expensive production element. There were no significant developments in typesetting until the 1880s. Newspapers had become expensive in the eighteenth century, in large part due to successive rises in Stamp Duty, what were termed ‘taxes on knowledge’ by critics. The process was taken forward as an aspect of political control. Stamp Duty was raised in 1815 to 4d, double the level to which it had been raised in 1789 and more than half the cost of a newspaper (7d). Advertisement Duty was also increased to its highest level that year. These duties encouraged the revival in the 1810s of an unstamped press, which, unlike that in the early eighteenth century, was primarily political rather than commercial in its rationale. The radical press of the 1810s also included

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the revival of the essay sheets. What was distinctive about the new essayjournalism of the 1810s, led by William Cobbett’s Political Register launched in 1802, was its determination both to adopt a popular approach and to secure substantial sales. In 1816, Cobbett began to produce an edition of the paper containing only the essay and, by dispensing with the news, thus avoiding Stamp Duty. He wrote in a readily grasped style, without the complicated sentence structure and opaque meanings that had characterised so many of his predecessors. The suspension of Habeas Corpus led Cobbett to flee to America in 1817, but Thomas Wooler had already launched the Black Dwarf (1817–24), a weekly that called, in clear and ringing tones, for political and social justice. Other newspapers imitated its style and agenda. There was also direct action against pro-government newspapers, as in 1817 in Birmingham when a crowd broke the windows of the Commercial Herald. Concerned about postwar political and social instability, the Tory government of Robert, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, responded to press criticism as well as to counter-veiling pressure for action, for example by Edward Hankin, a resolute Tory cleric and author of the Letter to the Rt. Hon. The Earl of Liverpool on the licentiousness of the press (1814). The government sponsored its own papers, such as Gibbons Merle’s White Dwarf (1817–18), changed the legal financial context of press activity through legislation, and mounted a series of prosecutions. This was very much another iteration of the policies introduced and pursued in the 1790s by the Pitt government. The Publications Act (1819) extended the Stamp Duties by defining as a newspaper any periodical that contained news or remarks thereon, fixed the size of the sheet, and decreed that newspapers and publishers had to enter into recognisances. The government onslaught on the press led to an increase in prices and a decrease in titles. Partly as a result, the radical press was marginalised until the early 1830s. However, as a reminder of the need to adopt multiple explanations, this marginalisation was more generally the case with political radicalism in the 1820s. In part, this situation owed much to economic growth in the 1820s. The Whig Morning Chronicle also did badly in the 1820s. There was also local support for a conservative press as with the purchase, for £25 each, largely by the local gentry, of the 100 shares issued to permit the launching in 1815 of the Carlisle Patriot. So also, in 1818, with the launch of the Westmoreland Gazette, which was designed against the more radical Westmoreland Advertiser and Kendal Chronicle. James Savage managed the Taunton and Bridgwater Journal, a weekly Tory newspaper of 1815–16, before having more success in the 1830s and early 1840s with the Dorset County Chronicle. The radical press was swiftly overshadowed by the Sunday press, which, while drawing on a similar public engagement with news and cheap print,1

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offered crimes, sport and titillation, the sensational and the salacious, and by less radical reformist papers. The Sundays aroused the ire of moralists, such as John Poynder, a London lawyer, evangelical activist, Tory, committee member of the Lord’s Day Observance Society, and author of Observations on Sunday newspapers, tending to show the impiety of such a violation of the Sabbath, the religious and political evils consequent upon the practice, and the necessity which exists for its suppression (1820). The previous year, Charles Knight, the joint-proprietor of the Windsor and Eton Express, attacked cheap publications as irreligious and anti-government. Many of the articles in the Sunday newspapers in particular were wellcalculated for the placards that were developed in the first quarter of the nineteenth century to highlight particular items. This use of large typeface advertising extended the visual impact of newspapers. The placards were fixed to mail-coaches and put up around newspaper offices. Spectacle was to become an increasing feature of advertising.2 Crime had always been a staple of the press. The Sunday papers made it the basis of their success. They enjoyed a burst of expansion in the 1840s after the lowering of Stamp Duties, with the foundation of Lloyd’s Weekly London Newspaper (1842), later shortened to Lloyd’s Weekly News, the News of the World (1843), the Weekly Times (1847), and Reynolds’s Weekly Newspaper (1850). Each was successful in employing the formula developed earlier in the century, and coining the high murder rate of a society that was changing rapidly. The Sundays benefited from the high cost of taking a more regular newspaper, from the increasing definition of Sunday as leisure time in the more regulated urban environment and economic system that was developing, and from their clear and deliberate association with more accessible and exciting news. They were less expensive than the provincial weeklies, but also longer, an economics encouraged by their high circulation. The Sundays were an instance of a more widespread characteristic of the early nineteenth-century press, growing specialisation. This process reflected a more developed society, the desire and ability of those who controlled and composed the world of printing and publishing to create and respond to opportunities, and the increasing sense, in sphere after sphere, that it was necessary, or at least desirable, to have a particular periodical to note changes, discuss options and activities, and act as a focus and a means of coherence. Thus, to indicate the range of the press, the number of religious newspapers rose markedly from the late 1820s. With their confessions, often lurid tales of sin, redemption and retribution, pious deaths, and elements of the supernatural, many religious papers were accessible, providing a readily grasped content, notably an exciting series of individual morality tales that paralleled crime literature and newspaper reporting.

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Alongside parallels and overlaps between types of newspapers and between individual titles, there were also contrasts, not least in reading markets3 and (differently) politics. The reformist papers included the longstanding Leeds Mercury, the Bristol Mercury, the Newcastle Courant, and the newly launched Sheffield Independent (1819), and Manchester Guardian (1821), all of which gave calls for moral improvement a pointedly political content and energy, and at both local and national levels.4 Through their newspapers, the major cities of the North came to express political and economic opinions or, rather, become the setting for them. Pressure for greater parliamentary representation helped shape the contours of local political activism, and there was an important conflation of political opinion and newspaper campaigning. This process was aided by the active political role of many newspaper figures and their central place in public political consciousness within their communities. The role of the reform press included the articulation of a selfconscious middle class. In contrast and as part of the process, the opponents of reform were stigmatised as a redundant ancien régime caste. An anti-establishment critique became more powerful, largely as a consequence of the protracted nature of the electoral reform crisis in the early 1830s which led to the Great, or, as it became, First Reform Act of 1832. This crisis, at once national and local, high political and electoral, resulted in sustained excitement. The situation was one in which newspapers were obliged to take sides. Thus, Baines used the Leeds Mercury in 1830 to promote Henry Brougham’s successful candidacy for Yorkshire, a key constituency. In 1832, during major riots in the city linked to pressure for parliamentary reform, the windows of the Tory Nottingham Journal were broken. At the same time, a series of unstamped radical papers produced by bold and energetic publishers, such as Richard Carlile, who spent many years in prison, launched sweeping attacks on the establishment and called for action on behalf of the working class.5 These papers attracted subsequent attention, not least from those interested in tracing the development of English radical thought and also committed to a view of press validity and vitality as requiring strident opposition. While instructive, this approach arguably did not devote sufficient attention to the significance of the newspapers that more closely matched the existing political parties, which, combined, maintained their dominance of the ‘public sphere’. However, some of the unstamped pioneered new commercial techniques and styles, and their success (rather than the radical challenge) threatened established newspapers. John Arthur Roebuck, a radical MP and opponent of the Stamp Duties, as well as of the extremism of much of the unstamped press, issued thirty-six unstamped weekly Pamphlets for the People in

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1835–6, in order to encourage popular debate and pressure for change. In 1835, he also brought out The Stamped Press of London and its Morality. The established newspapers put pressure on the government to remove the price advantage enjoyed by the unstamped and this led to a reduction in tax in 1836. This also made the rich man’s paper cheaper. At the same time, the stamped press was divided over politics. Thus, the Morning Chronicle, which had been bought by Whig supporters for £16,500 in 1834 (compared to the £42,000 for which it had been sold by Perry’s executors in 1821), strongly backed the Foreign Secretary, Henry, Viscount Palmerston, in the 1830s, while the Times bitterly criticised him.6 This remained a hostility seen until the Crimean War of 1854–6. In the 1830s, the Times also came to criticise the Whig government over the Poor Law Amendment Act. In 1835, it supported the Tory government of Sir Robert Peel, losing Whig subscribers as a result to the Morning Chronicle which backed the Whigs and attacked Peel. Newspapers, meanwhile, declared their determination to serve all markets, a conventional approach that matched commercial goals. Thus, on 7 January 1854, the first issue of the Staffordshire Sentinel announced that it would: ‘be a paper for all classes – fitted for the politician, the social reformer and the family circle’. There was also the repeated sense of the newspaper as a journal of record, an idea appealed to by the Birmingham Chronicle on 22 January 1823 when explaining the value of a general index for that paper. Such indices had been longstanding and joined newspapers to magazines. Prior to the spread of railways, there was a strong emphasis on the promptness of the news. The Devonshire Chronicle and Exeter News, which appeared every Saturday evening, carried at the start in its issues in 1831 and 1832: ‘This is the only newspaper in the West of England in which the London Gazette, Price of Stocks, and Markets of Friday etc. are printed and published on the following day – Saturday, and circulated throughout all parts of the kingdom on that evening and the following Monday.’ Crime was a major draw in the press as it had been from the second half of the eighteenth century. Accounts of the actions of criminals not only served to excite readers. They also provided warnings that were regarded as value, as when the Taunton Courier of 12 March 1828 warned against swindlers. Interest in a good story helped encourage inserting details of crime. The lives of villains were frequently discussed, often in moralistic and voyeuristic terms. There were regular reports on assizes and executions, each of which provided easy copy for the newspaper. Four-and-a-half columns of the Birmingham Chronicle of 6 November 1823 was devoted to the ‘Gill’s Hill murder’ near distant Elstree on 24 October. In addition, the editorial, which noted that the reporting had driven out reports from abroad, commented on the wealth and respectability of the principal accused, adding a note of drama:

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Another trait in the evidence brings the affair into a resemblance with those banditti establishments, hitherto peculiar to the Continent, and which have been known to us only as the plots of our melo-drames. Incredible as it may appear . . . a fraternity existed for the express purpose of robbery and murder. The following issue (13 November) devoted two entire pages, including four sketches and a map, to the murder, as well as an editorial. The massive attention devoted by the daily and provincial press showed that it was not only the Sunday press that covered crime extensively. Drewry’s Staffordshire Gazette of 2 August 1827 devoted one of its twenty columns to the calendar of prisoners for trial at the Staffordshire summer assizes, and also provided details of a trial at the Oxford assizes, two attempted break-ins, and a London poisoning. The Gloucester Journal of 9 April 1836 noted: ‘our columns are so extensively occupied by assize intelligence that we have been compelled to omit many advertisements and articles of a local nature’. Interest in crime was national as well as local, and encouraged the printing of items from other newspapers. The Taunton Courier of 6 February 1828 carried an account from the Bath Journal under the heading ‘The Murder in Marlborough Buildings, Bath – Confession of the Murderer.’ The Courier, a London daily evening paper, in its issue of 18 September 1832, carried a story headlined ‘Shocking Murder,’ with the Bolton Chronicle as the source. However, on a longstanding pattern, there was an underreporting of parts of the country.7 Crime reports were purchased from courtroom reporters. The latter were freelancers as was the pattern across much of the press. A detailed recent study of the representation of crime in the London press from 1780 to 1830, argues that press accounts proved an important source of public understanding of criminality and the response, a situation that continued that earlier in the eighteenth century.8 Victim reports in the press emphasised the need for strong government action.9 Accident reports were a variant on crime stories. The St James’s Chronicle of 1 April 1845 reported on a serious fire at Doncaster, and the issue of 16 November 1847 on a shipwreck. Rail travel provided new items for disaster reports and this continued to be a longstanding feature in the press. Thus, on 1 January 1901, the Western Times provided an account of a guard being killed during shunting at Tiverton Junction. More commonly, aside from playing a role in transporting London papers to the provinces, railways provided news and contention over transport developments. There was also discussion in the press of appropriate conduct on the new form of transport, notably between men and women, and thus its use in establishing new social conventions. Details for plans for new links provided much copy, for example for the Worcester and Oxford railway in the

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Birmingham Herald of 4 August 1836. Shareholder meetings were discussed, while railway timetables were printed. The general attitude was that of praise for new links tempered by criticism of schemes deemed inappropriate. The Staffordshire Advertiser of 14 October 1848 reported the opening of the Crewe branch of the North Staffordshire Railway: ‘which will give the district an outlet to Liverpool, Chester and Holyhead as well as for the present to Manchester and the north’. Boosterism was a longstanding feature of the press, one seen earlier with turnpikes and canals, and one that continues to be a feature. More generally, a sense of new opportunities was insistent. Many items relating to improvements were clearly inserted as advertisements, but, over some issues, the opinions of the printers were clear, while, in others, their willingness to insert particular items suggest their interest in propounding specific views. Nevertheless, the active involvement of the provincial press in local disputes came more from printing, often for money, submitted material, than from comments by the publisher. National economic news was speeded up in the age of the railway and telegraph. The advertisements for the Daily News in January 1847 included: ‘An evening edition under the title of the Express is published every day at four o’clock, containing full reports of the markets of the day.’ In a longstanding practice, the tone of the press was lightened by the frequent publication of jokes, humorous stories, verses and epigrams. Variety was a key theme and a means to make newspapers more interesting to a range of readers. In 1832–45, Charles Knight produced the Penny Magazine, a weekly that was the first lavishly illustrated publication to be offered to the working class. He adapted the printing machinery to produce more illustrations. At any rate, there was a significant growth in the market. The total sale of stamped papers in million copies rose from fourteen (1780) and thirty-one (1835), to eighty-five (1851), a rate of rise far greater than that of the population. This helped fund investment, notably, in the 1810s and 1820s, a significant expansion of the regular reporting staffs. That relationship between rising sales and investment was scarcely new and was to be seen repeatedly in the coming decades. Excluding Ireland, the population of Britain grew rapidly in the early nineteenth century, rising from 10.5 million in 1801 to 16.3 in 1831 and 20.8 in 1851. Moreover, there was a rising literacy level that in part reflected an increased desire on the part of the working class for literacy. The market for printed material therefore was steadily increasing. However, per capita readership of newspapers did not rise significantly until from the later 1830s and the proportion of literates purchasing newspapers was relatively low. The Western Times by the 1840s had a circulation of about 3,000, which was a low figure for newspapers that circulated widely in the South-West.

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The social location of the newspaper-reading public was restricted not only by the specific ‘taxes on knowledge’, and the consequent cost of papers, but also by the general social context. In this, both illiteracy and poverty were important, but, within these parameters, there was much reader choice. Aside from competition between newspapers, the press as a whole was challenged by almanacs and chapbooks. Moreover, the development of an extensive readership for the sensational, represented by stories in the Sunday press, provided a strong indication of what the press as a whole had lacked or, rather, been short of. The press as a whole can be an imprecise concept, but it was one employed at the time. The newspapers reflected most clearly the views and interests of the middling orders. Paternalism grounded in moral behaviour and religious attitudes, rather than economic dominance, was the justification of the social policy required for the well-ordered society that was presented by the press as a necessary moral goal, just as their presence in coffee-houses and other meeting places was part of the furniture of this sphere. Christian welfare, not egalitarianism, was the goal. Far from fostering feelings of regional identity, the provincial press helped to create a national awareness of public politics, so that issues resonated through the political community, with newspapers presenting themselves as taking part in national education, including in politics, as when the Exeter Weekly Times of 8 November 1828 discussed the Gunpowder Plot. Equally, newspaper commentary, even agitation, suggests as much a sense of desperate prodding of apathetic opinion and hostile interests as it does any control of priorities for debate and action by a broad, united and mobilised middle class. There were attempts to make news accessible, as in the Devonshire Chronicle and Exeter News on 2 December 1832 in which electioneering in Honiton was compared to fox hunting. The number of provincial papers rose, from over 100 in 1808, to 150 by 1830, and over 230 by 1851. Obtained despite the increased provincial circulation of London papers, this growth enhanced the possibilities for profit and increasing social mobility offered by newspaper ownership. The expansion was due both to the increase in the number of towns with papers and to more towns having more than one. The Windsor and Eton Express was launched in 1812. In Devon, continuous newspaper production began in Plymouth in 1808, followed, in 1824, by the first newspaper in north Devon, the first in Torquay (1839), Tavistock (1847), Teignmouth (1847), Dawlish (1850), and Sidmouth (1850). This process helped develop the growing centrality of print to local consciousness, as well as encouraging emulation. Some printers continued to use the spare capacity in their business in order to probe the opportunities offered by launching a newspaper. So also elsewhere, both in rural areas and in major centres. Thus, from 1824 to 1828, and from 1832 continually, Hereford had more than one newspaper, while the number of Liverpool papers rose markedly between 1812 and the late 1820s.

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Reflecting a rise in the prominence of editors, original editorial commentary became more common. Many newspapers ceased to be, as many originally had been, a means to use spare printing capacity and to probe market opportunities, and became, instead, more central to the activities of the concerns producing them. By mid-century, the proprietors and editors of the leading provincial papers were members of more influential and socially more prominent circles than had been the case a century earlier, and notably so in major towns as opposed to rural areas. Prior to the abolition of the ‘taxes on knowledge’ in 1853–61, there were major cuts, with the halving of the Advertisement Duty (1833) and the Paper Duties (1836) and the reduction of the Stamp Duty from 4d to 1d (1836). These were measures passed by reforming Whig ministries who explicitly accompanied reform with the thwarting of radical demands including the complete abolition of newspaper duties. Cutting the duties, ironically, hit at the radical press because it lessened the value of being unstamped. There were also firmer penalties for avoiding Stamp Duty as well as regulations for registration and securities payments by newspapers, for example indemnification against charges for blasphemy and libel. In the 1836 House of Lords’ debate on the Newspaper Stamps Bill, the Prime Minister, William, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, declared that the reduction of duty, from 3d to 1d, was designed not only to encourage knowledge but also to undermine the unstamped press. The postal benefits available by paying the stamp encouraged more newspapers to pay the duty. Between 1836 and 1853, there were no further cuts in duty. The taxable yield of the duties remained a factor. Moreover, the association of activists for repeal with the radical Chartist movement did not encourage a favourable response. The Tory ministry of Robert Peel (1841–6) was not temperamentally inclined to support a press free of taxation. In turn, although pressed by the Association for the Promotion of the Repeal of the Taxes on Knowledge founded by Richard Cobden and other radicals in 1849, the Whig ministry of Lord John Russell (1846–52) lacked a working majority for repeal and, anyway, was concerned about the challenge from Chartism. Moreover, most newspapers did not press hard for reform. The Chartists, indeed, had a series of newspapers, about ten by 1839, most prominently the Northern Star or Leeds General Advertiser. Launched in 1837, it had weekly sales of over 10,000 by the close of its first year. Denouncing Stamp Duty, the paper helped increase Chartist cohesion while also disseminating its message. The paper survived the imprisonment in 1840 for seditious libels of Feargus O’Connor, its editor.10 Its advertising revenue was limited, but it had a remarkable national presence, encouraged reader input, and carried on some of the commercial and populist success of the unstamped newspapers in its sports and crime coverage. The latter was

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used to show that money and property in itself did not produce good citizenship.11 It was the Whig–Peelite coalition ministry of George, 4th Earl of Aberdeen (1852–5), himself a friend of John Delane, the editor of the Times, that resumed the pace of reform, ending taxation on advertisements in 1853. The weakness of Chartism after its failure in 1848 made reform and a press free from taxation appear less threatening. The unpopularity of the decision by the Stamp Office to prosecute the Potterie Free Press, an unstamped penny weekly which Collet Dobson Collet had deliberately founded in 1853 as a challenge to the regulatory regime, was followed by an inconclusive court action. This encouraged pressure for a change in the system. The repeal of the Advertisement Duties in 1853 was carried by a House of Commons’ majority of thirty-one. Benjamin Disraeli for the opposition supported the measure, but William Gladstone, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with his strong concern about government finances, initially opposed it. These duties very much affected the profitability of most newspapers, not least as they encouraged the focus of advertising on the larger-circulation titles. It was argued that abolition would lead to an expansion of the press that would produce more revenue. A prominent debate over the freedom of the press was part of the equation. In 1852, the Times criticised Louis Napoleon who had seized power in France in a coup, only for the government in Parliament to urge restraint. The Times, in response, produced leaders on 6 and 7 February 1852 that were powerful blasts for the freedom of the press. Moreover, these leaders strongly distinguished the position of the press from that of government. That on 6 February 1852 included the statement: The first duty of the press is to obtain the earliest and most correct intelligence of the events of the time, and instantly, by disclosing them, to make them the common property of the nation. The press lives by disclosure . . . for ever appealing to the enlightened force of public opinion – anticipating, if possible, the march of events – standing upon the breach between the present and the future. Alongside pressure from the newspapers, there were also other special interest groups, notably those on behalf of printers, paper makers and publishers. They focused on the commercial aspects of the legislation, at once restrictive and a blow to profitability, rather than on more general issues of freedom. At the same time, the latter had political traction. The marked expansion of war reporting in the Crimean War (1854–6), notably that of William Howard Russell in the Times, encouraged a public interest in the press that made continued restrictions appear undesirable.

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Illegal, unstamped ‘war sheets’ were an issue. Politicians, moreover, were more willing to seek press popularity. Many newspapers called for a change in government during the war, the Times notably thundering its denunciations as on 11 November 1854, and a return for this help appeared necessary. The press could claim to have played a major role in the fall of the Aberdeen ministry in January 1855, and the Palmerston one which followed passed the Newspaper Stamp Bill. However, the second division was 215 to 161, only a modest majority for repeal. Support was not overwhelming, because there was concern, on the part of opponents, about the radical religious and political views of supporters of reform, as well as that competition for cheapness would lower the general character of the press, with newspapers ministering to the passions of the lower orders. Palmerston, in response, declared his confidence in the people. He was a past-master in obtaining press support, notably by wooing editors, especially of the Times. Political manoeuvring played a key role in the repeal legislation. In contrast, Edward, 14th Earl of Derby, MP from 1822 to 1844, Conservative Prime Minister in 1852, 1858–9 and 1866–8, and leader of the opposition in between, had scant regard for the press, adopting a position of aristocratic aloofness when the issue arose. Just before his death in 1869, he remarked: ‘I cannot conceal from you that, in my opinion, even in a political sense, there is no more unsatisfactory mode of spending money than the purchase of a second-class newspaper.’12 His friend and confidant James, 3rd Earl of Malmesbury, Foreign Secretary in 1852 and 1859, commented that Derby was never able to appreciate the growth and power of the political press. Derby’s indifference was reciprocated by the hostility of journalists. The final repeal – that of the Paper Duties in 1861 – only passed with considerable difficulty, not least with opposition by Robert, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, a future Conservative Prime Minister. The House of Lords rejected repeal in 1860. The Paper Duties were seen both as a welcome restraint on the press and as a source of government revenues that helped prevent a need for higher income tax. Fiscal policy was a key context, and at a time of marked uncertainty about the latter. In 1861, Gladstone got the measure through by including the proposal in the budget, a ploy that made voting it down as a separate measure impossible, and as part of a compromise that included reducing his proposals for income tax rates.13 In 1869, legislation removed the registration and securities requirements on newspapers. At the same time, there was a broader pressure in favour of repeal, that from middleclass radicals who sought to make markets and government more rational, and thus stable, and to apply economic law to policy.14 Evidence of a new consciousness of the press was provided by the publication of directories to the press as well as scholarly histories of it, such

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as Frederick Knight Hunt’s study that very much linked the press to its general political value: The Fourth Estate: Contributions Towards a History of Newspapers and of the Liberty of the Press (1850). The notion of the press as a Fourth Estate focused its supposed significance. Samuel Johnson’s 1758 piece ‘Of the Duty of a Journalist,’ while interesting, offered nothing to match the simple weight of material on the subject published in the late nineteenth century.15 The wider positioning of the press in this period is a matter for discussion. There is an established critique from a modern political position: Radical analyses of press history which focus on early to mid nineteenthcentury Britain provide useful insight into the ways in which the middleclass press sought to socialise the working classes into a passive acceptance of laissez-faire economic principles and thus undermine any revolutionary or truly democratic aspirations they had.16 However interesting, such analyses are frequently challenged by a difficulty in linking them to a pattern of press content. What is more immediately striking is the process of democratisation offered by newspaper notices of meetings. Thus, newspapers regularly carried notices of meetings against slavery. On 3 September 1853, Bell’s Weekly Messenger announced, ‘On Monday Mr W. Brown delivered a lecture on American slavery before a large and respectable audience at the Lecture Hall.’ This was very much the press as trumpeter for, and beneficiary of, the world of public politics.

Notes 1 I. Haywood, The Revolution in Popular Literature: Print, Politics and the People, 1790–1860 (Cambridge, 2004). 2 T. Richards, The Commodity Culture of Victorian England: Advertising and Spectacle, 1851–1914 (Stanford, CA, 1990). 3 W. St. Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge, 2004). 4 H. Lewis, History of the Bristol Mercury, 1716–1886 (Bristol, 1887); P. Brett, ‘Early Nineteenth-Century Reform Newspapers in the Provinces: the Newcastle Chronicle and the Bristol Mercury’, in M. Harris and T. O’Malley (eds), Studies in Newspaper and Periodical History, 1995 Annual (Westport, CT, 1997). 5 J. Weiner, Radicalism and Freethought in Nineteenth Century Britain (London, 1983) and The War of the Unstamped: The Movement to Repeal the British Newspaper Tax, 1830–1836 (London, 1969). 6 L. Fenton, ‘Origins of Animosity. Lord Palmerston and The Times, 1830–41’, Media History, 16 (2010), pp. 365–78.

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7 C.J. Griffin, ‘Knowable Geographies? The Reporting of Incendiarism in the Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century English Provincial Press’, Journal of Historical Geography, 32 (2006), pp. 38–56 and ‘ “Cut Down by Some Cowardly Miscreants”: Plant Maiming, or the Malicious Cutting of Flora, as an Act of Protest in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Rural England’, Rural History, 19 (2008), p. 47. 8 D. Lemmings, ‘Negotiating Justice in the New Public Sphere: Crime, the Courts and the Press in Early Eighteenth-Century Britain,’ in Lemmings (ed.), Crime, Courtrooms and the Public Sphere in Britain, 1700–1850 (Farnham, 2012), pp. 119–45; and ‘Henry Fielding and English Crime and Justice Reportage, 1748–52: Narratives of Panic, Authority, and Emotion,’ Huntington Library Quarterly, 80 (2017), pp. 71–97. 9 R. Hopps, ‘Narratives of Crime and Disorder: Representations of Robbery and Burglary in the London Press, 1780–1830’ (PhD, Open University, 2017), p. 209. 10 J. Allen and O.R. Ashton (eds), Papers for the People: A Study of the Chartist Press (London, 2005); Ashton, W.E. Adams: Chartist, Radical and Journalist, 1832–1906 (Whitley Bay, 1991); J. Hugman, ‘ “A Small Drop of Ink”: Tyneside Chartism and the Northern Liberator’, in O.R. Ashton, R. Fyson and S. Roberts (eds), The Chartist Legacy (London, 1999), pp. 24ff.; J. Allen, ‘George Julian Harney and the Democratic Review, 1849–1850,’ Labour History Review, 78 (2013). 11 R. Breton, ‘Crime Reporting in Chartist Newspapers,’ Media History, 19 (2013), pp. 244–56. 12 A. Hawkins, The Forgotten Prime Minister: The 14th Earl of Derby (2 vols, Oxford, 2009), II, 419. 13 M. Hewitt, The Dawn of the Cheap Press in Victorian Britain. The Campaigns against the Taxes on Knowledge, 1849–1869 (London, 2013). Corrects the emphasis on the quest for freedom in Collet Dobson Collet, History of the Taxes on Knowledge: Their Origin and Repeal, introduced by G.J. Holyoake (London, 1933). 14 G.R. Searle, Entrepreneurial Politics in Mid-Victorian Britain (Oxford, 1993). 15 J. Shattock (ed.), Journalism and the Periodical Press in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge, 2017). 16 J. Steel, ‘The “Radical” Narrative, Political Thought and Praxis’, Media History, 15 (2009), p. 232.

5 Heyday, 1861–1922 . . . the papers were full of the disappearance of Mingey’s daughter. Disappearances, apparently, were the order of the day; tunnel murders were no longer in fashion . . . there were leaders on the subject . . . It appeared that no one was safe. . . . The Morning Star maintained that Parliament ought to interfere. The Morning Star always believed in the omnipotence of Parliament, mainly because it was against the Government . . . One enterprising journal offered a prize of a life’s subscription . . . for the most probable solution sent in by one of its readers on a detachable coupon.1

A

s part of a more general process of global development, the English press benefited greatly in the late nineteenth century from a new regulatory system, from technological changes, and from a marked rise in consumption. These changes were interrelated and any prioritisation is subject to discussion. The abolition of the ‘taxes on knowledge’ – the Advertisement Duties in 1853, the Newspaper Stamp Duty in 1855, and the Paper Duties in 1861 – opened up the possibility not only of greater scale and profits for the existing press, but also of change in the sector as a whole. In particular, the prospect for a cheap press seemed clear, and, indeed, helped change debate over the likely impact of the press, prefiguring more recent discussion about tabloidisation, and in the context of a moral panic also familiar from recent years. The opportunity for a far larger press world was exploited by means of a technology centred on new printing presses and the continuous rolls or ‘webs’ of paper that fed them. Web rotary presses, which were able to print directly onto continuous rolls, were introduced from the late 1860s. The Walter press was first used by the Times in 1869 and by the Daily News in 1873; while the Daily Telegraph purchased the American Bullock press in 1870.2 New technology combined with a greater scale of activity, led to new premises, for 91

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example for the Daily Telegraph in Fleet Street in 1882. That street became synonymous with the national press. Capital played a key role in these changes. New technology was expensive, and required a considerable capital outlay, maintenance and large premises. However, the mass readership opened up by the lower prices that could be charged after the repeal of the newspaper taxes justified the cost. This was much more the case than with the introduction of steam-powered printing in 1814. New technology was not separate from politics. Indeed, due to the importance of the telegraph for the rapid transmission of news, the monopoly that the Electric Telegraph Company possessed was seen by newspapers as a threat to their finances, and they encouraged its nationalisation in 1868–70. More generally, and again as currently, the press played a key role in debating the political economy within which they operated.3 The consequences of new technology were more newspaper titles and lower prices, as well as a range of serial publications, including inexpensive, mass-produced weekly magazines and monthly serials that concentrated on fiction.4 London was the centre of change. The number of daily morning papers published in London rose from eight in 1856 to twenty-one in 1900, and of evenings from seven to eleven. There was also a tremendous expansion in the suburban and provincial press, an expansion that created a sense of scale and expansion; a sense that was fully merited. For example, the first dailies appeared in Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield in 1855, in Newcastle in 1857, in Bristol in 1858, in Plymouth in 1860, in Nottingham in 1861, in North Shields in 1864, and in Bradford in 1868. Whereas, in 1868, fourteen of the largest English provincial towns had daily newspapers; by 1885, forty-seven English towns had daily papers. May’s British and Irish Press Guide of 1879 noted 1,015 newspapers in print in England, and twenty-four towns having four newspapers. Moreover, the price of newspapers fell. Appearing six days a week, however, put pressure on the flow of content, editorial management, production schedules, and finances. Provincial papers continued to draw some of their items from London publications, as well as to comment on the latter. Thus, the Western Times of 1 January 1901 both cited the Daily News in its account of Sir Robert Ball’s Christmas lecture on the Sun and provided a summary of magazines. Three days later, it referred to the (London) Times on the political situation in Cape Colony. The Western Times also followed the Daily Express, citing it on 29 January 1901 over a report that large gold, silver and copper deposits had been found on the eastern slopes of the Andes and, on 30 August that year, on a moral panic: ‘There is no holding back with the London Express, and its efforts to save innocent girls from the vile clutches of a few dramatic and music-hall agents and managers.’

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In contrast, many of those newspapers that did not become dailies, instead, eventually became more truly local newspapers, carrying essentially local advertisements. Thus, there was a process of differentiation in the press. This was a frequent aspect of its history, one that was a product of the constant strain of profitability and the high-octane character of the matching entrepreneurship that was necessary. At the same time, alongside differentiation, the overlap could be considerable. The Western Times, in its issue on 5 November 1901, covered the government mishandling of the Boer War, but also the outbreak of anthrax on a farm near Okehampton. This was very much news as public information, as well as a clarification of rumour. The paper also extensively advertised, as in its issue of 15 January 1901, its general printing business. Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post could press for more warships (27 July, 7 December 1912) while also publishing pieces on a horse bolting at Uffculme, a train, as a result, delayed there, and on ‘how to know a good potato’ (9 November 1912). As the Tavistock Gazette, founded in 1867, indicates, local papers could be highly profitable, not least due to advertising revenue. This revenue and rising circulation were two aspects of the same process.5 Newspaper advertising also drew on political developments, as with that for an Exeter hatter in Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post on 20 March 1867. Headlined ‘Great Reform Demonstration’, the advertisement emphasised that ‘Reform in Hats is needed first of all’. Newspapers puffed themselves, as was only to be expected. This process, indeed, encouraged newspaper history, such as Robert Davies’ A Memoir of the York Press (1868), the anonymous History of the ‘Ipswich Journal’ (1875), and J. D. Leader’s Seventy-Three Years of Progress: A History of the ‘Sheffield Independent’ (1892). At the same time, the extent and type of claims were instructive. The 1886 report of the directors of the Devon and Exeter Constitutional Newspaper Company, a group of nine that included two MPs and one general, claimed: The circulation has been increased to an extent largely in excess of anything anticipated at the outset. Besides reducing the price of Friday’s paper, from 2d to 1d, and this without lessening its size, the Directors have permanently enlarged the ‘Gazette’ on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays to 24 columns, and Saturday’s issue has been made of the same size as that of Tuesday, vis, 28 columns. Arrangements have been made for obtaining an extended service of news by telegraphic agency, distinct reporters, and correspondents, and steps have also been taken to further increase the circulation of the paper. The Directors have the satisfaction of reporting that as a result the sale of Friday’s paper has been increased by 150 per cent, and during the past year, the total circulation of the Gazette was 600,000 in excess of the

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average of the last five years in which the paper was in the hands of the former proprietors. The increased size of the Devon and Exeter Daily Gazette has necessitated the employment of a larger staff than formerly, and this and the greater supply of better class news has entailed considerable additional expenditure . . . the great increase in the circulation has been the means of obtaining additional advertising business . . . In accordance with the views of the promoters of the company, an evening edition was issued on each Saturday until . . . its continuation was rendered unnecessary by the publication in Exeter of a daily conservative evening paper. In 1888, the report noted the impact of competition: ‘revised train arrangements brought other competitors into the field at a much earlier hour than formerly, and as these competitors were papers of eight pages . . . the Gazette’ also became an eight-page daily. This led to higher costs, but also, as the 1889 report commented, greater advertising revenue.6 The repeal of Stamp Duty permitted the appearance of ‘penny dailies’. Relaunched in 1855 as a penny paper after a brief start for 2d, the Daily Telegraph led the way, providing a successful daily rival to the Times, and fighting off the challenge from the more radical Morning Star, a London daily priced at a penny and launched in 1856. By 1888, the Daily Telegraph had a circulation of 300,000. Moreover, evening papers became more prominent, with clerks having time to read them on their lengthy commutes home, while the papers gave them something to do. These papers were also bought for their racing news, which was regarded as important to their working-class readership. The penny press was in turn squeezed by the ‘halfpenny press’. The Echo, the first halfpenny evening paper, appeared in 1868. It peaked at a circulation of 200,000 in 1870. The scale of the press encouraged a perception of it as a universal phenomenon that reached all, and this underlined assertions of the significance of newspapers. Moreover, the press made apparent and accessible the developing information flows that stemmed from new technology, notably in the form of the telegraph. In turn, information was shaped in accordance with the longstanding, recurrent form of the newspaper, especially its periodicity, its highly miscellaneous character, and its size.7 Newspapers were seen as an aspect of modernity and also as its bearer; in each function matching the train and the telegraph, both of which were crucial to their new marketability and role. Indeed, the news was treated as validated by the telegraph. The papers that best served popular tastes were the Sunday papers: Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper (1842), the News of the World (1843), and Reynolds’s Weekly Newspaper, the last founded in 1850 by an active Chartist

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as a Sunday for the working man. Lloyd’s, the first English paper with a circulation of over 100,000, was selling over 600,000 copies by 1879, over 750,000 by 1893, and, in 1896, rose to over a million. Founded by Edward Lloyd, the paper cost two pence, the price being raised to threepence in 1843. In 1856, Lloyd was the first in England to introduce the Hoe press, the first true rotary newspaper printing press. Patented in 1845, it could produce 12,000 to 14,000 copies an hour. In comparison, an eighteenth-century London newspaper was considered a great success if it sold 10,000 copies a week (most influential papers then were weeklies), and 2,000 weekly was a reasonable sale. Building on the model of the popular unstamped press of the 1830s, the Sunday papers relied on shock and titillation, drawing extensively on police court reporting. However, they also had political leanings, with Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper radical and the People (launched in 1881) Conservative. Launched in 1843 by John Browne Bell, the News of the World rapidly did well, but, after the death of Bell in 1855, its sales were poor until the 1890s. The Sundays dropped their prices to a penny after the removal of Stamp Duty, creating a cheap press that was sold direct to individual purchasers, rather than being read by larger numbers in communal contexts, such as beer shops, a process that had led to a lower aggregate circulation. This change increased the disposability of newspapers, and thus of news. The accessibility and character of the Sundays helped make the style and type of news offered by the Sundays seem unrespectable, or, at least, to some commentators. To be labelled as cheap and populist, or as it would later be termed ‘downmarket’, was to be commodified for a particular part of the newspaper market. This relationship was one that was to be seen more generally. The ‘news’, in its content and tone, was in part received in terms of an understanding of the market. Whereas the unstamped papers of the 1830s and the Chartist papers failed to develop a powerful radical press, on the other hand Sundays and the dailies of the late 1850s could be more readily assimilated by mid-Victorian society and its political system; although this was not a process free from tension. For example, accounts of crime served not only to provide interesting stories, but also to convey wider responses including the need for reforms. Change extended to the vocabulary that could be used. In 1884, the word tabloid, a contraction of tablet and alkaloid, was copyrighted. Halfpenny morning papers became important in the 1890s, with the Morning Leader (1892) and the Daily Mail (1896). The Daily Mail was to become extremely successful, with its bold and simple style and the entrepreneurial drive and skill of its owner, Alfred Harmsworth. The Daily Mail testified to the dynamic combination of entrepreneurial capitalism and the market created by the expanding urban working class. This process helped increase the

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confidence of the press in its role, even if it also sowed disquiet among many politicians and other commentators. As a parallel, although not one seen as politically central, there was also the rapid development of cinema. An enormous expansion had taken place, one that matched the vitality of an imperial capital, swollen by immigration and increasingly influential as an opinion-setter within the country. This was not least because of the communications revolution produced by the railway and better roads. The railway also affected the worlds of work and leisure. Suburbs and commuting created demands and opportunities for the press. In 1848, the first of what was to be the network of W.H. Smith railway bookstalls was opened at Euston Station. By the time William Henry Smith died in 1891, he had opened 150 station shops. The development of the railway allowed London newspapers to increase their dominance of the national newspaper scene. This was an aspect of the broad range of technologies and practices involved in the industry. In the case of distribution by rail, the rapid development of methods and cost structures encouraged large-scale circulation by the new technology. One of the many ways in which Victorian London was at the centre of political life was that of the provision of the news. Thanks to the railway, these papers could arrive on provincial doorsteps within hours of publication. Through its press, which lay claim to the title of the ‘fourth estate’ of the realm, London created the image and idiom of nation and empire and shaped opinions. London was also the centre of a developing imperial and international press system, a process, aided by a global cable network and represented by Reuters which, launched in 1851, sold foreign news to newspapers.8 Newspapers could make reference to foreign news when considering events in Britain, the Daily Telegraph of 2 October 1888 referring to recent French murders when responding to the Jack the Ripper murders. There were also parallels, even close links, with the United States with the interview coming from America and Harmsworth being influenced by Pulitzer’s New York World.9 Ireland was a key subject for discussion, one that very much overlapped with the British situation, both because of Irish representation in the Westminster Parliament and due to large-scale migration. Much of the treatment of Ireland and the Irish from mid-century was critical and pejorative.10 Aside from its political functions, or at least aspects, the press also played a central economic, social and cultural role, setting and spreading fashions, whether of company statements or through theatrical criticism. In what was increasingly a commercial society, the press played a pivotal role, inspiring emulation, setting the tone, and fulfilling crucial needs for an anonymous mass readership. That sounds benign, but it is necessary to note that while offering economic and financial information, newspapers, in a process seen

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throughout their history, could be overly close to company promoters. The emphasis was on mutual benefit and not investigative reporting.11 The press was particularly important in constructing a new political culture. The attempt to woo an electorate that expanded greatly, as a result of the Reform Acts of 1832, 1867, 1884, 1918 and 1928, required a newly expanded infrastructure of politics capable of creating links between élite and electorate. Deference and traditional political alignments still played a role, but there was adaptation in pursuit of an informed civil society. The first issue of the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, a new daily published in Leeds from 2 July 1866, declared: The political principles of this journal are Conservative: while supporting every practical improvement, it will resist organic changes. That opinions exist in this country at the present day subversive of that political and social system which distinguishes England from all other nations in the world, no candid observer can deny. That defects still exist in our institutions, which may be amended with benefit to the public, is a truth equally indisputable. By these two guiding facts the political conduct of the Yorkshire Post will be regulated. It will be at once conservative and progressive – a foe to democracy and revolution, but the firm friend of all constitutional reform. Imperial enthusiasm was a frequent theme in the press. The Western Times, in its issue of 25 February 1879, reported on the departure from Dartmouth of the 3rd battalion of the 60th Rifles on the steamer Dublin Castle to reinforce British forces struggling against the Zulus in southern Africa. The patriotic spirit of the inhabitants, already kindled by the fact that they were to bid farewell to the first reinforcements for the Cape [Cape Town] was thoroughly aroused by an address issued by the Mayor calling upon them to assemble at noon on the Castle to give the departing soldiers a hearty Devonshire cheer . . . When at length the steamer passed she was greeted with hearty and continued cheers from the crowded shore . . . The band on shore played ‘The British Grenadier’, ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and ‘God Save the Queen.’ Newspapers tended to assume that imperial expansion was not as good in itself and there was support, for example, for expansion into what is now Zimbabwe, a policy advocated by Cecil Rhodes. Yet, criticism of the government’s forward-policy in Afghanistan at the time of the Second AngloAfghan War was bluntly expressed in the press. The Times of 25 September 1878 commented:

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We have entered with more or less of disguise upon a policy of aggression, undefined in its aim, and certain to bring trouble with it whatever way it may end. We are now only at the commencement of the difficulties we have brought upon ourselves. Imperialist themes continued into the twentieth century, albeit with significant changes, notably as the source of apparent threat altered. In the First World War, the concern about Persia (Iran) focused on Turkey and its ally Germany and not, as earlier, on Russia. Thus, on 21 March 1918, the Times pressed for British preparations against a ‘fresh invasion of Persia . . . They may move down the Turco-Persian frontier and endeavour to strike at the valuable oilfields of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. They are quite likely to reach the frontiers of Afghanistan and try to raise the Afghans against us,’ which would be a threat to British India, as readers, carrying the mental geography of imperialism, would be expected to know. It was often said by contemporaries that metropolitan opinion was rather different from its provincial counterpart, not least because most cities and major towns had their own influential local papers. Certainly, opinion was divided by party, particularly once the consensus period, associated with Palmerston and Derby, was replaced by the more divisive politics of Gladstone, Disraeli, Chamberlain and Salisbury. The press continued its practice of reporting on political meetings. Thus, the Manchester City News of 23 January 1864 reported on a pro-Emancipation meeting at Chorlton Temperance Hall in Manchester that traced the Civil War to that between those who landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620 and those who landed at Jamestown in 1607. For London, the Times was the most influential newspaper, and it had a strong following in the City. For the West End, the Times was challenged by the Morning Post. Both suffered from the rise of overtly party political papers like the Standard (Conservative and much cultivated by the party leadership) and the Daily Telegraph. There was also a rather marginal radical press, largely republican in tone. The Socialist press emerged in the 1880s. Justice, a weekly newspaper, was published by the Social Democratic Federation from 1884, becoming a monthly, Social Democrat, in 1925. Commonweal was founded by the Socialist League in 1885, with William Morris its principal writer until 1890. Morris later published the Hammersmith Socialist Record. His replacement in 1890, was David Nicholl, an anarchist who, unlike Morris, favoured violence. Nicholl was imprisoned in 1892 for his support of the Walsall anarchists. Once he was released, Commonweal was closed and replaced by the Anarchist. More successfully, Robert Blatchford, who had become a Socialist while working as a journalist for the Sunday Chronicle in Manchester and writing about the city’s slums, launched the Clarion, a Socialist

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weekly. His early articles, republished as Merrie England (1893), sold over a million copies in the 1890s. The Clarion remained successful until the mid1910s and lasted until 1935. It was a truism that the London press was, by the 1870s, more Conservative than the provincial press which was predominantly Liberal. At the same time, the latter could be very divided, as in Bradford where it was split between the Conservatives (Bradford Argus), the traditional Liberals (Bradford Telegraph), more progressive Liberals (the Bradford Observer), and a Socialist press that emerged from the late 1880s with Demos followed by the ILP News, the Bradford Labour Echo and the Bradford Pioneer.12 C.P. (Charles Prestwich) Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian from 1872 until 1929, took the paper to the left when the Liberals split in 1886. He also became a Liberal MP in 1895, having failed in three earlier elections, and held his seat until 1906. There were also important Conservative newspapers in other cities, such as Leeds, where, thanks to a focus on sport and other leisure items there was success in creating a cross-class Conservative coalition, one, moreover, that bridged the slums and the suburbs.13 The influence of the London press was also a matter of new organisation and culture. Provincial dailies that were successful enough to invest in new printing technology and in a staff of reporters mirrored the internal organisation and developments of the London daily press. This replication facilitated the movement of individuals between the two, and also helped secure the position of the London press as the model to the remainder of the newspaper world. In addition, reporters developed their own specialisations, principally City, foreign and parliamentary news, but also including much else. As a parallel move, there was a process of increasing specificity in the production organisation, with sub-editors developing particular skills and tasks. Moreover, advertising, news and comment were more clearly distinguished than in the past. Layout was clearer and more predictable, with more effective and consistent grouping of material. At the same time, it is important to remember that the press was also the register, and to a degree organiser, of the local world. Writing in Kingston’s local paper on 3 July 1880, ‘Paddler’ complained that he sought ‘relief from the noise and turmoil of the City in the enjoyment of a leisurely paddle on the river in these long twilight evenings’, only to face ‘the nosy and immodest proceedings of the evening bathers’ and their ‘foul and disgusting language which assaults one’s ears and serves to call attention to the immodesty which might otherwise pass unnoticed’.14 Similar comments can be found in other papers across the country, notably as correspondents called for moral improvement, but, more generally, as they engaged with local issues, or, looked at differently, created them. These issues were pushed to greater public attention as new county councils and other bodies gained roles and

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defined policies. Moreover, there were possibilities for public accountability via the press. The press had become the prime source, outside the family, of ideas, and comparisons through which people could understand and structure their experience. This process was accentuated by the tremendous mobility of midVictorian society as massive urbanisation drew on extensive migration within the country. This challenged, indeed frequently broke down, earlier patterns of communal control or at least influence, not that these had been indefinite and without strain. The normative quality of print was enhanced both by the development of other aspects of print culture and by the expansion of public education, notably by the 1870, 1876, 1880, 1891, 1893, 1897, 1899 and 1902 Education Acts. Indeed, this expansion might be linked to declining élite confidence in the educational value of the press, a confidence shown by many commentators as the end of the ‘taxes on knowledge’ were debated and celebrated, and in parallel with free trade ideology, but decreasingly in evidence from the 1880s and 1890s. Indeed, the latter was to be associated in particular with twentieth-century criticism of the tabloids. The debate related not simply to the press but to the nature of both democracy and democratisation. Newspapers could be seen as subject to the latter, as expressions of them, or as independent.15 A newly expanded urban world that owed little to traditional social disciplines and that was able to read widely, providing indeed a mass reading public,16 searched for new ways to communicate. The press provided the news, comment and advertising material that was required. The fast tempo of the daily press, with the resulting rapid changeability of news, matched a swiftly altering society. At the same time, there was the sheer interest of the news and politics, both domestic and international. This appeal was referred to in Wilkie Collins’s novel The Moonstone (1868): The guests present being all English, it is needless to say that, as soon as the wholesome check exercised by the presence of the ladies was removed, the conversation turned on politics as a necessary result. In respect to this all-absorbing national topic, I happen to be one of the most un-English Englishmen living. Newspapers were made readily accessible in public libraries, which were a way in which working people could read them. The scale of demand for the press offered a prospect of profitability that encouraged investment. As equipment and staffing costs rose, increased capitalisation was in part driven by the needs of the industry, but the opportunities for profit were also important, and this attracted share capital.

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For investment purposes, it was best to avoid radical political views, not least because they might inhibit advertisers. Nevertheless, much of the working class, like much of the rest of the newspaper-reading public, apparently sought the entertainment and human interest that was offered them, rather than campaigning commitment. The resulting situation was criticised by Matthew Arnold, a prominent literary figure, in May 1887 in the magazine Nineteenth Century, for its focus on sensation and its lack of accuracy, themes made for as long as there have been newspapers. Indeed, in 1868, Anthony Trollope attacked the fictional Quintus Slide, the editor of The People’s Banner. This criticism, and Arnold’s phrase the ‘New Journalism’, reflected an unease with some of the leading press figures of the age such as W. (William) T. Stead who ran the Pall Mall Gazette from 1883 to 1889, a prominent press campaigner, notably against the prostitution of minors. Stead was a muckraker with confidence in his own rectitude and the consequent justification for twisting facts. He was also highly talented and understandably frustrated by the condescension that he experienced, often on social grounds.17 He was also an example of the press as moraliser that was an aspect of the changing society. An aspect of this was that of periodic moral panics, many provided by or linked to crimes. Thus, in 1895, when 14-year-old Robert Coombes was convicted of the murder of his mother in London, the murder was blamed by part of the press on his reading of ‘penny dreadfuls’, ‘cut-throat newspapers’ and thus on compulsory elementary education.18 Whether or not linked to campaigning, there was a marked engagement with a committed style, often sensationalist. Indeed, popular newspaper writers employed novelistic features.19 The congruence of fiction and fact, or rather novelistic styles and newspaper methods, was seen in particular in the reporting of crime, as in the Illustrated Police News, and of imperial expansion. ‘Special correspondents’ proved a key means, driving dramatic narratives for readers who wanted them in part-work forms, either newspapers or novels. They created the realities that were experienced by readers, not least by explicitly focusing on their role and experiences.20 In a world of shifting categories and complex interactions, many writers had long moved between journalism and fiction. Henry Fielding was a key example. Major instances in the nineteenth century included George Reynolds, Charles Dickens, who had begun his literary career as a reporter for the Morning Chronicle and who became editor of the Daily News and the weekly Household Words, and one of his writers, George Augustus Sala. Social questions, the ‘Condition of England’ issues, could be addressed in both fiction and the press. Each, in turn, helped to shape the other. Moreover, the growth of the readership of each created contexts within which the other was approached and understood.21 There were important overlaps, not least the

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syndication of fiction in newspapers, particularly in the 1870s and 1880s.22 Dickens’s Household Narrative, a monthly supplement to Household Worlds, was prosecuted in 1851 for not paying the newspaper stamp; the Inland Revenue arguing that any publication containing news was taxable, but losing. As with fiction, the reporting of crime in the press served to shape what were presented as social problems as well as to create moral panics, with the two often different sides of the same coin. Crimes that were not solved or not solved rapidly, encouraged alarm and reflection as newspapers struggled to find new and distinctive angles. Readers responded by buying more copies, as in 1888 when five young women were murdered in Whitechapel. The press reported these ‘Jack the Ripper’ murders in terms of their existing style and tone. Fear of the poor, of the East End, of outcasts, and of criminality all played a role in creating a sensational narrative, that produced a lasting myth around ‘the Ripper’. It has been argued that not all the victims were prostitutes.23 Politics also played a role, with the Liberal press accusing the Tory government of failing to act sufficiently, only for Tory newspapers to be more sympathetic to the government.’24 Sales of the People in particular benefited. Although the political impact of newspapers did not generally match the aspirations of their editors, the latter were responsible for a major shift in the content and presentation of many newspapers. Sport and sensationalism, rather than politics, came to the fore. There was a desire to make news and advertisements more interesting by increasing the visual element. There was also more use of headlining, more attractive format, and more interviews. The language employed by newspaper writers became more direct. By 1895, the Daily News covered racing, yachting, rowing, lacrosse, football, hockey, angling, billiards, athletics, cycling and chess. In contrast, less respectable traditional sports and pastimes, such as cockfighting, ratting and Morris-dancing, were not covered, as well as losing popularity and being suppressed. The sporting press formed a major part of the reading of the working class. The development of telegraphic communications in the 1880s led to the standardisation of betting odds for horse racing, while Sporting Life, the racing paper founded in 1859, became a daily in 1883. In Darlington in the 1900s, Nonconformists found it necessary to adapt to the demand for sporting and gambling news, notably from readers of the Northern Echo.25 Commercialisation, and the role of the news in encouraging the taste for the new, were scarcely new, having been a central characteristic of the English press from the outset. Commercialisation was not incompatible with the role of newspapers and other periodicals as vehicles for opinion and instruction. Yet, allowing for obvious differences, there was a parallel with the impact on television of advertisements after the Television Act of 1954. A century earlier, legislative changes had also combined with technology and economic expansion to create a major discontinuity in public culture. This can be

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exaggerated, as much was clearly an acceleration of developments that had been under way for several decades. Yet, the end of the ‘taxes on knowledge’ had still been the end of the ancien régime of the English newspaper world. Alongside industrialisation came a new form of professionalisation. The role of the newspaper writer was not limited to that of a reporter, in part due to the widely held notion of the writer as taking the role of instructor and guide to the reader. Industrialisation and professionalisation each required an investment that consistent sales and advertising revenue had to provide. Profitability, however, was usually possible as long as management was good. By 1891, Thomas Beecham had increased his advertising expenditure to £120,000; compared to £22,000 in 1894.26 Medicines, and the details of their claims, were always a major source of newspaper advertising. The advertising of national products was a new element of scale, which both posed opportunities and represented a challenge. The economies of scale were a consequence of the mechanisation of production and distribution, notably by means of the industrialisation of paper production and by distribution by railways, including in night trains. Lower costs, and fewer pinch points, encouraged mass circulation, and this was linked to advertising trends. These market conditions initially offered profit to small enterprises, but rapidly exposed them to the more active cost-cutting by the most successful or at least capitalised newspapers. In turn, the latter were able to drive down the costs of newsprint, printing and distribution. The Daily Mail proved particularly successful and began what is widely seen as a new period in English press history.27 Founded by Alfred Harmsworth in 1896, it was proclaimed in its first leader as a triumph of technology: It is no secret that remarkable new inventions have just come to the help of the Press. Our type is set by machinery, we can produce 200,000 copies per hour, cut, folded, and, if necessary, with the pages pasted together. Our stereotyping arrangements, engines, and machines are of the latest English and American construction, and it is the use of these inventions on a scale unprecedented in any English newspaper office that enables the Daily Mail to effect a saving of from 30 to 50 per cent. Indeed, the mechanisation of news and its production, notably through the telephone, the typewriter and the linotype machine (invented in 1885), had enhanced the possibilities for speedy, mass production offered by rotary presses, flexible power-sources, scale and cheap newsprint based on woodpulp paper. Capitalist innovation within a mass, consumer society was the key dynamic and mechanisation a means and image. Other traditional practices ended or declined. Thus, the technology lessened the role of the compositing

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trade in newspaper production. Harmsworth was fascinated by new technology, and articles were published accordingly. In a series of articles for the Daily Mail published in 1913, the novelist H.G. Wells predicted that science and engineering would be crucial in winning the next war, which would be more mechanised than any hitherto, putting a premium on ‘the best brains’. Another Harmsworth paper, the Daily Mirror, failed as a newspaper for women in 1903–4, but was successfully relaunched as a picture paper, another form of new and applied technology, and its circulation then rapidly shot up. Indeed, that of the press as a whole doubled between 1896 and 1906 and again by 1913. From a middle-class background, the self-made Harmsworth had a varied experience in journalism, including editing the magazine Youth and, in 1888, founding Answers to Correspondents, the circulation of which rose to over 200,000 by the mid-1890s. This was not a work of weight, but one that sought to provide readily digestible material for the less well-educated. In this, Harmsworth followed George Newnes’s success with Tit-Bits, founded in 1880. Both men can be seen in Whelpdale, a newspaper entrepreneur in George Gissing’s novel New Grub Street (1891), a classic of fiction focused on newspapers. Whelpdale aims to serve ‘the quarter-educated . . . chit-chatting information’, and does so to great profit to himself. The novel was a reflection of the more general fascination that the press offered writers, a fascination that owed something to their role as journalists, as with J.M. Barrie’s novel When a Man’s Single (1888). Jerome K. Jerome, a journalist in the 1890s, wrote a novel about journalism, Tommy and Co. (1904), which is an account of the transition from old to new styles of journalism. Establishing with his brother Harold, later Lord Rothermere, the Amalgamated Press Company, Harmsworth made money from magazines before buying the London Evening News in 1894 and boosting its circulation through sensationalism, notably crime. Committed to winning reader interest, Harmsworth sought to communicate excitement and loved stunts. The Daily Mail was a great success from the start. Heavily advertised, notably in the Harmsworth press, it sold 397,000 copies on its launch day, and amply fulfilled his injunction to his staff to simplify. Human interest stories were a key. A northern edition was launched in 1900. The newspaper was far from boring and could also appear more relevant to a mass readership than many established titles. In 1901, the Mail’s circulation passed a million. The Prime Minister, Robert, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, who, in 1860, had opposed the repeal of the Paper Duties, was disparaging: ‘a newspaper run by office boys for office boys . . . a paper for those who could read but not think’. However, his nephew and successor as Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour, was more forthcoming in praise, not least because he understood the political potential of the Daily Mail. Harmsworth might claim to reflect, not direct, the

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opinions of his readers, but he provided an education in modern life.28 A keen party supporter, Harmsworth had unsuccessfully stood for election as a Conservative MP in 1895. Harmsworth, who became Lord Northcliffe in 1905, a major sign of the prestige and importance of the press, was the most prominent instance of the concentration of newspaper ownership in fewer hands. He was as significant for the ‘New Journalism’ as Stead, and more so for its business side. The owners sought sales, advertising revenue, and influence; and these factors interacted. There was a degree of congruence, greater sales attracting more advertising, but also an ambivalence, on a longstanding pattern, one not shared by the radical press,29 between a desire to take a stance, and the realisation that to do so would alienate potential readers. As in the eighteenth century, this ambivalence challenged both the views of particular proprietors and the attempt by politicians to woo them. At the same time, the press did pursue campaigns. Government, both national and local, was the prime target, London newspapers focusing on the national level. Just as the Times had attacked the Aberdeen ministry for incompetence during the Crimean War, so Harmsworth was critical of the army’s conduct in the early stages of the Boer War (1899–1902). At the same time, on a pattern later to be seen in the First World War, this was as part of aggressive and popular patriotism,30 one that was in keeping with the Conservatives’ success in winning re-election against the divided Liberals in the ‘Khaki election’ of 1900. The radical Liberal anti-war position was taken by George Cadbury who was persuaded by David Lloyd George to buy the Daily News in 1901. As a result, the paper, whose editor was removed, changed its policy. Cadbury cut the price of the paper to a halfpenny and saw it as a counterpart to the Manchester Guardian as a power for peace.31 The previous year, the anti-war editor of the Daily Chronicle, the other major Liberal newspaper, was removed, and the paper moved to a pro-war position. The Daily Mail, a proponent of empire, was blamed for stirring up and focusing jingoistic views on war in southern Africa. John Hobson, a reporter for the Manchester Guardian in 1899, very much took this view and it became a popular one, not least because of his books.32 However, as with most comments about the press, it is important to understand the context of the criticism. Hobson was a vocal example of the Liberals who criticised the popular press. They found it attractive to blame imperial expansionism on that press, but, in practice, the impact of the latter was problematic, not least because foreign policy was generally discussed in terms of a more limited public opinion.33 There was an instructive anticipation of later political criticism of the press. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the Liberal leader from 1899 to 1908, in a ‘New Century’ message to Dundee’s People’s Journal that was carried in other newspapers, such as the Western Times on 1 January 1901,

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urged his countrymen ‘to maintain their energy of character and fervour of spirit,’ but to think before they act and to avoid love of sensation as well as haste after excitement. The war, which proved unexpectedly difficult for Britain, led to much press coverage, popular interest and political contention. Thus, the Western Times, in its issues in early 1901, carried a notice: The Boer War The China Crisis [the Boxer Rebellion] Persons desirous of reading the latest intelligence should order The Western Times, which can be delivered by first post every morning for 6d per week. The suppression of the Boxers ensured that the notice was soon only on the Boer War. Multiple failures in that conflict led not only to sustained and bitter criticism of the government and the military leadership, including an awareness that reforms were necessary for the army, but also to more searching sociopolitical criticism, which reflected the developing public mood. Thus, on 8 January 1901, the Western Times published leaders attacking the dominance of the army by the rich and cited Campbell-Bannerman in support of the view that the army should not be a ‘playground’. For the paper, ‘the public’ was the key player in demanding that the army ‘be placed on a sound business policy’. Press criticism also focused on the scandalous state of the military hospitals. Newspapers also sought to offer more measured commentary. Thus, a letter signed ‘Colonel’ and entitled ‘The Boer War – Attacks on positions’, published in the (London) Times on 27 December 1899, noted, with reason: The modern method of fortifications, introduced with the breech-loading rifle, is based upon the practical indestructability by modern artillery fire of properly designed earthworks, and the improbability of an attacking force being able to rush a properly prepared position defended by a sufficient number of troops armed with the breech loading rifle. This improbability became impossibility, now that the magazine rifle is substituted for the breechloader, until the defences shall have been seriously injured by artillery fire. Such correspondence brought up-to-date information into the public domain. Subsequently, commenting on the field manoeuvres of 1903, the paper was to be sceptical about the applicability of offensive techniques.34 The war saw a lionisation of some of the Boer commando figures, such as De Wet. There was to be no comparable lionisation of German commanders in the First World War.

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There were significant, often partisan, contrasts in press reporting. Thus, Liberal newspapers, such as the Western Times on 11 January 1901, claimed that the Boer invasion of Cape Colony had been underplayed by official dispatches and ‘in the Unionist press’35 and, instead, emphasised the threat. On the 15th, the paper was sceptical about the reassurance offered in the (London) Times and appealed to the readers for their judgement, noting that the contrast with British preparations ‘must be puzzling to newspaper readers’. The rifts were also within the Liberal press. Thus, the Western Times of 31 December 1901 declared that the: ‘Daily News . . . has also lost touch with the mass of Englishmen . . . the readiness to twist facts and to draw crooked inferences which has marked a section of the Liberal press during the last few years explains not a little of the trouble that has befallen the party.’ The emphasis on the public36 was seen that year in the issue of 30 August which mentioned ‘the instincts of a democratic people’ in a report on a substantial fall in the Conservative majority in a by-election at Andover. So also with attempts to encourage a change in the political culture, as on 29 January 1901: An effort is to be made in the forthcoming elections to Boards of Guardians to elect working men and women Guardians favourable to a liberal interpretation of the Local Government Board’s Order respecting more outdoor relief for the aged poor, in preference to so often offering ‘the House’ [workhouse]. The movement is, we hear, likely to be taken up in earnest in all the big towns and there seems to be no reason why it should not become general. Outdoor relief is humane and it has not been proved to be wasteful. It will be more economical than building and furnishing separate wings for aged couples who are permitted to live together in workhouses. At any rate the working classes are advised that they can now make an effective start in the direction of the old age pension so often promised them by voting only for such Guardians as will promise liberal outdoor relief to the undisabled aged poor. The same issue showed how a newspaper could present itself as a force for enlightenment and modernisation, as well as use the news to raise substantive issues, both longstanding linked characteristics that have lasted to the present. That issue also reported: The superstitious have connected the fall of one of the big stones at Stonehenge with the death of the Queen. It was a warning they say, of misfortune coming upon the Royal House. The idea has little to recommend it to our acceptance because this stone fell in a gale. It is much more important to discuss whether Stonehenge ought not to become national

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property. At present it is private property, and nothing is done to prevent injuries of the kind recently sustained. Governments, meanwhile, sought to restrain press attacks by influencing owners and by using the ‘lobby system’ begun in the 1870s that managed access to news through off-the-record briefings, a situation that has continued to the present. This offered an alternative to the reporting of debates that had hitherto dominated parliamentary news, and was a response to the willingness of journalists to take news from personal encounters with politicians.37 Thus, as so often, management was a response as much as a proactive change. So also with the later development of government press officers. Having launched the Daily Mail, Harmsworth pressed on reinvesting his profits, notably with new offices and printing works at Carmelite House (1902). The latter had the most modern presses, which enabled a cutting of costs that put pressure on competitors. Modernity led to a switch of the Daily Mail’s distribution from trains to lorries. Harmsworth, ‘the Napoleon of Fleet Street’, also rode his ideas, notably an alleged German threat to Britain, the pressing need, as a result, to strengthen the navy, and, separately, the need for Imperial Preference not Free Trade, a cause to which he became committed in 1903.38 In contrast, Cadbury’s Daily News supported pensions and attacked sweated labour. The Daily Mail was possibly the first paper to achieve a genuinely national circulation. It and its rivals ate into middle-class and upper working-class markets. In the 1900s, Liberal newspapers struggled to position themselves between their Conservative counterparts and the rising assertiveness of the Socialists. They did this by arguing for the value of a ‘good understanding and co-operation between capital and labour’.39 There was a general conviction across the political spectrum, that press support was of great significance, and at the local as well as the national level.40 In 1906, Franklin Thomasson MP founded the Tribune as the official Liberal Party newspaper. Priced at a penny and well-written, the paper failed in 1908 in part because it was too worthy. The Daily Citizen, launched in 1912 as a halfpenny Labour paper published in Manchester and edited by a former Daily Mail journalist Frank Dilmot, hit financial difficulties and had to seek support from the trade unions. The paper closed in 1915. Started with official Labour support in 1912, the Daily Herald proved more successful. Press chains became more prominent, a process encouraged by the investment capital made readily available as papers were listed on the Stock Exchange. Northcliffe went on to acquire the Observer and the Times (1908). William Berry, later 1st Viscount Camrose, made money with Advertising World, and went on to buy the Sunday Times (1915) and the Financial Times (1919), before creating an even greater empire. Formerly, Newnes’s helper at

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Tit-Bits, Arthur Pearson made money with Pearson’s Weekly, launched in 1890, a fund of circulation stunts, before launching the Daily Express (1900), buying Newcastle and Midland newspapers, and then the Standard (1904) and Evening Standard (1904), only to lose in the purchase of the Times to Northcliffe in 1908. That paper, which cost Northcliffe £320,000, was a totem of esteem and prominence but, with a circulation of 38,000, not of sales. In contrast, the Daily Express was speedily selling over 400,000 copies daily, as it, the Daily Chronicle and the Daily News sought to rival the Mail. The Daily Telegraph, which proved successful in its development of sports reporting, was nevertheless hit hard by the competition and its circulation fell. The Times had lost money and reputation with its totally mistaken libel on Charles Parnell, the leader of the Irish parliamentary group in the House of Commons, whom it accused of implication in the murder of key officials in Dublin in 1882. It suffered from outdated production methods, falling circulation and dividends, and a sense of drift, notably under George Buckle, editor from 1884 to 1912. Northcliffe replaced the printing equipment with new machinery and reorganised the methods of production, and the look of the paper, bringing in new men, including a new editor, Geoffrey Dawson, as well as photography. On 16 March 1914, he cut the price from 3d to 1d and printed for new readers an explanation of the layout. Circulation rose even before the war. ‘The Chief’ was soon in full command, and commenting on the leaders. Thus, the political and social place and understanding of the press was changing. At the same time as there was an expansion in the control, real and apparent, of proprietors who were perceived with reason as rich and domineering, if not plutocratic and autocratic, so also there was a change in the understanding of the relationship between the newspapers and the reading public. The view that had been disseminated in mid-century had been that of newspapers informing the public, but, by the 1900s, the notion that was to the fore was that of papers representing their readers. This was a press that can be linked not only to the ‘New Journalism’ but also to the politics that followed the Third Reform Act, that of 1884, which extended the male franchise so that about 63 per cent of the entire adult male population received the vote. What this would mean was unclear to politicians and a matter of concern for commentators. The press might present itself as a representational and, thus, democratic ‘Fourth Estate’, but in practice it was shaped by the consequences of its organisation, and notably the need for capital to sustain large-scale production. As with the development of party, organisations of related movements, such as the Primrose League, and the redefinition of both Liberalism and Conservatism in a more democratic direction, to shape the new franchise, so also with the press. This does not necessarily imply some form of ‘suppression’,

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still less conspiracy, but, rather, the understandable drive to organise for influence and other forms of profit. However, critics focused on the process, or rather their interpretation of it, in order to paint a dire picture. The press was given much of the responsibility for concern about politics and political developments. Moreover, the links were not only between newspapers and politics or consumerism, but also, for example, between the press and the development of large-scale organised sport. Another key development of the period that had implications for the ‘New Journalism’ was the suffragette movement and the more general question of the social role of women. These affected the mainstream press and the newspapers produced specifically for women, such as the large-circulation Votes for Women (1907–18), a newspaper that drew on the style of new-style newspapers in part in order to tackle the hostile coverage in the latter, notably in the Daily Mail and the Daily Express. In contrast, there was sympathetic coverage, as in the Manchester Guardian.41 Controversy extended to local newspapers. Thus, Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post, a halfpenny Saturday weekly, vigorously attacked the Liberal government. On 6 January 1912, its leader claimed: In all probability, future historians will arrive at the conclusion that the revolutionary schemes of the existing Liberal regime were carried through largely because the nation failed to realise fully their import and tendency. By the sheer weight of words, unctuousness of persuasion, and protestations of honest motives, the present ministry have undoubtedly deluded a sufficient proportion of the public to permit of their pushing through such things as the ‘great’ Budget, the Licensing Act, the Parliament Act, and the National Insurance Act. Mentioning the adage about being able to fool some of the people all of the time, or all of them some of the time, but not both, the paper predicted that there would be bitter opposition over Home Rule for Ireland. The latter was a theme presented in religious terms, as with the claim about the ‘persistently aggressive’ policy of the Catholic Church in Ireland (3 February 1912). Imperial preference and protectionism in preference to free trade (20 January, 3 February 1912) was another running campaign. In addition, more fundamental points were raised. Anger about government policy led to worry about the operation of the political system and concerning its wider resonance. In an editorial on 17 February 1912, the paper argued that most of the electorate was against Home Rule and Disestablishment in Wales, but that ‘The system is one in which groups which are singly incapable of obtaining a national verdict in favour of their objects arrange by bargain to give one another spells of illicit domination.’ On 27 April 1912, the Bill for the

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disestablishment of the Church in Wales was presented as an attack on ‘the greatest force for the spiritual welfare of the people’ and the government as ‘proceeding to cripple the religious forces of a nation’. The reference to ‘pieces of silver’ on 18 May scarcely lightened the tone. So also with the coal strike which was presented as an instance of the threat from Socialism, one that should draw attention on the links between Liberalism and Socialism (24 February). The crisis led to more marked language, as with ‘the Socialist serpent’ (2 March) and also to typographical variations, as on 23 March when there was a bold heading, ‘Coal Strike. Still no settlement’ followed by a news item in a bolder type than other items in the newspaper. The proprietors faced particular challenges with the First World War (1914– 18), as the government determined to limit the political and press debate to a greater extent than had been the case during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. A system of control, via D-notices (requests not to publish or comment) established in 1912 after the Official Secrets Act of 1911, was followed, under the Defence of the Realm Acts (DORAs) of 1914 and 1915, by the government gaining more regulatory power, although it worked by presence rather than direction. Questions of confidentiality in war news were not new.42 War led to institutions of influence, notably the Press Bureau and the Foreign Office News Department. That situation might have worked had the conflict been as short as was hoped, for, initially, the key concerns were those of the conversion to a war economy, notably the supply and cost of newsprint, as well as the provision of accurate and adequate news from the ‘front’, a process that was actively handled by the army, and notably so in the opening retreat. Correspondents were kept from the ‘front,’ the emphasis was on official press releases, and reports had to be channelled via a press bureau. In response, the Times, which had begun to issue Sunday editions from the start of the war, on 30 August 1914 produced an account of the dire situation of the British Expeditionary Force and the need for more volunteers. A fortnight earlier, the paper had emphasised the value to readers of its peacetime structure: ‘The Times, on account of its great number of correspondents in the various European capitals, supplemented by an extra staff of experienced war correspondents now in the field, is in a position to obtain much special information of an exclusive character.’ Newspapers also sought to reach out to troops abroad. The Daily Mail introduced a ‘Soldiers’ Friend’ column and had the Continental edition delivered to the front line. The Wiper’s Times, produced by troops at Ypres from the spring of 1916, was a far more accurate account. At home, there was jingoism, as in Horatio Bottomley’s newspaper John Bull. The press also served to humanise aspects of the war, as with the article on margarine published in the Times on 17 March 1916:

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There is a story, worth repeating, of a suburban husband who had been urging economy. He expatiated on the uses of margarine, but was emphatic that butter should be retained for the table. His wife asked if the butter that morning was to his liking, and on receiving a reply that it was excellent she remarked, ‘Well, dear, you have eaten margarine with your toast for a week.’ The reality of the conflict was kept from the British public. Dependent on official information which could not be questioned in public, the press provided scant clue to the heavy cost at which only limited success was obtained on the Western Front in 1915–17. Arthur Child-Villiers, a British officer, noted ‘the papers do not enable a very correct idea to be formed of modern warfare’. Indeed, by 1917 he could suggest the abolition of newspaper correspondents. The following year, he noted that the news of the battle was coming to him from the London press, before observing ‘the press is inclined to make too much fuss about an advance over ground which in many cases is of no real value to either side’. Also, in 1918, Major Hugh Fortescue took his news at the Front from the Times.43 From 1915, the army sought to adapt anew to the public need for news by accrediting (and paying) five war correspondents who were given the honorary rank of captain and dressed in uniform. In the Daily Express of 3 July 1916, John Irvine presented a totally misleading account of the opening of the Somme offensive: the taking of the first line trenches was in some places comparatively easy – almost a walkover. It was only when our men bit deeper into the enemy’s defences, that they were brought face to face with difficulties; but their indomitable pluck and perseverance have triumphed . . . one word of caution . . . it would be altogether premature . . . . to assume that the offensive on which the British Army has now embarked is a movement which is going very soon to end the war. Irvine wrote of ‘British Lions . . . let loose on their prey’, while, that day, the Daily Mail similarly referred to ‘going over the top’ as a ‘gay, impetuous and irresistible leap from the trenches’. Its correspondent, Beach Thomas,44 wrote: The toll of blood-taking has been fairly heavy, but I am glad to be able to state from reports received that it is by no means excessive, having regard to the magnitude of the day’s operations – it is and for many days will continue to be siege warfare, in which a small territorial gain may be a great strategical gain and the price we must pay is to be judged by another

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measure than miles or furlongs of booty. We are laying siege not to a place but to the German army. He was satirised as the ludicrously optimistic Teech Bomas in the Wiper’s Times and the Daily Mail was referred to as the Daily Liar.45 Knighted in 1920, he later regretted his wartime reports. The contemporary presentation of the Battle of the Somme, and the extent to which reality was kept away from the public, were also highlighted in the official film which was an enormous popular success as the public were hankering for images of the front. In practice, what they were shown was a re-enactment, both with troops going over the top and with them advancing across no-man’s land.46 Yet, while the national press and the film did not convey anything regarding the scale of losses, the provincial press remained effectively uncensored and carried full lists of casualties, so that the loss on the Somme was certainly known in the localities from which units were recruited. The reporting of the fighting on the Western Front was misleadingly positive. That, however, was scarcely surprising due to concerns about morale both there and at ‘Home’.47 On 22 November 1917, the Times, describing a mass British tank attack at Cambrai, noted that the commander sent a Nelsonian message to all his captains on the eve of the engagement which ran: ‘England expects that every tank today will do its damnedest!’ Concern with morale was important to the writing. Despite much revisionism and a more sophisticated view of the press, there is still a consensus that reporting was not good, overly patriotic and optimistic. Alongside the traditional view that the press was controlled by the army and under DORA, the editors appear to have controlled themselves and supported the war, even C.P. Scott of the Manchester Guardian and especially Howell Arthur Gwynne of the Morning Post who said, ‘hands off the generals, they know best’. The press, however, could accurately convey aspects of the war that otherwise readers would not grasp, as with a piece by Philip Gibbs in the Daily Telegraph on 26 June 1918: The business of the day proceeds – a vast business impossible to describe – as one travels from the base to the front and along behind the lines for a hundred miles or more, with the transport columns moving up with their usual supplies of rations for men and guns, with labour companies working on the roads and digging new trenches, with battalions ‘in rest’ training hard in the open fields, and battalions in support putting their new drafts through their paces, and all the activities of millions of men doing a hundred thousand jobs which have only one purpose and meaning, which is to perfect every part of that highly complicated machine known as an army in the field.

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Gibbs was the best of the five correspondents accredited to the British forces on the Western Front. Aspects of the ‘Home Front’ were also extensively covered. They included much that is of interest today, notably the position of women workers. Their contribution attracted press attention because it was important, there was novelty value, there were social implications, and the topic linked to the suffragette issue. Other aspects appear less relevant today but were very much so at the time. These included the state of agriculture, which was crucial to food production. Newspapers provided direct reports of what particular landowners were doing with their land or what they had said in a public meeting, and commented, both positively and negatively, regarding the reports of what landowners were doing and saying. The failure to provide sufficient military success helped lead some newspapers to criticise the Liberal government of Herbert Asquith. This continued the pattern both of pre-war newspaper partisanship and of the strength of Conservative support in the London press. In 1915, the Northcliffe press, notably the Daily Mail and the Times, which Northcliffe sought to coordinate, repeatedly challenged Asquith. He was not the sole target of the press. In the Shell Crisis of May 1915, both the Daily Mail and the Times focused on the government’s failure to provide sufficient of the right kind of shell and blamed it for failure in the attack at Neuve Chapelle. The Times published a piece by its influential military correspondent, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles à Court Repington, that drew attention to the issue. The British commander on the Western Front, Field Marshal Sir John French, had been leaking critical information about the shell shortages to Repington. This was followed by items in the Daily Mail, culminating, on 21 May, with a piece written by Northcliffe, headlined ‘The tragedy of the Shells,’ including ‘The kind of shell our poor soldiers have had has caused the death of thousands of them.’ Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, was personally blamed. The assault was greeted with outrage, with the Daily Mail and the Times being burnt on the floor of the Stock Exchange, and lost the papers both circulation and advertising, but Northcliffe saw it as his duty. The press campaign did not cost Kitchener his job, but helped lead first to the formation of a coalition ministry with the Conservatives at the end of May. There were repeated further controversies, notably with the Daily Mail attacking the Gallipoli campaign, which was the idea of a prominent Liberal, Winston Churchill, and also what, on 5 July 1915, it called the ‘Hide-the-Truth’ papers who ‘have chloroformed the masses into the belief that everything is going well with us’. The Daily Mail pressed for conscription, better equipment for the army, and a war cabinet, all in order to create a more effective and active military and war government. Conscription had been a pre-war Conservative cause and it hit at a principle of Liberalism as well as seriously

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dividing the Liberals in the government. Northcliffe got on well at first with Douglas Haig, the British commander on the Western Front from December 1915, although he became critical from late 1917. In contrast to Asquith, David Lloyd George, his Liberal rival, proved more energetic and adept in wooing the press barons, notably Northcliffe. If this contributed to the replacement of Asquith in December 1916, it was a case of pressing on an opening door. The first leader in the Times on 4 December was important to Asquith’s fall. The paper referred to ‘the dilatory and irresolute manner in which the Cabinet and the War Cabinet have directed the war’. On 12 December, the Globe claimed: ‘Lord Northcliffe has just brought down the Asquith Cabinet . . . . it was after reading the now famous leader in Monday’s Times that Mr Asquith sent in his resignation.’ Once in office, Lloyd George, who understood well the uses of the press, sought to manage the press by a range of means, both positive and negative. Owners and editors were rewarded or circumvented, in the latter case losing control of critical papers. Max Aitken, a Conservative MP, who bought the Daily Express in 1916, became Lord Beaverbrook and Northcliffe a viscount, while both, as well as Rothermere, who had bought Northcliffe’s holdings in the Daily Mirror in 1914, gained posts: as Minister of Information, head of foreign propaganda, and Air Minister, respectively. On 29 November 1917, Henry, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne, a former Foreign Secretary and leader of the Conservative peers, published a letter in the Daily Telegraph advocating a compromise peace. This call, which the Times had refused to publish, was ignored by the government. In contrast, Robert Donald, the eventually critical editor of the Daily Chronicle, lost his position when Lloyd George had the paper purchased by a sympathetic syndicate in 1918. Pressure and banishment from access were important means of intimidation. Growing criticism of Haig after the heavy casualties at Passchendaele in late 1917 was expressed by both Northcliffe and, privately, Lloyd George. There were bitter critics of the new axis and its methods, notably Howell Arthur Gwynne, the editor of the Morning Post from 1911 to 1937, a firm Conservative. Lady Bathurst, the paper’s proprietor, was unconvinced of the value of democracy. Indeed, in February 1918, Gwynne and Repington, who now worked for him, were charged with printing articles in contravention of DORA. Repington was found guilty and fined. In February 1918, Austen Chamberlain, a leading Conservative, attacked the government for being so closely linked to major newspaper proprietors. There were also important tensions in the axis, in particular between Lloyd George and the megalomaniac Northcliffe who the Prime Minister felt in April 1919 had exceeded his position by trying to interfere in the peace negotiations.48 Dawson, the editor of the Times, was certainly fed up with

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Northcliffe’s manic behaviour and ‘Hunbaiting’ and had resigned in February 1919. More mundanely, the Daily Mail hat backed by Northcliffe failed in 1920, although Churchill wore one. Lloyd George was able to continue his methods. In 1921, he provided a baronetcy for Edward Hutton, a key figure in the Manchester press, who had purchased the Evening Standard in 1915. In 1920, George Riddell, the owner of the News of the World, and the secretary of the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association, another of Lloyd George’s convenient friends, was made a lord. Lloyd George himself easily won the postwar 1918 election as head of the continuing Liberal-Conservative coalition, and held power until 1922. His was an age of close links between the press and politics. Who ran who was unclear. Lloyd George said ‘The Press? What you can’t square you squash, what you can’t squash you square.’ Maybe so, but the situation looked somewhat different to the press barons, and it was to be Lloyd George, not them, who fell in 1922, although that was also the year of Northcliffe’s death aged fifty-seven. Lloyd George had managed the system to his advantage; not created a new system. Some were subsequently to cite this period as evidence of the need for reform by means of regulation. Yet, the ability of government to provide impartial regulation was scarcely suggested by the record of Lloyd George’s ministry. However, the influence of the press barons was not as well-understood outside the political world as it was within. The newspaper was still generally perceived as an almost abstract force spreading information and opinion. A degree of distance from political parties was important to this impression. C.P. Scott captured the aspiration in a piece in his paper on 5 May 1921 marking the centenary of the Manchester Guardian, in which he focused on accurate news reporting and called for fair editorial commentary. The reality of press life was somewhat more complex.

Notes 1 Frank Richardson, 2835 Mayfair (London, 1907), chapters 8 and 10. Later republished as The Mayfair Mystery. 2 L. Brown, Victorian News and Newspapers (Oxford, 1985). 3 R.N. Barton, ‘New Media: The Birth of Telegraphic News in Britain 1847–68,’ Media History, 16 (2010), pp. 379–406. 4 H. Cox and S. Mowatt, Revolutions from Grub Street: A History of Magazine Publishing in Britain (Oxford, 2014). 5 S. Manning, ‘Devon Newspaper Archives of the 1860s and 1870s’, Archives, 29 (2004), pp. 59–63. 6 Exeter, Devon Record Office, 1037 M/B 8/2.

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7 J. Mussell, ‘Elemental Forms: The Newspaper as Popular Genre in the Nineteenth Century’, Media History, 20 (2014), p. 5. 8 S.J. Potter, News and the British World: The Emergence of an Imperial Press System, 1876–1922 (Oxford, 2003). 9 J.H. Wiener, The Americanization of the British Press, 1830s–1914: Speed in the Age of Transatlantic Journalism (Basingstoke, 2011). 10 M. de Nie, The Eternal Paddy: Irish Identity and the British Press, 1798–1882 (Madison, WI, 2004). 11 S. Schifferes and R. Roberts (eds), The Media and Financial Crises: Comparative and Historical Perspectives (London, 2015). 12 Keith Laybourn to Black, 28 Aug. 2018. 13 M. Roberts, ‘Constructing a Tory World-View: Popular Politics and the Conservative Press in Late-Victorian Leeds’, Historical Research, 79 (2006), https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2281.2006.00367.x: Accessed 5 December 2018. 14 D. Robinson, ‘Local Newspapers and the Local Historian: The Surrey Comet and Victorian Kingston,’ Archives, 31 (2006), p. 39. 15 M. Hampton, Visions of the Press in Britain, 1850–1960 (Champaign, Ill., 2004). 16 R. Altick, The English Common Reader, a Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800–1900. 17 W.S. Robinson, Muckraker. The Scandalous Life and Times of W.T. Stead, Britain’s First Investigative Journalist (London, 2012); R. Luckhurst, L. Brake, E. King and J. Mussell (eds), William T. Stead: Newspaper Revolutionary (London, 2012). 18 K. Summerscale, The Wicked Boy. The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer (London, 2016). For that argument in 1840, see C. Harman, Murder by the Book (London, 2018). 19 J.H. Weiner, Papers for the Millions: The New Journalism in Britain, 1850s to 1914 (New York, 1988). 20 A. Griffiths, The New Journalism, the New Imperialism and the Fiction of Empire 1870–1900 (Basingstoke, 2015). 21 I. Haywood, ‘George W.M. Reynolds and the Radicalization of Victorian Serial Fiction’, Media History, 4 (1998), pp. 121–39; M. Rubery, The Novelty of Newspapers: Victorian Fiction and the Invention of the News (Oxford, 2009); H. Mackenzie and B. Winyard (eds), Charles Dickens and the Mid-Victorian Press, 1850–1870 (Buckingham, 2013); P. Blake, George Augustus Sala and the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press: The Personal Style of a Public Writer (Farnham, 2015). 22 G. Law, Serializing Fiction in the Victorian Press (Basingstoke, 2000). 23 H. Rubenhold, The Five (London, 2019). 24 J.R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago, IL, 1992); R. Odell, Ripperology: A Study of the World’s First Serial Killer and Literary Phenomenon (Kent, OH, 2006); B. Fisher, ‘Reporting on the Ripper’, History Today, 68/9 (2018), pp. 9–11.

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25 P. Gliddon, ‘Politics for Better or Worse: Political Nonconformity, the Gambling Dilemma and the North of England Newspaper Company, 1903–1914’, https:doi.org/10.1111/1468-229X.00222. Accessed 20 Sept. 2018. 26 T. Nevett, ‘Advertising and Editorial Integrity in the Nineteenth Century’, in M. Harris and A. Lee (eds), The Press in English Society from the Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries (London, 1986), p. 151. 27 A. Bingham and M. Conboy, The Tabloid Century: The Popular Press in Britain, 1896 to the Present (Oxford, 2015). 28 K. Jackson, George Newnes and the New Journalism in Britain (Aldershot, 2001). 29 E.C. Miller, Slow Print: Literary Radicalism and Late Victorian Print Culture (Stanford, CA, 2013). 30 B. Beaven, ‘The Provincial Press, Civic Ceremony and the Citizen-Soldier During the Boer War, 1899–1902: A Study of Local Patriotism’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 37 (2009), pp. 207–28. 31 A.G. Gardiner, The Life of George Cadbury (London, 1923). 32 J.A. Hobson, The War in South Africa: Its Causes and Effects (London, 1900) and The Psychology of Jingoism (London, 1901). 33 S.J. Potter, ‘Jingoism, Public Opinion, and The New Imperialism: Newspapers and Imperial Rivalries at the fin de siècle,’ Media History, 20 (2014), pp. 45–7. 34 S. Manning, Evelyn Wood. Pillar of Empire (Barnsley, 2007), p. 229. 35 Unionist refers to the Conservatives and the allied Liberal Unionists who had split from the Liberal Party over Irish Home Rule. 36 See, more generally, J. Lawrence, Speaking for the People: Party, Language and Popular Politics in England, 1867–1914 (Cambridge, 2002). 37 A. Sparrow, Obscure Scribblers: A History of Parliamentary Journalism (London, 2003). 38 S.J. Taylor, The Great Outsiders: Northcliffe, Rothermere and the Daily Mail (London, 1996). 39 Western Times, 1 Jan. 1901. 40 C. Buckley, ‘The Search for “A Really Smart Sheet”: The Conservative Evening Newspaper Project in Edwardian Manchester,’ Manchester Regional History Review, 1 (1987), p. 27. 41 R. Nessheim, Press, Politics and Votes for Women (Oslo, 1997); J. Mercer, ‘Making the News. Votes for Women and the Mainstream Press’, Media History, 10 (2004), pp. 187–99; M. Tusan, Women Making News: Gender and Advocacy Journalism in Britain 1858–1930 (Champaign, Ill., 2005). 42 St. James’s Chronicle, 16 Sept. 1762. 43 Child-Villiers to his mother, Margaret, 24 July 1916, 7 May 1917, 27 Aug., 1 Sept. 1918, London Metropolitan Archives, Acc/2839/D/001-2; Hugh Fortescue to his father, Earl Fortescue, 6 Oct. 1918, Exeter, Devon CRO., 1262M/FC 61. For accurate press reporting, FC/62 a, 17 Apr. 1917. 44 On whom, see W. Beach Thomas, With the British on the Somme (London, 1917).

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45 N. Hiley, ‘ “You can’t believe a word you read”: Newspaper-reading in the British Expeditionary Force, 1914–1918’, Studies in Newspaper and Periodical History, 2 (1994), pp. 89–102. 46 S.D. Badsey, ‘Battle of the Somme: British War Propaganda’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 3/2 (1983), pp. 99–115 and The British Army in Battle and Its Image 1914–18 (London, 2009); R. Smither, ‘ “A wonderful idea of the fighting”: The Question of Fakes in The Battle of the Somme’, Imperial War Museum Review, 3 (1986), pp. 4–15. 47 M. Farrar, News from the Front: War Correspondents on the Western Front (Stroud, 1998). 48 J.L. Thompson, Northcliffe, Press Baron in Politics 1865–1922 (London, 2000).

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6 New challenges, 1922–75 The newspapers attacking me are not newspapers in the ordinary sense. They are engines of propaganda for the constantly changing policies, desires, personal wishes, personal likes and dislikes of the two men . . . Their methods are direct falsehood, misrepresentation, half-truths . . . What the proprietorship of these papers is aiming at is power, and power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.

L

eader of the Conservative Party, Stanley Baldwin provided the most famous speech on English newspapers, which he delivered at an eveof-poll by-election rally in London in 1931. His targets, Harold Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere, and Maxwell Aitken, 1st Lord Beaverbrook, the proponents of a ‘crusade’ for Empire Free Trade, however, did not suffer unduly. No restrictive practices were imposed by government as a result, even when Baldwin became Prime Minister again in 1935. Moreover, in 1936, as Prime Minister, Baldwin, in the Abdication Crisis, saw off the support of Rothermere, Beaverbrook and their newspapers for Edward VIII. However, Baldwin’s 1931 speech captured the degree of unease about the fate of a Britain whose empire was also under challenge. There was concern about the nature of power and influence in a mass democracy which, in 1918, legislated both for votes for women and for a universal male franchise. This concern influenced the decision to launch newspapers in 1926, in response to the General Strike, Winston Churchill, then Chancellor of the Exchequer in Baldwin’s government, launched the British Gazette as an official government newspaper. He commandeered the newsprint stocks of other newspapers, used the Air Ministry to help distribution, and brought sales up to over two million copies daily. The paper put the government case and supported morale, for example emphasising the sufficiency of food supplies.1 121

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In turn, Hamilton Fyfe, the editor of the Daily Herald, persuaded the Trades Union Congress General Council, in response, to launch the British Worker. It produced eleven daily issues in an attempt to maintain the morale of the strikers. It was priced at one penny, but had to deal with a police raid and with Churchill commandeering most of its newsprint which led to a cut in its size from eight to four pages. The print run rose to a peak of 700,000 copies, but circulation proved difficult. Provincial editions in England were established in Manchester and Sunderland. Separately, radio and television altered the technological context of news, not least by threatening a new immediacy in news provision, although radio only emerged slowly as a news provider. Newspaper proprietors pushed back, not least obliging the BBC to agree that news should not be broadcast prior to 7 pm. Newspapers, however, eventually had to adapt, even if initially there was the opportunity of filling space by publishing their programme schedules. So also with cinema. Newspapers, both national and local, devoted much space to commenting on the films that were on show, as in the Devon and Exeter Daily Gazette on 20 May 1930. More immediately, the major problems of British political economy and society, such as poor labour relations and management, posed problems. There were also the more specific issues of the period, notably the Great Depression that began in 1929 and the Second World War (1939–45). There were also specific episodes related to the press. Thus, in 1924, the Daily Mail intervened in the general election campaign with the Zinoviev Letter. The supposed (in practice very limited) sympathy of Labour for the Soviet Union and Communism was highlighted with the publication on 25 October of an apparently compromising letter, allegedly by Grigori Zinoviev, the President of the Communist International, giving instructions to the Communist Party of Great Britain to provoke revolution. The editor of the Daily Mail had tipped the other papers off, so quite a few of them ran a similar story, but the Daily Mail was the one that had the letter and the text of the British response. Given that the press, except the Daily Herald (funded from Moscow) and the cautious Manchester Guardian, were pretty right-wing, this meant that the humiliation felt by the Labour leaders was even more public.2 In practice, this letter did not greatly hit the Labour vote on 29 October, which was larger, in terms of both the number (by a million) and percentage of votes, than in earlier elections. Instead, Labour lost seats not due to the Zinoviev Letter, which was probably forged, but, because, as in 2015, the collapse of the Liberal vote consolidated the non-Labour vote with the Conservatives. Nevertheless, Labour blamed its failure on the Daily Mail, which it came to call the Forgers’ Gazette. This established part of Labour’s historical mythology with the Daily Mail linked in this account to MI5 and an ‘Establishment’ set-up for which there is scant evidence. Given the real

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challenge of subversion from the Soviet Union in this period, it is possibly surprising that there was not more activity. In practice, Labour’s stance towards the press was highly questionable in 1924. The Labour government had secretly instructed the Attorney-General to abandon a court case against John Campbell, a Communist journalist, who, in the Worker’s Weekly, which he edited, on 25 July 1924, had urged servicemen to mutiny. The mainstream press was exposing the story which put Labour in a difficult position. The headline item, however, that attracted most public interest was as indicated at the start, the role of the press barons. While not new, this became more prominent. Moreover, the growth in ownership by a small number of proprietors suggested to critics that the press was an instance of an untrammelled capitalism that threatened not only society but also the viability of other newspapers. Looked at differently, this concentration was necessary in order to provide the economies of scale appropriate for a mass readership, and also to hold political parties to scrutiny. This situation reflected the complex newspaper economics of the interwar years. The headline figures were good. The combined circulation of London’s national dailies rose markedly in the 1920s, and to 10.6 million copies in 1939. The circulation of the Sunday press also rose. There was a growth of readership, especially the switch of many working-class readers from weekly to daily reading. There was also an expansion of the female audience. Moreover, cartoons, puzzles and news items represented an approach to younger readers, and as part of the notion of providing entertainment for the whole family. The growth of readership continued to the early 1950s. At the same time, and helping explain why heyday would not be the best description for this period, the number of individual papers, whether mornings or evenings, fell in the period. In particular, the number of provincial morning newspapers fell. Moreover, there were changes in the structure of the press, with more of the provincial press taken over by national chains, notably in the 1920s. That loss of independence, however, did not prevent the provincial papers from being allowed to focus on local issues and to hold local government to account; and in a reasonably independent fashion so long as they returned a profit.3 Scale increasingly had a value of its own, although that dimension had always been the case. The circulation wars of these years more generally reflected the problematic nature of a world that appeared to mean growth or failure with few valid intermediary stages. The Daily Mail lost its clear primacy, being put under major pressure from the well-managed Daily Express, edited from 1933 to 1957 by Arthur Christiansen, and, in the 1930s, from the Daily Herald. Each sought to win readers by increasingly lavish promotional offers, an expensive policy, and also by keeping cover prices down, which helped

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ensure that working-class readership of the press rose, while leading to an even stronger emphasis on advertising as a way to raise revenue. Mass readership was also sought with changes in content and presentation alongside traditional practices that might appear inefficient. It was necessary to capture more of the reading public, and experimentation was the key way to establish how best to do so. Changes in content built on the ‘New Journalism’, while the latter saw the use of tabloid methods, including more photojournalism and bolder headlines. The photographs were part of the news rather than stilted or contrived additions to it. Some were both, notably if part of the social world, as in the Devon and Exeter Daily Gazette of 14 March 1930 which included a photograph of Sir Alfred Godson with the huntsman of the South Devon Hounds alongside a news-item on the relevant meet. The Daily Mirror, which, having been under commercial pressure in the 1920s, transformed its content in 1934 on the advice of the advertising company J. Walter Thompson, benefited in its sales. The Daily Mirror helped change the language used in newspapers towards a bolder approach, characterised by an exuberant and somewhat vitriolic style that was always vigorous.4 These were ‘the allurements of sensationalism’ which the Yorkshire Post was praised, that year, for keeping at bay.5 Looked at differently, this tension reflected the extent to which the media democracy that was developing adopted a range of tones. The continuing boom in fiction was important as a backdrop.6 Moreover, much in the Daily Mirror was not new, even if the form it adopted was increasingly to be that of popular newspapers. There had been an increasing emphasis on news, shorter articles, and a plainer style from the late nineteenth century.7 The press of the period has been criticised by commentators linking ownership to a quest for profit in the shape of sensationalism, consumerism, advertising and the avoidance of politicisation.8 That approach, which parallels criticisms made for, and in, other periods, assumes, however, a degree of political commitment and reader engagement that says more about the commentators than the readers. Moreover, it is possible to underplay the quality of the reporting offered in the popular press. The Daily Express and the Daily Mirror, for example, were serious papers in their politics in the 1950s. In the 1980s and 1990s, the tabloids were often quite progressive on social issues. Furthermore, it is not easy to write clear copy for a newspaper such as the Sun. It is instructive to turn to earlier instances in which the importance of clarity and accessibility was emphasised. I could wish something were writ in the way of dialogue between two farmers or persons of that size, in a natural easy familiar way, so as to be intelligible to the meanest capacities, in which the nature of the excise might be thoroughly explained, and the objections fairly discussed and

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answered, such objections as the country people are thought to make and in fact do make. Something of this kind, I am apt to think, would be much more read and have a greater effect than the finest writ papers in the way of a continued argument, which is necessarily above vulgar capacities; for such things must be minced and cut into small pieces, since they can take in but a little at a time.9 Crime proved a prime topic in the popular press, one that spoke, in particular, to the social, ethnic and gender anxieties of the period,10 as well as providing human interest with a frisson and, often, excitement. There was a constant series of new stories, which provided links to the popular fiction of the period, to new forms of crime, and to alarms about the competence, and even integrity, of the police. There was also a racist dimension, with particular attention devoted to crimes by foreigners, a theme that matched that in much popular fiction. In practice, alongside upper-class criminals, London’s key gangsters were the Sabinis, led by an Anglo-Italian, Charles ‘Darby’, while the Messina brothers dominated prostitution. Local newspapers covered crimes across the country. Thus, the Devon and Exeter Gazette in January 1930 reported on a murder at Bradford.11 In his short story ‘The White Murder’ (1925), G.K. Chesterton has the wise Adrian Hyde: ‘pishing and poohing over the newspapers. “Lord, what rubbish!” he cried. “My God, what headlines! Look at this about White Pillars ‘Whose Was the Hand?’ They’ve murdered even murder with clichés like clubs of wood.” ’ Chesterton had experience of the press as a columnist for the Daily News and The Illustrated London News, and in his newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly (1924–36). Crime overlapped with other aspects of public morality, notably sexual conduct and drug-taking. This led to the press being the definer and policer of public morality.12 Particular concern with the sexuality of young women was a key element, with social reform joining human interest, the press finding ready copy in the matters of every day, not least thanks to problem pages, which brought together the older practice of reader correspondence with a particular character of interest in sexuality. The Daily Mirror had such a column from 1935, and the Daily Mail from 1936. They were variously informative and repressive; although attitudes towards them depended in part on personal preference. Female sexuality thus was a matter not just of women’s magazines and fiction.13 The sensationalism of the ‘New Journalism’ was very much to the fore in such reporting, and both in the dailies, such as the Daily Mirror, and the Sundays, for example the News of the World. Linked to the female readership, astrological predictions in the press rose from the 1920s. At the same time, there were more serious discussions of the modern woman. The popular

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press sought to update its earlier views.14 Although there was press criticism, notably in the Daily Mail, about equalising the voting situation for men and women, ‘the flapper franchise’, which was not achieved until 1928, the popular press proved eager to reach out to its new female readers, and keen to adapt in order to avoid offending them. Indeed, the Daily Mail changed its attitude towards ‘the flapper franchise’ once it had been obtained in 1928. This reaching out was not simply a matter of embracing issues in household management and consumerism as a topic for much discussion, but also included an engagement with political, social, moral and cultural concerns that appeared to be of interest to female readers. It is of course readily possible to find sexism in the press, but there was much that was far from condescending. Moreover, the changing profile of journalists included more women. At the same time, the altering social status of journalists was linked to a degree of professionalisation, although, within the context of the time, professionalisation was also true of earlier periods of press history. There were, moreover, the more habitual aspects of socialising. Women and men could want for company as the personal notices in the South Westerner noted. On 27 May 1938, ‘Passable Brunette (Lopes Hall) would like company of trustworthy man for evening walks once or twice weekly as escape from work’, only for the following issue (3 June) to report: We regret to inform the authors of the flood of letters that we have received, requesting dates with the ‘Passable Brunette’ . . . that the lady in question considers none of the applicants to be suitable for her. All the applications, she says, were much too suggestive. As a reminder that themes recur, an item headlined ‘Wanted MEN’ in the issue of 26 October 1955 reported: Three unattached ladies of a sociable turn of mind offer three desirable gentlemen the opportunity of enjoying a free – repeat – free – evening’s entertainment. This marvellous, unbelievable, never-to-be-repeated offer includes entry to the Guild Ball and as many free drinks as you can carry while still remaining gentlemen. The jockeying of the press barons provided part of the detailed narrative of these years, for example the rise of the Berrys to be the dominant force in the 1930s. The Berry brothers bought the Sunday Times (1915), the Financial Times (1919), the Daily Dispatch (1924), the Daily Telegraph (1928) and many provincial papers. Harold Rothermere inherited the holdings of his brother, Northcliffe, in 1922, but he was outbid for the Times that year and, subsequently, in a reconfiguration of his portfolio, parted with the Daily Mirror and the Sunday

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Pictorial. In the late 1920s, Rothermere established new evening papers in Bristol and Derby. The Daily Mail was his key holding. The press lords were brutally satirised by Evelyn Waugh in his novel Scoop (1938), in the person of the foolish power of Viscount Copper, the owner of the Daily Beast. With its two million registered readers, the Daily Beast is run from Copper House, the Megalopolitan Building on 700–853 Fleet Street. Its rival is the Brute, and at the outset the latter has beaten the Beast ‘in every edition on the Zoo Mercy Slaying story’.15 Copper is clear on what the paper stands for – ‘Self sufficiency at home, self-assertion abroad’, and on what readers expect from a war: ‘The British public has no interest in a war which drags on indecisively. A few sharp victories, some conspicuous acts of personal bravery on the Patriot side and a colourful entry into the capital. That is The Beast policy for the war’.16 Waugh, himself, had reported on the Abyssinian War for the Daily Mail in 1935. At the same time, although politically motivated, and often clearly so, the press lords ensured that control of the press by party interests was minimal.17 In addition, the press of the 1930s ranged widely. Alongside right-wing newspapers, there were those of the left, including the dynamic Daily Herald (launched with official Labour backing in 1912 and, from 1929, majority-owned by Odhams) and the News Chronicle, an amalgamation of the Daily News and the Daily Chronicle owned by the Cadbury family and launched in 1930. Moreover, these papers influenced arguments in other newspapers, such as the coverage of the Daily Express which followed them in opposing unemployment and wage-cutting. The Daily Herald was particularly successful, selling over two million copies daily, in part by offering free goods to subscribers, and keeping the Labour message to the fore. However, there were major tensions, notably between Francis Williams, editor from 1936 to 1940 and Julius Elias, the chairman, tensions which led to the resignation of the former.18 As a consequence of such newspapers, the political range was greater than with the radio or the cinema. The first was a monopoly under its own ‘baron’, Sir John Reith, while the latter had equivalents, as with the Kordas. The press did not witness an Americanisation similar to that seen in the cinema. The role of the press barons, and thus of capitalism, was seen on the left as a cause of the failure of the working class to recognise their supposedly true interests and vote Labour. This was a convenient, but misleading view, not least because it underrated the appeal of Conservative arguments. Labour may have proved more adept at appealing to the media in the 1930s than the 1920s,19 but it did very badly in the 1931 and, even more, 1935 general elections. The newspaper with the closest political control was the Daily Worker, which was launched on 1 January 1930 and edited by William Rust, a

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Communist Party official who had earlier edited the Workers’ Bulletin for the Party. Designed to advance Party propaganda, the paper, nevertheless, faced the problem of how best to combine a revolutionary approach, aimed at gaining support from the Labour Party as much as anything, with winning and keeping mass popular appeal. The latter had been a challenge to previous leftwing papers, leading, for example, to the end in 1915 of the Daily Citizen, a Labour Party newspaper. Popular material in the Daily Worker included sport and general interest stories, but these subjects were considered to be ‘bourgeois’ and a drug to weaken the workers by party officials, and were ignored in the early 1930s. Instead, topical commitment and clarity were to the fore, which helped explain why early daily circulation figures reached 39,000. However, circulation then fell and Harry Pollitt, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain, successfully argued that it was necessary to change the paper so as to appeal to the workers. This approach was helped by the move in 1935 into a ‘Popular Front’ approach of uniting the left. From 1935, the Daily Worker became less explicitly Communist. Instead, cinema reviews, racing tips, murder stories and advertisements received space. At the same time, a political edge was retained, notably with crime linked to social conditions. An emphasis on the purist approach, a focus on the class struggle, led, in turn, to the removal of crime reports. Emphasising that it was the paper of the workers, the Daily Worker not only employed professional journalists, but also ‘worker correspondents’ who, supposedly active in the labour market, reported from factories, pits and offices. There were also appeals for donations from readers.20 The Daily Worker was scarcely alone, for the press barons also faced the problems posed by their need to raise finance. The sale of shares diluted their proprietorship and moved newspapers towards corporate ownership, which hit the independence of the press barons. In 1931, Rothermere had sold his shares in the Daily Mirror to individual shareholders, so that the paper had no single proprietor. The Times under Geoffrey Dawson, editor from 1923 until 1941, was under editorial, rather than proprietorial, control, and more so than when he had been editor from 1912 to 1919. John Jacob Astor, who acquired the proprietorship in 1922, was satisfied with the relationship. A Conservative, Dawson was still willing to criticise the government, notably over the HoareLaval Pact in 1935 and over Chamberlain’s conduct of the ‘Phoney War’ in 1939–40. Subsequently condemned for Appeasement, notably in A.L. Rowse’s All Souls and Appeasement (1961), Dawson was a committed supporter of peace who, like most of the population, backed the Munich agreement of 1938, but was in practice able to adopt his own policy.21 Rothermere’s stance was much more dubious. He visited Hitler and corresponded with him, encouraging his expansionism in Eastern Europe. On

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15 January 1934, his piece ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts,’ a defence of Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists, appeared in the Daily Mail. The Depression affected newspaper revenues across the board. Sales, however, remained stronger than advertising revenue which was hit even harder. This strength increased the battle over circulation and at a time when total sales were greater than the number of households, and, therefore, in part discretionary. These problems did not attract sympathy from critics who thought the press debased and debasing, and, more particularly, an aspect of a pernicious establishment politics.22 As so often, it is unclear what would have happened but for the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. The Conservatives, who dominated the National Government established in 1931, and who had done extremely well in the 1935 election, would probably have won the next peacetime election, which was due in 1940, and there was no sign of any apparent change in media regulation. Radio broadcasting and the beginnings of television remained a BBC monopoly, and neither offered round-the-clock news nor challenged the advertising position of the newspapers. The squeeze on profitability seen in the early 1930s had been replaced by economic growth later in the decade, while tax rates remained low. Growth and prosperity were centred in the South and the Midlands, which greatly helped the London-based national newspapers. The spreading ownership of cars, of ‘white goods’, such as fridges, and of radios provided a need for more advertising, and the cost of such advertising, as a percentage of the cost of the product, was modest, which again encouraged advertising. Cars offered a significant topic for newspaper reporting, even more so than trains had done, not least because of the more pressing moral issues offered by cars. Women in them were unchaperoned and single to an extent that was far more the case than in trains. By 1939, there were two million cars in private ownership. An editorial in the Devon and Exeter Daily Gazette on 20 May 1930 pressed for more safety on Exeter’s roads, criticising drivers more than pedestrians. Cars also offered a means for the authentication of news. Journalists were made individual as well as mobile by getting out of the office and into cars. Going to the news, to witness it, made it easier to provide items, and thus to provide newspaper copy, and in a distinctive fashion. The news could be telephoned in (albeit without the mobile phones of the present day, so that the journalist needed a plentiful supply of coins for coin-operated phones), or the journalist could race back to the office. A ‘speeded up’ quality to the news was provided by the role of cars and firearms in crime. Crime reporting also drew on popular interest in the cinema, and this influenced the reporting.23 The prosperity of much of the country in the late 1930s serves to underline the problems posed by addressing the popular press in terms of a supposed

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failure to engage with the real politics of the period, or, rather, a failure to match the papers of the left. This analysis is problematic on several heads, more especially because of its assumptions about false consciousness and due to the degree to which the press captured the variety of a society experiencing growth and stability as well as decline and crisis. This is more generally apparent with reporting and also opens up significant perspectives on the diverse consciousness of contemporaries. In Death in a White Tie (1938), Ngaio Marsh, in the chapter ‘Stop Press News’, offers different headlines on the same murder, as well as providing the context: ‘. . . this is only the ten o’clock racing edition . . . Wait till we see the evening papers!’24 The situation was transformed by the Second World War which became a total war far more rapidly than its predecessor. There was a sharp fall in the availability of newsprint and of ink, and the size of newspapers fell, while the price rose. A fall in advertising revenue, in part because there was less space to sell for advertising, also hit hard. Moreover, many journalists were conscripted and there were staff shortages in production. Bomb damage was an issue, affecting both production facilities and distribution. In particular, the rail system was hit hard, while petrol rationing was an issue. The Times made arrangements to print, if necessary, on the presses of the Evening Standard or in Kettering. The press was again subject to wartime regulation, as well as being expected to report accurately to boost morale and not to help the enemy, goals that reflected the disparate wishes of readers and government. The censorship regime was put in place at once. The press accepted this but complained about the efficiency of the scheme and criticised Duff Cooper, whom Churchill appointed Minister of Information in 1940 only to replace him by Brendan Bracken in 1941. Newspapers sought a speedy scrutiny but, in 1940–2, when Britain faced repeated defeats and much anxiety, the press was in a particularly difficult situation. Under supervision from the Ministry of Information, and not wishing to be accused of fostering defeatism or publishing falsehood, the latter a charge thrown by the British at the Axis press and at, and by, Axis broadcasters such as ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ (William Joyce), journalists and editors had to respond rapidly to a war that brought a continued volley of events. This was particularly the case with reference to the German air attacks which were intense from September 1940. Their severity tended to be underplayed in newspaper reports, while the strength of the air defences was exaggerated, notably in late 1940, and the strain on civilian morale, as in Southampton, was neglected.25 By doing so, there was also an attempt to challenge German confidence in the impact of their bombing. The London newspapers themselves suffered from bombing. Churchill congratulated the Times for going on as normal. The press also initially underplayed the

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seriousness of Axis success on land, as with the invasion of the Netherlands and Belgium in 1940. This habit made subsequent British failure more difficult. Concern about the stance of the Communist Daily Worker led to it being suppressed in 1941–2, while, in 1942, Churchill clashed with the Daily Mirror which was moving to the left. In particular, it printed, on 6 March, Philip Zec’s critical cartoon ‘The price of petrol has been increased by one penny’, an attack on profiteers. Churchill considered closing down the paper, but was dissuaded by the Labour Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, although he was angered by the cartoon, while Ernest Bevin, the Minister of Labour, another Labour MP, claimed that such cartoons affected morale. Zec was to go on to assist Labour in the 1945 general election. The Daily Mirror benefited from a marked wartime rise in its circulation, in part due to it being read widely in the Forces. A leftward move in the press was significant even though the conservative stalwarts, the Daily Express and the Daily Mail, continued to be prominent. Looked at differently, a key issue in changing opinion were not the dailies but the progressive weeklies, such as the New Statesman, and their influence on figures such as teachers. The Daily Mirror was influential in encouraging workers to move towards Labour.26 There was some informed discussion of strategy. J.F.C. Fuller, a retired Major-General and leading military thinker (as well as an individual of marked right-wing views), wrote for the Evening Standard and the Sunday Pictorial. However, his copy when critical was censored, sometimes heavily so. In 1941, Fuller argued that it was mistaken for the British to confront the German ‘mechanised hordes’ in the Balkans, and that ‘to plunge into the Balkan bog before we can fully be supported by America is the height of folly’. He also suggested that there had been a serious violation of the concept of concentration of force due to intervention in Eritrea rather than consolidating the gains in Libya. Fuller commented on Rommel’s advance: ‘like a ladder in a girl’s stocking, our splendid desert campaign is running backwards up our strategical leg from its ankle to its knee’; and on Greece: ‘We should have blitzed our enemy before he blitzed our allies. And if we were not in a position to do that, then we should never have gone to Greece at all.’ These items came from two pieces he wrote for the Sunday Pictorial of 27 April 1941. The first was banned, the second heavily censored.27 That day, Athens fell to the Germans. Fuller was correct. The dispatch of forces to Greece had greatly weakened the British in North Africa. Churchill, who had backed the policy for political reasons, in order to show that Britain was supporting all opposition to the Axis, swiftly recognised it as an error. Fuller fulminated in a heavily censored piece in the Sunday Pictorial of 8 June: ‘Because we could not think cubically we expected a caterpillar crawl and got a dragonfly assault.’ Not all of Fuller’s pieces were critical and many were highly informative. In the Evening Standard of 2 August 1941, he wrote that, unlike the French, the

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Red Army fought on even when broken into fragments, and he pointed out that ‘this unexpected change from field to, what may be called, morcellated siege warfare hit German logistics’. He added that ‘Mud is Stalin’s ally’. In 1944, Fuller focused on writing for the American journal Newsweek while continuing to provide informed comment for British readers. In the Sunday Pictorial of 10 September 1944, he noted, correctly, of France: ‘at the moment, supply and not fighting power is the key factor of our advance’. On 1 October, Fuller added: had our sea power remained what it had been, solely a weapon to command the sea, the garrison Germany established in France almost certainly would have proved sufficient. It was a change in the conception of naval power which sealed the doom of that great fortress. Hitherto in all overseas invasions the invading forces had been fitted to ships. Now ships were fitted to the invading forces . . . how to land the invading forces in battle order . . . this difficulty has been overcome by building various types of special landing boats and pre-fabricated landing stages. More generally, interest in war news was strong, in part due to conscription and in part due to its unprecedented range. There was literally far more to report than had been the case in the First World War, with large-scale campaigning involving now British forces in North Africa and South-East Asia. Whereas most of the fighting in the First World War took place nearby, on the Western Front, that was not the case in the Second. The press, however, suffered from the role of radio which became the chief source of news, as the public chose it over the newspaper. Radio unlike the telegraph, did not require the intermediary of the newspapers. It was readily accessible and, once access to a radio set had been gained, free. Newspapers were also produced for the forces, for example Union Jack which was modelled on the American Stars and Stripes. Hugh Cudlipp, later chairman of the Mirror Group of newspapers from 1963 to 1967, played a key role in launching Union Jack. The postwar years continued to be difficult, in part because the censorship of newsprint continued. This represented both a means of control and also a product of a marked lack of sympathy for the press at a time when corporatism was strong in the culture and practice of the period. Both processes came to the fore during the 1945–51 Labour governments, not least with it establishing the Royal Commission on the Press in 1947. This Commission, which reported in 1949, found that there ‘was a marked tendency away from concentration of ownership in the national press’,28 but recommended the establishment of a General Council of the Press. The Royal Commission represented an aspect of the more general corporatist or public service approach to life that had been seen under the wartime coalition government and that continued more

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strongly under Labour. Churchill, then head of the opposition, declared in 1949: ‘a free press is the unsleeping guardian of every other right that free men prize’. The scepticism about market mechanisms and private ownership that was seen under Labour reflected an uneasiness about profit as both goal and means. The press suffered from a more general criticism of capitalism. In the event, no such Council was established. Moreover, although keen to dominate the commanding heights of the economy, Labour did not nationalise the newspapers, which would have appeared dictatorial. However, controlling newsprint supplies, which were expensive and had to be imported, both served to protect foreign exchange and, arguably, kept the press in line. For example, the Yorkshire Post had to reduce its size in 1947 and 1950. Small-size newspapers affected both the information available and the space for advertisements. This hit the range of material that could be covered, as well as job opportunities for would-be journalists. As a separate, but also related, process, there was also an attempt to manage the news. Although Clement Attlee, the Prime Minister, and Labour leader from 1935 to 1955, was very resistant to any news management or publicity, advisers at headquarters urged him to do more.29 In the event, the press discussion of government policy had scant impact. For example, the Times’ approach to the establishment of the National Health Service, with its emphasis on evolutionary change and preservation of tradition, did not resonate, no more than its defence of the interests of doctors, interests that were questioned by the Manchester Guardian.30 Controls over newsprint supplies were continued under the subsequent Conservative governments, but rationing became less acute and finally ended on 1 January 1959. The 1950s saw a struggle between Beaverbrook’s Daily Express, which did not seek to change the country, and the Daily Mirror, which, from 1951, was under the control of Cecil King, nephew of Northcliffe, who acted as an old-style press baron. On election day, 25 October 1951, the Daily Mirror ran a front page accusing Churchill of being a warmonger, keen to attack the Soviet Union, under the title ‘Whose Finger on the Trigger.’ In response, Churchill had a writ issued alleging libel. In practice, Churchill was far more cautious than he had been after the First World War, and, supported by most of the press, won the election. The press played a major role in creating the national mood, as with the idea that the accession of Elizabeth II in 1952 represented a new Elizabethan age, an approach that infuriated Evelyn Waugh, a militant Catholic, and thus opponent of Elizabeth I.31 At four million, rising to over 4.32 million in 1960, the Daily Express readily passed the circulation of the Daily Mail which hovered at about two million. The Daily Express had better news coverage. In the 1966 Beatles’ song ‘Paperback Writer,’ the protagonist is working for the Daily Mail but wants to be a paperback writer. Ironically the newspaper job is described as ‘a steady job’.

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The struggle between the Daily Express and the Daily Mirror raises questions about the assumption that newspaper partisanship declined in the 1950s and 1960s. King developed the Daily Mirror as the most successful working-class representative, and helped Labour win the 1964 and 1966 elections. In 1967, the circulation was 5,282,137 copies, a world record. In 1961, the Mirror Group purchased Odhams Press, and, with it, the Daily Herald which had been hit hard by the greater accessibility of the Daily Mirror. In 1964, King replaced the Daily Herald by the Sun which was launched as a broadsheet: Rupert Murdoch was to turn it into a tabloid. Beaverbrook’s opposition to the Conservative attempt to join the European Economic Community, the forerunner of the EU, played a role in the 1964 election, as the Daily Express became less committed to the Conservatives. In 1968, King, who was chairman of the International Publishing Corporation and not the owner, was sacked by the directors as a consequence of his use of the paper to launch a front-page attack in the paper on Harold Wilson, the Prime Minister whom he had been seeking, from 1966, to replace by a coalition. The control of the press barons over the press was much less than at the time of Baldwin’s criticism in 1931, in part because newspapers were now more clearly run on behalf of investors. Yet, owners remained significant. For example, Esmond Rothermere, a son of Harold Rothermere, ran the Mail group from 1940 until his retirement in 1971, but lacked the business acumen necessary for a proprietor, and the journalistic flair required to spot the quality in editors and potential editors. At the same time, there was a complex relationship between ownership and tone, as with the Daily Telegraph, where the clear expression of opinion in editorials and in signed articles on the leaderpage, was matched by news reporting that was far less partisan, notably in the foreign news that was one of the paper’s more impressive features.32 Meanwhile, local newspapers continued their accustomed emphasis on their locality which, indeed, became more conspicuous with the growing dominance of the national press. The Western Times on 4 January 1952 published a photo of a family reunion dinner, another of four generations at a party, a call from a JP for heavier fines on motorists, criticism of the drowning of a valley in order to construct a reservoir, and an attack on the secrecy of local authorities towards the press, an attack based on events at Ilfracombe. In Ruth Rendell’s novel The Babes in the Wood (2002), which is set in rural Sussex, Inspector Wexford still has the evening paper, the Kingsmarkham Evening Courier delivered, but finds ‘it seemed to hold nothing but photographs of floods’. He subsequently decides that a local evening paper is no longer of value.33 For long, horse racing had been crucial to the economics of evening newspapers. Buying an evening paper was the only way of finding out the racing results. In London, the Evening News and the Evening Standard were published in several editions. Each edition carried racing results. In central

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London that sufficed, but another method was used in the South East. In Reading, for example, each edition of the London paper arrived by train from Paddington. It was taken to a nearby hut where men printed the very latest results, obtained by telephone or telegraph, in the space on the back page of the paper headed Stop Press. And every half an hour men on bicycles brought the latest papers to the street sellers in Broad Street and the station. Thus, the result of say the 4 o’clock at Newmarket would be in the papers by 5. Betting shops from 1963 would offer a different way of seeing the results and, by the mid-1960s, the old Stop Press was no more, beginning the decline of evening papers. The earlier situation led to such practices as several people buying different editions over the afternoon and sharing them in the J. Lyons tea shop, while those who did not buy the papers stood in the bus queues next to others who had and looked at the Stop Press over their shoulder. Meanwhile, the press suffered from many of the problems of British society and the British economy. In particular, the trade unions cared very little for the profitability of the companies for which their members worked and, instead, some parts of the union movement were party to a fraudulent system of blackmail. As a result, the cost to sales and advertising of labour disruption was so great that managers tended to accept working arrangements known as ‘Spanish practices’, such as ghost shifts and double manning, that were simply corrupt. Journalists often liked the bottle, a facet captured in Michael Frayn’s novel, Towards the End of the Morning (1967), in which the protagonist, fearing entropy, wants to work in television. Drunkenness was a theme in many other depictions, as in the eponymous protagonist of Andrew Martin’s 1999 novel Bilton. Management was not always impressive. This situation hit the profitability of newspapers and many closed in a process of mergers. Thus, the Daily Dispatch was merged into the News Chronicle in 1955 and the latter, hit by difficult unions, poor management and an ageing readership, was sold by the Cadburys to Associated Newspapers and merged into the Daily Mail in 1960, while its sister-paper, the Star, launched in 1888, was merged with the Evening News. Laurence Cadbury, the Chairman of the group from 1950, had found the newspaper world fascinating but also an unpredictable and costly contrast to the family’s chocolate business. The sale reflected the fall in advertisements that was matching that of readers, and the need for money to provide for those who lost their jobs, in order to make up for the absence of a company pension scheme. Selling the papers as a going concern helped save as many jobs as possible, and thus reduced the costs. The sale proved highly controversial, in part because it was the first national newspaper of consequence to close for years, and in part because the paper was a Liberal one sold to a Conservative group.34

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There were developments in content. Sunday newspaper colour supplements began on 4 February 1962 with the first Sunday Times colour supplement, an issue, entitled ‘A Sharp Look at the Mood of Britain’, that depicted a new sense of national purpose and classlessness, one however, that was also a new iteration of the version of these that had been offered for several decades. Indeed, in the Daily Express, ‘Giles’ in his cartoon used the ‘Family’ depicted to present a form of classlessness.35 The first Sunday Times supplement included photographs of Jean Shrimpton wearing a Mary Quant dress and a new James Bond story. Such supplements provided a way for newspapers to raise revenue through advertising and thus to counter the competition of commercial television which had been relaunched in 1946. That threat was feared even before independent television was established. Indeed, in 1953, the chairman of the Birmingham Gazette and Despatch Limited told the annual dinner of the Birmingham area committee of the Newsvendors Benevolent and Provident Institution that he was not impressed by the measures being taken to meet the ‘threat’ of sponsored television: ‘I think this greatly affects you through us, for if our prosperity is impaired many of the publications you handle may disappear.’36 Beginning with the ‘quality’ press, supplements were subsequently introduced by the lower-price popular newspapers, enhancing the magazinetype character of the press as a whole. In 1969, the Daily Mirror became the first British daily national newspaper to produce a free weekly colour magazine. It was on a Wednesday. These supplements offered valuable opportunities for advertising and led to an emphasis on the visual aspect of the press and on its non-news character. The supplements were planned, designed and printed before the rest of the paper. As a result, the timing of newspapers changed. So also did their size and weight. Responding to readers was more generally professionalised in a consumer world increasingly focused on the practices and ethos of market research and of more sophisticated advertising. Polls as an analysis of voter preferences were aspects of the same.37 With politics increasingly presented in terms of responding to consumerism, as with Harold Macmillan’s strong victory in the 1959 general election, it was scarcely surprising that the press moved in the same direction. The colour magazine of the Sunday Times was an innovation produced on the new presses installed by Roy Thomson who, in 1959, purchased the Kemsley Group, including the Sunday Times as well as thirteen provincial dailies. Thomson’s activity, including the establishment of new evening newspapers and investment in new technology, reflected a sense of optimism and buoyancy in the early 1960s. He became Lord Thomson of Fleet in 1964 and bought the Times in 1967.

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Thomson, a Canadian who had made his money in Canadian local radio stations and newspapers and later in launching Scottish Television, was matched by Rupert Murdoch, an Australian media magnate. In 1969, he bought the News of the World and the Sun, the latter depicted in James Graham’s 2017 play Ink. The Sun was relaunched as a tabloid and its sales rose dramatically. Its Page Three nude became a regular feature, as well as a cause of contention and notably so in light of the rise of feminism. The influence of this item, as of other newspaper staples, could be varied. In 2018, Charlotte Riley, as an instance of the misunderstanding of the very young, recalled that when she: was little, she wanted to be a Page Three girl. ‘I was always sent round to the corner shop to get my grandparents the Mirror and the Sun,’ she explains. ‘As a kid I was like, “This feels slightly weird, delivering my grandad boobs.” I’ll never forget, my granny said, “What d’you want to be when you’re older?” and I said, “I want to be a Page Three girl” . . . I’d heard the term pageboy and thought a page girl was a professional bridesmaid.’38 The build-up of the Murdoch presence represented a transformation of the popular press, and sufficiently so for the term ‘the Murdoch press’ to become one frequently used to describe the tabloids as a whole, and generally in highly critical terms. The Sun, in particular, with its new editor Larry Lamb, was regarded as a challenge to British society, not least in providing people with what they wanted to read. Other newspapers did not do so well. The Daily Express declined after the death of Beaverbrook in 1964, lost its way, and hit increasing financial problems in the mid-1970s. Although the Daily Mail, merged first with the News Chronicle, and later with the Daily Sketch, was relaunched as a tabloid in 1971, it faced major difficulties in its challenge to the Daily Express. Moreover, both were seen as middle-market newspapers unable to compete with the Sun, which put the pop into populism and provided a new iteration for a ‘New Journalism’ of sensationalism. Under pressure from the Sun, the Daily Mirror meanwhile hit serious problems in the 1970s. At the same time, there was the continuous pressure of getting scoops, as in 1969 when the Daily Express beat the Daily Mail in getting the first British interview with the astronauts who had gone to the Moon. The variety of the national press was captured by the Guardian. On 1 April 1977, as an April fool’s joke, it provided a spoof supplement, to which advertisers contributed, about San Serriffe, a fictional island. This was followed on 1 April 1978 with a sequel, with pages of spoof front pages from San Serriffe newspapers styled after British counterparts such as the SS Sunday Times.

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Competition with other titles and conflict with the unions both hit newspaper profits and affected the future of individual titles, not least by making it difficult to invest in new technology. Mergers became more common. The Shields Evening News, having merged with the Shields Gazette in 1959 and become a weekly, was merged in 1974 with the Wallsend News, and in 1982, after a damaging strike, its production was merged with that of the Whitley Bay Guardian.39 Such a process of consolidation was also seen elsewhere. Advertisers chased the newspapers with the higher circulation, which put great pressure on their competitors, not least as readers sought advertisements as a form of news. Thus, there was a synergy but one that only benefited the lead newspaper, and that made it difficult for others to challenge its position. As yet, other technologies had not inflicted the serious competitive damage that was to follow. They were, however, affecting the nature of reporting. This was readily apparent in the case of political news. Newspapers found that politicians focused on the television news, both to announce policy and to comment on it, a method that also downplayed the significance of Parliament. Indeed, Tony Blair, Prime Minister from 1996 to 2007, was to be criticised by Betty Boothroyd, the Speaker of the House of Commons, on this head. Prime Ministers welcomed the opportunity to give television interviews, which were far more deferential than the parliamentary bearpit, not least because the style of these interviews was very different to that which was to follow. As a result, the press increasingly focused on commentary on politics, although it retained its value to politicians for selective items, both on and off-the-record. This, however, meant that newspapers were vulnerable to manipulation and ‘spin’, which was a key term applied, and with reason, to the news management of the Blair government, notably by Alistair Campbell. In the meanwhile, regulation of the press had made few advances. The Royal Commission of 1947–9 was followed by others in 1961–2 and 1974–7, but, despite political aspirations to the contrary, the reliance continued to be on self-regulation. Given the significance of the move to Wapping in 1986, it might appear problematic to end this chapter in the mid-1970s, but that is a helpful dividing point reflecting the need to place the move in the context of problems and changes that were developing from the late 1970s.

Notes 1 P. Catterall, ‘Churchill and the General Strike’, in R. Toye (ed.), Winston Churchill. Politics, Strategy and Statecraft (London, 2017), pp. 66–7.

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2 G. Bennett, The Zinoviev Letter: The Conspiracy That Never Dies (Oxford, 2018). 3 M. Bromley and N. Hayes, ‘Campaigner, Watchdog or Municipal Lackey? Reflections on the Inter-War Provincial Press, Local Identity and Civic Welfarism’, Media History, 8 (2002), pp. 197–212. 4 K. Waterhouse, The Mirror’s Way with Words (London, 1981), pp. 10–12. 5 M.A. Gibb and F. Beckwith, The Yorkshire Post. Two Centuries (Bradford, 1954), p. 78. 6 D. LeMahieu, A Culture for Democracy: Mass Communication and the Cultivated Mind in Britain between the Wars (Oxford, 1988); J. McAleer, Popular Reading and Publishing in Britain, 1914–1950 (Oxford, 1992). 7 S. Lonsdale, ‘Man of Letters, Literary Lady, Journalist or Reporter? Contributors to the New Mass Press and the Evolving Role of the Writer 1880–1920’, Media History, 21 (2015), pp. 265–79. 8 B. Winston, Messages: Free Expression, Media and the West from Gutenberg to Google (London, 2005). 9 Francis Hare, Bishop of Chichester, to Thomas, Duke of Newcastle, 18 Aug. 1733, BL. Add. 32688 fol. 136. 10 C. Emsley, ‘Violent Crime in England in 1919: Post-war Anxieties and Press Narratives’, Continuity and Change, 23 (2008), pp. 173–95. 11 J. Rowbotham, K. Stevenson and S. Pegg, Crime News in Modern Britain: Press Reporting and Responsibility, 1820–2010 (Basingstoke, 2013); J.C. Wood, ‘ “The Third Degree”: Press Reporting, Crime Fiction and Police Powers in 1920s Britain’, Twentieth Century British History, 21 (2010), pp. 464–85; H. Shore, ‘Rogues of the Racecourse. Racing Men and the Press in Interwar Britain’, Media History, 20 (2014), pp. 352–67; A. McLaren, Playboys and Mayfair Men: Crime, Class, Masculinity, and Fascism in 1930s London (Baltimore, MD, 2017). 12 A. Bingham, Family Newspapers? Sex, Private Life and the British Popular Press, 1918–1978 (Oxford, 2009). 13 A. Bingham, ‘Newspaper Problem Pages and British Sexual Culture since 1918’, Media History, 18 (2012), pp. 52–63; J.C. Wood, ‘The Constables and the “Garage Girl”: The Police, the Press and the Case of Helene Adele’, Media History, 20 (2014), pp. 384–99; L. Bland, Women on Trial: Sexual Transgression in the Age of the Flapper (Manchester, 2013). 14 A. Bingham, Gender, Modernity, and the Popular Press in Inter-War Britain (Oxford, 2004). 15 E. Waugh, Scoop (London, 1938, 1948 ed), p. 14. 16 Ibid., pp. 13, 42. 17 For information on Rothermere as a proprietor, N.J. Crowson, Fleet Street, Press Barons and Politics: The Journal of Collin Brooks, 1932–1940 (London, 1998). 18 L. Beers, ‘Education or Manipulation? Labour, Democracy and the Popular Press in Inter-War Britain’, Journal of British Studies, 48 (2009), pp. 129–52.

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19 J. Thomas, Popular Newspapers, the Labour Party and British Politics (London, 2005); L. Beers, Your Britain: Media and the Making of the Labour Party (Cambridge, MA, 2010). 20 L. Young, ‘Internal Party Bulletin or Paper of the Working Class Movement? The Communist Party of Great Britain and the Role of the Daily Worker, 1930–1949’, Media History, 22 (2016), pp. 123–34. 21 S.J.D. Green, ‘Geoffrey Dawson, All Souls College and the “Unofficial Committee for the Destinies of the British Empire,” c. 1919–1931’, in J. Black (ed.), The Tory World. Deep History and the Tory Theme in British Foreign Policy, 1679–2014 (Farnham, 2015), pp. 243–52. 22 M. Hampton, ‘Censors and Stereotypes: Kingsley Martin Theorizes the Press’, Media History, 10 (2004), p. 18. 23 H. Shore, ‘Rogues of the Racecourse: Racing Men and the Press in Interwar Britain’, Media History, 20 (2014), p. 362. 24 N. Marsh, Death in a White Tie (1938; London, 1960 ed), p. 60. 25 P. Woods, Reporting the Retreat: War Correspondents in Burma (London, 2017); G. Hodgson, War Torn: Manchester, its Newspapers and the Luftwaffe’s Blitz of 1940 (Chester, 2015). 26 M. Pugh, ‘The Daily Mirror and the Revival of Labour 1935–1945’, Twentieth Century British History, 9 (1998), pp. 420–38. 27 New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers University Library, Fuller papers, Scrapbooks vol. 6. 28 Royal Commission on the Press 1947–1949, Report (London, 1949), p. 175. 29 M. Moore, The Origins of Modern Spin: Democratic Government and the Media in Britain, 1945–51 (Basingstoke, 2006). 30 J. Barry, ‘What the Papers Said: the Times and the Manchester Guardian on the Establishment of the NHS’, unpublished paper. I am grateful to Jonathan Barry for allowing me to cite this. 31 M. Amory (ed.), The Letters of Evelyn Waugh (1980; London, 1982 ed), p. 369. 32 D. Hart-Davis, The House the Berrys Built: Inside the Telegraph 1928–1986 (London, 1990). 33 R. Rendell, The Babes in the Wood (London, 2002), pp. 12–13. 34 E. Martell and E. Butler, The Murder of the ‘News Chronicle’ and the ‘Star’ (London, 1960). I have benefited from advice from Benedict Cadbury. 35 P. Salisbury, ‘Giles’s Cold War: How Fleet Street’s Favourite Cartoonist Saw the Conflict’, Media History, 12 (2006), p. 173. 36 Times, 2 June 1953. 37 K. Brückweh (ed), The Voice of the Citizen Consumer: A History of Market Research, Consumer Movements, and the Political Public Sphere (Oxford, 2011). 38 E. Steafel, ‘Life of Riley’, The Telegraph Magazine, 18 Aug. 2018, p. 17. 39 J.M. Black, Development of the Shields Daily News, 1864–1984 (Newcastle, 1986).

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he most dramatic sign of change occurred in 1986 when the abrupt move of newspaper production from Fleet Street was resisted in the case of News International. Rupert Murdoch broke the restrictive practices of the print unions by moving to a purpose-built plant at Wapping, located in the newly filled-in western basin of the London Docks, a plant misleadingly presented in a dummy operation as the basis for an evening paper. There was violent and prominent picketing, which was fully reported by a media greatly interested in its own role and with the news story conveniently close. However, the picketing was thwarted by the police. At the same time, Murdoch was successful in part because he could turn to the Electricians’ Union to provide an alternative labour force. To many commentators, the episode appeared to be another version of the long contest in 1984–5 between the National Union of Miners (NUM) and the government of Margaret Thatcher, Conservative Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990. The NUM’s strike had also involved workers willing to continue working as well as violent picketing that was thwarted by police action. A keen supporter of that government, Murdoch benefited from her backing and, notably, her determination to end restrictive labour practices and the power of the trade unions. In contrast, Neil Kinnock, the leader of the Labour Party from 1983 to 1992, was a member of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, and pressed for newspapers’ accountability to their employees, as well as the wider public. Indeed, Kinnock initially opposed the purchase of the Daily Mirror by Robert Maxwell in 1984. The Daily Mirror’s journalists were hostile to a Maxwell takeover. Kinnock, however, swung round in return for Maxwell’s support for the Daily Mirror’s Labour stance. The Daily Mirror was significant as a newspaper because it was willing to adopt a different line to the bulk of the popular press. Thus, Denis Healey wrote of the Falkland Islands crisis in 1982: ‘a tabloid press in Britain which, with the exception of the Daily Mirror, was screaming for war at any price’.1 In 1984, Kinnock’s support for journalistic autonomy was abandoned. In turn, the Daily Mirror actively backed Kinnock when he attacked Militant at the 1985 Labour party conference.2 141

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At the same time, far more than breaking the labour unions and their practices was involved in the move to Wapping. The move in newspaper production was an aspect of a longstanding process in which all manufacturing continued to move out of central London into greenfield sites. Newspapers moved to new sites in London: the Daily Telegraph to Canary Wharf and the Financial Times to ‘south of the River’. In 1989, the Daily Express was the last paper printed on Fleet Street, with the paper then moving away from the world of steaming hot metal. The Thatcher government was keen on the development of Docklands, and the move of newspapers there accorded with its policies as well as ideology. For the press, the break with Fleet Street was both symbolic and very significant in terms of working practices, attitudes and investment. New sites literally meant a new start in production, organisational and distribution terms. The moves in production facilities were a particularly prominent aspect of adaptation in the press, one that reflected a crisis in the traditional model of production and the related labour issues. New technology created opportunities, but also required investment. The pressure of transformation was increased by the degree to which developments took a toll of many titles, as well as transforming those that continued. The changes rapidly followed each other. The Sunday supplements of the 1960s, and the increase in magazine-type articles, were to be followed by free advertising titles and Internet tie-ins. At the same time, there was a continued belief in the influence of the press. In the ‘winter of discontent’ of 1978–9, the use of the Shakespeare phrase itself one that reflected the impact of the tabloid press, the Sun played a major role in lambasting the Callaghan government and in suggesting that Jim Callaghan, Labour Prime Minister from 1976 to 1979, was underplaying the crisis. In part, the political struggle was also one between newspapers, in particular between the Sun and the Daily Mirror, both competing for the leading position in mass readership. The Daily Mirror was pro-Labour, but most of the popular press was not. At the same time, people read both.3 The Daily Star was added by Trafalgar House, the owner of Express Newspapers, in 1978, initially as a northern competitor to the two, and as a paper intended to use the under-capacity of the presses in Manchester as the Daily Express lost circulation. Even more striking was the claim that the Sun helped deprive Labour of electoral victory in 1992. This claim, which was made by the paper, and echoed by a Labour party drawing on the idea of false consciousness and keen to argue that the voters had been misled and to find someone else to blame, ignored the capacity of the voters to understand their own interests. In addition, polling data suggested that a significant percentage of the Sun’s readers were unaware of the paper’s political preference. Indeed, in 1992,

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despite it proclaiming on 11 April 1992 that ‘It’s the Sun Wot Won It,’ 55 per cent of its readers did not vote Conservative. Labour’s claim about the 1992 election followed similar complaints about the 1979, 1983 and 1987 elections, with both bias and deception alleged. In practice, 52 per cent of the Sun’s readers voted Labour in 1979, and, in each of the elections, the Conservatives had a smaller percentage of the popular vote than its share of newspaper support. This contrast had a number of causes, but certainly leads to a questioning of automatic influence by the press, albeit while accepting that elections are determined by a relatively small share of the electorate. Thus, the percentage of Sun readers who voted Conservative increased, and this may well have influenced the result of the 1979 election. The Sun and the Daily Mail supported Thatcher very strongly and she won over many voters in the C1, C2 and D groups in society. At the same time, there were policy reasons for such a shift, and these related both to the appeal of the Conservatives and to the strong sense of Labour as failing. Moreover, while they engaged with its nationalism,4 it is unclear that the Sun’s readers, or at least most of them, welcomed its domestic political partisanship, a point also true for other tabloids. Possibly these, and other, papers, on a longstanding pattern, had more influence on the politicians than the public, with this influence encouraged by the denizens of a new greatlyexpanded world of news management and political advisers. Moreover, fascinated by politics (however much also repelled by its conduct), many journalists sought to influence political battles, a goal that they shared with proprietors. As a consequence, politicians felt that they had to win the support of newspapers in part because they were there. Thatcher and Blair both did so with considerable gusto. David English, the editor of the Daily Mail, was a great fan of Thatcher, saw a lot of her, and in the 1987 general election campaign offered a double-page spread to correct the dangerous impression that could have been created when Thatcher implied that she would welcome back direct grant schools, with the fees that implied.5 Politicians indeed were fascinated by newspapers, however much some might be repelled by its conduct. At the same time, policies played a major role, as with those newspapers that were sceptical about the European Union. Earlier, the Falklands War in 1982 had provided a key instance of a link between public interest, political role, newspaper engagement and the success of particular titles. The Sun benefited greatly in its circulation war with the Daily Mirror from its coverage of the conflict, a coverage that proved far less costly and more lucrative than its £1 million prize bingo competition in 1981. Indeed, in 1982, the Sun’s circulation rose to a million more than that of the Daily Mirror. From the outset, the Sun was committed to a military solution and provided front-page jingoism, beginning with ‘WE’LL SMASH ’EM’ and a picture of Churchill. The Page Three girls, arguably a covert form of pornography,

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were presented in semi-military guises and the Sun provided pictures of the wives or girlfriends of sailors wearing underwear carrying the ships’ names. Opposed to peace talks, the Sun made much of a ‘STICK IT UP YOUR JUNTA’ theme, with t-shirts sold to sponsor a missile. The Daily Mirror, Guardian and BBC were accused of treason, with the Daily Mirror replying by comparing the Sun to Goebbels’ journalism, noting that it had ‘fallen from the gutter into the sewer’. Some of the key figures in the Sun’s newsroom wore military paraphernalia. There was a black humour mixed into the harsh xenophobia. Private Eye offered a spoof Sun headline: ‘KILL AN ARGIE AND WIN A METRO’. The Murdoch revolution was more significant because he had gone on in 1981 to acquire the Times and the Sunday Times from the Thomson Corporation. These papers had been hit hard, in finances and reputation, in 1978–9 by industrial disruption. This was more than simply a ‘winter of discontent’. Kenneth Thomson, who had succeeded his father Roy in running the business in 1976, was unwilling to yield to the money-squeezing techniques of the print unions. Instead, he insisted on new technology in the shape of computerised typesetting, directly input by journalists. The typesetters’ union rejected these proposals. In response, Thomson closed the Times and the Sunday Times in December 1978 until an agreement was reached. Management, journalists and advertising staff were retained on full pay. The lockout cost £40 million, as the management took eleven months to win agreement on lower manning and higher productivity. When the journalists followed by going on strike over a 21 per cent pay rise, Thomson decided to withdraw from the national newspaper business, setting a four-month time limit for the sale with the stark decision to close down if none was achieved or if there was any further disruption. The bidders included the Express group, Robert Maxwell and Lord Rothermere. However, most were only interested in the very profitable Sunday Times. Thomson insisted that the buyer guarantee publication of the Times as well. Murdoch won in 1981 by meeting this provision and with a bid of £12 million and a share of future profits. In light of the character of the Sun and what was termed ‘tabloid-journalism’, Murdoch’s acquisition of the Times was controversial. Challenged by continued disruption by the print unions, Murdoch successfully moved all four of his national titles to Wapping. Thatcherism proved very attractive to Murdoch as well as to much of the press. In part, they were attracted by the narrative of betterment and self-help, but there were also significant commercial attractions. The very extensive advertising for privatisations was highly welcome. So also was the boom in property prices, which again attracted much advertising. Consumerism as a whole was both profitable for the press and attractive to it, offering a form of politics that focused on the individual and not the community.

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In the broadest of senses, this was all highly political. So was the assumption that the press should be listened to. Thus, on 13 June 2001, Anne Ashworth in the Times at the end of a long article encouraging people to save more for their pensions, wrote: Alistair Darling, now Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, should abolish the out-dated and patronising rule that forces anyone with a personal pension to buy an annuity (a fixed-rate investment) on retirement. Rates on annuities are low and likely to remain so making this a very poor deal and a disincentive to pensions saving. Do you hear us, Alistair? He did not. A supporter of Thatcher, but not in the end of John Major, a characteristic he shared with an important tranche of the electorate, Murdoch moved to back Tony Blair and his repositioned Labour for the 1997 general election. In 2012, he told the Leveson Inquiry that he had ‘never asked a Prime Minister for anything’ and denied ever offering the endorsement of his newspapers in return for political favours. In the 1980s, however, the Sun, under Kelvin MacKenzie, its editor from 1981 to 1994, was involved in a series of controversies that affected Murdoch’s reputation, including, in 1988, a £1 million libel settlement obtained by Elton John and in 1989 a crass and cruel coverage of the disaster at the Hillsborough football stadium, a coverage that led to a consumer boycott in Liverpool, and to a bitter criticism of the Sun still voiced in the late 2010s. At the same time, there was no doubt that he had been wooed heavily by ‘New Labour’, with Blair, its leader from 1994 to 2007, making very public efforts to be close to Murdoch. Blair also wooed other newspapers, winning the endorsement of the Daily Express for Labour in 2001, for the first time in its history. This, however, did not lead to that paper’s readers swinging to Labour. Blair’s policy very much differed from that of Neil Kinnock, party leader from 1983 to 1992, under whom there had been a formal policy of not speaking with News International journalists. The Sun, indeed, had made Kinnock a particular target, creating a press persona for him, albeit one that drew on his characteristics.6 He was both vulnerable, in part due to his verbosity, and also the product of a politics focused on personalities, notably his clash with Thatcher. The critique of Kinnock underlines the extent to which, while tabloids had less political content than earlier in the century, and less than in the broadsheets, there was still an engagement with politics. Moreover, as the tabloids were generally larger than earlier in the century, the content could be considerable. Seeking to woo Murdoch, Blair did not pursue the 1993 Freedom and Responsibility of the Press Bill.7

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Murdoch’s success encouraged emulation. Some was unsuccessful, but, nevertheless, indicated that there was a sense of new possibilities. In 1986, Eddy Shah, a regional publisher who had hit problems with the unions, launched Today, the first national colour seven-day newspaper, one drawing on state-of-the-art production technology. Today greatly contributed to a sense of change in the newspaper world. The sales, however, did not meet expectations, so that Shah had to find new investment, and, as a result, Murdoch finally acquired Today in 1987. Also in 1986 came the Independent with new computer-based technology from the outset. The key figure was Andreas Whittam Smith, a former Daily Telegraph City editor, who sought to provide an un-ideological newspaper that was strong on production values, especially photographs. Smith argued that the basis of a newspaper was its staff, that the production and distribution media might change, not least in response to computers, but that the key element was that of developing and selling the staff skills and the resulting content. The paper initially did well and was seen as a breath of fresh air. Visually, the layout, with the prominent photography, attracted attention. It also understood ‘that Saturday was the new Sunday’, and published a magazine then, thus offering a different approach to the other broadsheets.8 The challenge it posed led to a circulation war from 1993 when the Times cut its price in order to hit both the Independent and the Daily Telegraph. In 2003, the Independent switched to a tabloid format. The Independent encouraged other newspapers to look to their photography, and there was a general improvement. However, the press use of maps was generally unsophisticated. An article on global crime in the Sunday Times of 17 November 1996 noted that: ‘Today’s criminal sees a national border as an opportunity to exploit and use the laws of one country to try to subvert and do business in another. “International boundaries mean nothing to criminals,” said Det. Chief Inspector Simon Goddard . . .’ The accompanying map indeed showed no boundaries, thus dramatising the threat of illicitly smuggled goods by ensuring that the only lines on the map were those of smuggled goods: no inhibiting or opposing boundary lines appeared. The map itself served as an example of much newspaper cartography. It was both lurid and misleading. The concentration on Britain ignored the greater complexity of drug and other networks and exaggerated the importance of Britain as a market. This concentration combined with the effect created by the repeated red arrows striking home on Britain. As an example of cartography as drama, the map, however, served the newspaper’s point by making themes of danger and threat readily apparent. The map therefore directed attention to the article, rather than providing additional information or visual clarification. Instead, the map acted as a form of advertisement for the article, catching the eye of readers saturated

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with the visual richness of advertisements and the constant theme of crisis in the articles in the rest of the paper. More generally, weather maps long remained poor and overly small. The innovations of the 1980s were accompanied by a major transformation in ownership. Robert Maxwell, a questionable businessman who had been a Labour MP and donor, purchased Mirror Group Newspapers in 1984, but turned out to be fraudulent as well as having a more commonplace megalomania. A man of whims who sought control, Maxwell did not have the impact on the Daily Mirror’s content that he thought he did. In 1987, Maxwell launched the London Daily News as a rival to the Evening Standard which was owned by Associated Newspapers, whose chairman was Vere, Lord Rothermere. Maxwell wanted a 24-hour newspaper with editions throughout the day, but Rothermere revived the Evening News, which had been closed in 1980, as a far less expensive rival, and this competition killed the London Daily News. The Mirror Group survived Maxwell’s fraud which involved a wholesale pillaging of the company pension scheme. Another outsider, the Canadian Conrad Black, a North American press magnate, purchased the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph from the Berry family in 1986. Michael Berry, Lord Hartwell, chairman and editor-in-chief for each of the papers, had failed to match his editorial skill with business acumen, and found that an expensive modernisation programme could not be afforded, in part due to the financial strains of buying off the unions. Seeking to match Murdoch had proved a burden too far. Black provided new capital for the Telegraph group, and that was important to new journalistic and production facilities. Hartwell retired in 1987, the year after new editors had been brought in for both titles. The Daily Telegraph had a reasonably successful 1990s, but Black’s financial irregularities led to his dismissal in 2004, and the papers were purchased by the Barclay brothers who put in Murdoch MacLennan, a Daily Mail journalist, as head of the Telegraph Media Group. He brought in many figures from the Daily Mail, including the journalist Simon Heffer, and turned both the Telegraph papers into versions of it in order to win greater sales by taking part of the Daily Mail’s market share. The Daily Telegraph made a number of innovations including a tabloid sports section, a standalone business section, and a regular podcast all in in 2005, and a redesign of its website in 2006. It also had considerable success as a reporter of news, notably playing the key role in the MPs’ expenses scandal in 2009. This exposé created a sense of the political class as corrupt; a sense that did not capture the marked variety in individual conduct. However, the 2010s proved less happy for the Daily Telegraph, not least in 2015 when Peter Oborne resigned claiming that advertising strategy affected its content. There have also been suggestions that financial arrangements

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with official Russian and Chinese newspapers have proved compromising. In 2014, Private Eye attacked the paper for replacing experienced staff. More seriously, the paper’s circulation fell: to 458,000 in November 2017. Despite claims of press influence, there was to be an accelerating sense of crisis for the press, with the difficult 2000s followed by the more difficult 2010s. Other newspapers also suffered from circulation issues. The same month, that of the Times was 435,000 (compared to over 900,000 in the 1990s). Unlike the Daily Telegraph, it is a tabloid, its sole form since 2004. As with other newspapers, the Times in part depends for its print-circulation on copies given away free, notably in railways, airports and supermarkets. This enables the paper to provide more attractive but contentious circulation figures to attract advertising. Owned by Russian oligarchs, Evgeny and Alexander Lebedev, from 2010, and hit by falling sales, the Independent, with a daily paid circulation of just over 40,000, a tiny figure, became, in response, online-only in 2016. On 13 February, the editor, Amol Rajan, entitled a column ‘a letter to the readers’: The Independent launches its next, digital chapter I imagine most of you will have read or heard the news that the Independent is to cease its print edition a few weeks from now. As our loyal readers, many of whom have been with the newspaper from the very beginning nearly three decades ago, I realise this must have come as a shock. I also know that for print readers, the most treasured members of our special club, the notion of our focusing on digital doesn’t appeal so much. It is therefore very hard to explain this decision, but it’s the least you deserve. The simple fact is, there just aren’t enough people who are prepared to pay for printed news, especially during the week. With our circulations and advertising down, very substantially, the future of our print edition would inevitably be one of managing decline. I don’t want that to be our approach; and by being decisive about the switch to digital, I think we can go out on a high. Our last edition will be on Saturday 26 March. This newspaper’s journalism, with its unique integrity, intelligence, courage, wit and humanity, is reaching more hearts and minds than ever before. We are read by millions every day – but they are reading us digitally, through their mobiles, and via social networks. I know it is a hard thing to say here and now, but I want the message to go out loud and clear that even after we cease to print, in spirit and in impact this great newspaper will live on.

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We have huge, global ambitions for our website, backed by multimillionpound investment from our owners, the Lebedev family. They have invested more than £60m in this great institution over six years. Having sold our stablemate title, i, they have the chance to fund the next chapter in our story. In plotting the next few years, it makes sense for them to invest that money in the digital product. To that end we are launching new bureaux across the world and a new subscription mobile app. Many of our world-class journalists will continue writing just the same amount of journalism on this website. I can’t mention them now because we are in negotiation – but I hope to update you soon. So the spirit and quality of The Independent will endure. I know that is of little comfort to our print readers. Like me, you love the rustle and whiff of paper, the thud on the doormat when it arrives, and the geography and serendipity of each edition. All I can say is we will deliver great journalism until the very end. That is because we have the most kind, industrious, dedicated and brave staff in the history of Fleet Street. They’re so damn wonderful, they’ve produced a cracker of an edition for today, too. Sold to Johnston Press, the smaller i, launched by the Independent in 2010, which is both online and in hardcopy, carries on its cover the banner heading ‘Quality, Concise – The Future of Independent Journalism.’ Just as popular journalism was updated, so also with its ‘quality’ counterpart. The News of the World fell victim not to circulation problems, but to the response to its own methods. It was closed in 2011 over the revelation, notably by the Guardian, that it had taken part in phone hacking in ongoing police investigations, notably of a murdered schoolgirl.9 Other journalists demanded action, including Polly Toynbee in the Guardian of 15 July who wrote ‘Rejoice! Role on the tumbrils as another News Corp head rolls’. This furore led Murdoch, who was centrally concerned about the regulatory environment for his wider media interests, and in 2010 had heard the Business Secretary, Vince Cable, privately remark to Daily Telegraph reporters posing as constituents, ‘I have declared war on Mr Murdoch,’10 to abandon what was one of the highest-circulating English-language newspapers, for fear of the implications for his business interests as a whole. Phone hacking was used by the paper, and by certain others, as part of the competitive race for information in what were presented as scandals. Long a staple, these appeared more significant as newspapers responded to circulation pressures. Scandals were also an inherent aspect of the celebrity culture of the period. Becoming, in 1989, the final head of the Press Council, the lawyer Louis BlomCooper pressed newspapers to limit their intrusive activities before greater regulation was imposed on them. Indeed, in 1990, the organisation was replaced by the Press Complaints Commission. Nevertheless, the celebrity

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culture was greatly extended in the 1990s to include the royal family as a result of the troubled relationship between the Prince of Wales and Princess Diana. In turn, the latter used interviews and disclosures in an attempt to influence the public debate. Scandals overlapped with reporting in what became a sequence of very different episodes, each of which contributed to a growing sense of the press as in some way out of control. The pursuit of the royals, a process that Prince Charles and, far more, Princess Diana sought to manipulate, was to be followed by the Daily Telegraph’s reporting on MPs’ expenses, and the issue of phone hacking, and then by the Leveson Inquiry into the ethics and behaviour of the press and the issue of press freedom. The Inquiry began in 2011 and received evidence until 2012. Scandals were linked to an engagement with moral panics. These both sold newspapers and captured a public mood, presenting it as the public mood. Much that was offered was extreme in its approach and unattractive in its tone, and the attempt to gain an edge in such reporting led to the phone hacking and other techniques that took forward established attempts to find scoops. Thus, the press coverage of the Jamie Bulger murder in 1993 was characterised by the attempt to blame this killing of a toddler by two young boys on video nasties, was associated with a moral panic, and was followed, once the boys were released, by press attempts to track them down. In Exeter, the Safer Sex Ball, a successful charity event designed to raise AIDS awareness, got somewhat out-of-hand in the case of one couple in January 2013. The episode involved the issues of security and privacy bound up in the spread of CCTV, smartphones and the Internet; as the actions of the couple recorded on a CCTV were copied to a smartphone. The Daily Mail suggested that the Ball was a reminder of ‘the decadence that came just before the fall of the Roman Empire’, an observation that indicated, surprisingly, that the paper was not in touch with recent scholarship. Murdoch replaced the News of the World in 2012 with a Sunday edition of the Sun. As a result, the Sun became a seven-day operation. In January 2018, it had an average daily circulation of 1.5 million. However, from March 2018, that circulation was less than that of Metro, a free tabloid produced on Monday–Friday by the same media group as the Daily Mail. Launched in 1999, initially only in London, the paper is largely devoted to London news, and there are no regional editions within England. Metro contains news, but not much, and certainly less than in the Sun. The issue of 20 September 2018 had a wrap-around advertising Michael Palin’s television programme on North Korea. An ability to respond to online opportunities was important to prominence and profits, as with the success of the Daily Mail, which, under the highly effective editorship of Paul Dacre, took over from the Sun the position of hate paper for the left and added that of hate paper for those opposed to BREXIT, notably if they argued that the 2016 referendum result had been swayed by

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biased reporting. The Daily Mail’s website strongly targeted the American market in the mid-2010s. In 2017, Mail Online had more than 250 staff in the USA and launched its own television show aimed at the USA. However, that year Associated Newspapers, the parent company, had to apologise to Melania Trump and pay damages after suggesting, in 2016, that she had a background in an escort service. The Daily Mail had followed other newspapers into supplements, adding, for example, a weekly arts and entertainment one. At the same time that the Daily Mail thus pursued novelty there was also much continuity, as with the gossip column by ‘Ephraim Hardcastle’ and the cartoons by ‘Mac’. That in the Daily Mail on 21 August 2018 had a nervous potential prison governor saying to a guard in a ruinous prison, ‘Of course I’m nervous. I didn’t know I’d have to pass an interview before I get the job.’ The prisoners are shown preparing to interview him. Meanwhile, the Sun continued to lay down its accustomed line. Thus, on 21 August 2018, a tweet from Dawn Butler, Shadow Secretary for Women and Equalities, attacking cultural ‘appropriation’ by Jamie Oliver, led to a comment piece by Brendan O’Neill in which he attacked the ‘miserabilist, divisive PC worldview’. His theme was, instead, liberation, with the argument that ‘the global intermingling of food and art has enriched human life’. For the same day, the Sun’s editorials began: The Sun says Are EU kidding? It is stomach-turning to see the EU smugly congratulating itself on ‘European solidarity’ saving Greece. What a sick joke. The country was deliberately reduced to a smoking ruin as Germany, supposedly its Eurozone ally, prospered. Look at Greece now as it finally emerges from eight years of monstrous bailouts it will be paying back for decades. Savage cuts and tax rises have slashed its GDP by a quarter. A third of its ten million population are in poverty. One in five cannot afford electricity or rent. Forty per cent of young people are jobless. Many in work earn half what they did ten years ago. Hundreds of thousands of Greece’s brightest have fled. The Eurozone works nicely for Germany . . . but that’s it. Thank God we never signed up to it. As for EU ‘solidarity’, it’s propaganda. Real Remainia NOW we know why so many diehard Remainers are as crazy as flies on a window. They HAVE gone mad. Brexit Anxiety Disorder is real, two top psychologists believe. It certainly explains the gibbering hallucinations of Andrew Adonis and his mates. Two grievous losses tipped this complacent Remoaner elite over the edge: The control over our national direction to which they always felt entitled. And our departure from the corrupt, bullying, protectionist EU club they bizarrely consider a beacon of liberal values. Their latest co-ordinated ruse – backed by rich celebrities, has-been

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politicians and former newspapers – is to pretend a second referendum would ‘bring a divided Britain together’. They are actually arguing that after two years of abusing 17.4 million Leavers as thick racists, Remainers now deserve a second chance to get what they wanted. And that, whatever the result, we would all magically unite behind it. If there’s a more laughably mad contention, we haven’t heard it. We might once have wondered what they were smoking. But the truth is simpler: they are just genuinely barking. Douglas Carswell noted that in the 2016 EU referendum, the press was more helpful than television journalism for the LEAVE campaign, in that ‘many of them did not play along with Project Fear’.11 In the year ending April 2018, the digital revenues of the Guardian overtook print revenues for the first time. The former rose 15 per cent to £108.6 million out of total revenues up 1 per cent to £217 million; while the daily print circulation fell by 13 per cent to 138,000. In 2018, in accordance with a plan launched in 2016, both the Guardian and its sister-title, the Observer, were relaunched, while their newsrooms were reduced through several rounds of voluntary redundancies, a cause of significant short-term financial losses. In order to cut costs, the newspapers also outsourced their printing to Reach, formerly known as Trinity Mirror. The Observer became a tabloid in 2018. The Guardian and the Observer sell themselves as providing ‘fearless, independent journalism – get uncompromised reporting on every negotiation’.12 The Observer, on 14 January 2018, declared: ‘our dedication to fearless, independent journalism remains undiminished. To be a force for change, you have to be willing to embrace it.’ As an instance of innovative financing, the Guardian has 340,000 supporters who pay a monthly fee to help its journalism, encouraged by repeated notices about how the paper does not get much revenue from advertising and is independent of proprietorial controls. Newspapers of course advertise themselves, but less egregiously or offensively than does the BBC, which is both taxpayer-funded and in a dominant news position. The Guardian’s pattern of ‘cloud finance’, also seen with many one-off financial contributions to the paper, is not, however, one that works more generally for the national press. The pattern reflects the prosperity of much of the readership and the extent to which the paper has a coherent political message. At the same time, in 2015 the Bristol Post carried on its cover ‘52p to subscribers. 65p.’ In part, the fortune and fate of the press was a matter of the aggregate results of individual titles, but this was far less than the complete picture. The sense of overall success and prosperity was also highly significant as it could encourage, as well as discourage, investment and, more generally, turn outcomes into trends, and trends into the future. There was also the impact of

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information about the position abroad. A highly instructive instance was that provided in the United States by the Chief Executive of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett, who is widely regarded as the world’s greatest living investor and who has a long affinity with the American newspaper industry. As a teenager he delivered newspapers, later going on to take a major stake in the Washington Post and to acquire many local and regional titles. In his shareholder newsletter for 2012, Buffett argued that newspapers needed to charge for their digital editions in order to survive. By 2018, he had become more pessimistic, in part in response to the sharp fall in circulation for the twenty-eight newspapers he had purchased in 2011. In February 2018, Buffett told CNBC that only two newspapers, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, had an assured future, and that because of their proven Internet model that people would pay for. By May 2018, at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting, he was willing to add the Washington Post, but no others. So also, possibly, with the British press. By 2028 there may be three paper newspapers, the Times, the Daily Mail, and the Guardian, or only the first two, or, maybe the Sun and the Daily Telegraph as well. However many print copies, there will probably be several active and trustworthy pay-for-accurate news websites, including possibly the Daily Telegraph.13 One key element, in Britain and the United States, was the lack of any purchase of an existing title, or the creation of a new one, by any of the Internet giants. They were concerned at broad-range diversification and branding, but this did not extend to print news. Nor, indeed, and more significantly in terms of the general culture, did the Internet giants greatly favour online news. Indeed, conventional news of any type seemed distinctively less significant to existing consumers, and, in particular, to the all-important new group represented by the young and their willingness to spend and borrow. Entertainment as news, and personal relations as news, were both readily presented and catered for by the Internet; but a more conventional print form, let alone format, for news aroused far less interest among the young. Whereas, in the late 1970s, 60 per cent of 17- and 18-year-olds said they read a book or magazine almost every day, by 2016 only 16 per cent did. Moreover, if they read newpapers, the young tend to read free ones. The overall reading of books also declined, but not so dramatically. Furthermore, by 2018, the reading of electronic books was in decline, while that of print editions was constant. Audio-books were rising in popularity. Commuting practices were significant. On trains where passengers could sit, newspapers remained convenient. However, in crowded trains, it was easier to use audio-books and website apps. In part, the decline in the salience of newspapers was because more conventional types of news, such as classified advertisements, stock market quotations, and sports results, were mostly now followed on web-based

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services. This change greatly hit advertising and revenues. Thus, the Sheffield Telegraph, a weekly, used to be invaluable for local property sales, but has been hit by Internet property services. A very different decline in use was that of old newspapers as wrapping, and notably for fish and chips. In practice, the sale of Food and Drugs Act of 1875 should have ended the process, but the Food Safety Act of 1990 and the Materials and Articles in Contact with Food (England) Regulations of 2012 transformed the situation more recently. Moreover, ‘news’ is now a 24-hour process and content, which created pressures for the press, as did the entire concept of programmes on-demand. A double-page spread in the Daily Telegraph of 8 September 2018, urging readers to start a 30-day free trial today, began: Make sense of today’s biggest stories with a digital subscription to The Telegraph: * Get the daily newspaper, delivered to your smartphone or tablet from 5 am, for a complete perspective on the world around you. 24/7 access to breaking news and thoughtful insight in subscriber-only articles on the website and app. Although newspapers cut their costs dramatically, thanks to the use of computer technology and to greatly reduced staffing, the issue was not primarily the cost of the news, but the inherent interest of what newspapers understood by it. This perspective also challenged the role of newspapers as a medium for advertisements, or, rather, of advertisements from which they could derive an income. In an industry long addicted to it, optimism by 2018 was in very short supply. Part of the resort by newspapers was an emphasis on journalistic professionalism. It was hoped that this would maintain loyalty both to the press as a whole and to particular titles. Such professionalism took a number of forms, including the Times adding to its culture section ‘What the critics would pay to see.’ Maybe so, but journalistic professionalism did not win a new generation of readers. Linked to this, the economies of scale, and indeed the issues of production and distribution costs, increasingly counted in favour of the web and against newspapers.14 In response to ‘fake news’, or, rather, to claims, particularly associated from 2017 with President Donald Trump, about the ‘fake news’ of traditional American outlets, both newspapers and television stations, English newspapers were energised to a mission of maintaining standards. However, it was unclear that this mission would enjoy much resonance, let alone success, apart from among traditional readers. The long-term implications of the ‘fake news’ furore are unclear, although it will become part of the accumulated rhetoric of contention about the press. The furore may encourage

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a measure of state support, indeed a reaction to the air of political and public disfavour that surrounded the press at the time of the Leveson Inquiry, but that is scarcely likely. The very process of newspaper investigation may appear a necessary feature of an active democracy, indeed as the best counter to ‘fake news’ and to the often related extremism on social media, all points made by the press. Nevertheless, such a mission does not guarantee readers. Instead, it was necessary to provide variety. Costing £3, the Observer, on 26 March 2017, highlighted on its front page the key charge made in a lengthy editorial inside the paper: This week the UK will throw into jeopardy the achievements of 60 years of unparalleled European peace, security and prosperity. The hard Tory Brexit in prospect represents an epic act of self-harm. And, far from reuniting a fractured kingdom, Theresa May has divided it further. Above that came an illustrated headline: ‘Free Inside. Nigella’s 20 Best Recipes. From glazed ham to lemon pavlova, Observer Food Monthly’s selection.’ Sometimes, such items accorded with the political assumptions of a paper, as when, with reference to Malton in Yorkshire, the Daily Telegraph, on 20 February 2016, carried a feature on ‘How we saved our historic high street,’ which was proclaimed as ‘a victory for The Telegraph’s Reinventing the High Street Campaign’. Sports news could fit into any editorial policy. At other times, there was a marked contrast between editorial policy and the content of non-news sections. A key requirement, across topics, was for the writing to be vigorous and exciting, as in the opening article in ‘Sportfriday’, a section in the Daily Telegraph, on 6 July 2001. Writing from Edgbaston, Michael Henderson began: This wasn’t Test cricket, it was lunacy. But if it was lunacy it was the work of benevolent madmen. On a glorious summer’s day England and Australia presented a magnificent gift of 427 runs to a full house . . . When an opening batsman [Michael Slater] plays with such freedom of stroke, unencumbered by the possibility of losing his wicket, one can only rejoice, for the game is all the richer for his boldness. It was sensational cricket . . . In the course of the day the batsmen made their runs at a shade under five an over, which takes some absorbing. This is an Ashes Test, for goodness sake! . . . Then, all of a sudden, Caddick went berserk . . . The crowd roared, open-mouthed at the cheek of it all . . . This really was a day in a thousand.

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On the whole, newspapers were able to provide a level of engagement that the BBC lacked because of the latter’s practice of providing both points of view. There were frequent complaints about partisanship on the part of the BBC, usually that it was markedly left-of-centre, but little to match that of newspapers across the political spectrum. Thus, when the veteran left-wing politician Tony Benn died in 2014, Matthew Parris, a former Conservative MP, who was a columnist in the Times, offered a biting attack in the issue of 15 March, that went on to offer a partisan account of recent national history. Having referred to Benn as ‘a deluded left-winger . . . notorious old twister . . . [with] poisonous beliefs,’ Parris continued by making a broader point about the role of memorialisation and ‘uncritical legacies’ in helping to shape myths that made ‘a sensible reading of history’ harder to explain. He then criticised Clement Attlee, the Labour Prime Minister in 1945–51: Attlee’s takeover of the coal and steel industries began a series of nationalisations that pointed post-war economic policy in wholly the wrong direction and helped to cripple our recovery . . . The slow-burn catastrophe of putting health into the hands of a central state monolith was one of 20th century Britain’s most far-reaching mistakes. Do we find it hard to come to terms with the mistake because of misplaced deference to the ‘nobility’ of their venture . . .? Demythologising the leaders of the Left in Britain since 1945 would be a useful first step towards thinking straight about modern political history . . . Anthony Crosland is lauded as an intellectual: he was a destroyer of our education system. The details and tone of this critique can of course be contested. However, the use of a newspaper to contest the tradition of a political movement is readily apparent, as also with very different pieces in the Guardian. Prominent government ministers could do the same, as on 3 January 2014, when Michael Gove, the Conservative Secretary of State for Education, used the Daily Mail to publish a piece ‘Why does the Left insist on belittling true British heroes?’ that engaged with the satirical critical approach to the First World War, including in BBC works such as Blackadder and The Monocled Mutineer. Other writers argued the same as with Max Hastings’ ‘Oh, what a lovely myth,’ in the Sunday Times on 11 May 2014. In turn, the Observer, in its lead item on 5 January 2014, carried a piece about an article, published in that issue by Tristram Hunt, Labour Shadow Education Secretary, accusing Gove of crassness and arguing the case for patriotism on the Left. Both the Gove and the Hunt pieces are still worth reading as instances of the ability of newspapers to produce high-grade partisan material in a fashion that the BBC rarely will. Gove had also used the Times on 6 November 2007 to offer a patriotic account both of Elizabeth I and of England’s role in the world.

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Politics, however, was less significant in newspaper content than is generally suggested. Social relationships were a prime topic of the press across the political divides and the different types of newspapers. Take the ‘our problems solved’ in Exeposé. For 23 January 2012, the letter picked up an enduring theme, starting: ‘I’m a single second-year student who moved in with three equally single girls at the beginning of the year. The problem is that they’ve all got boyfriends now and I’m feeling increasingly isolated.’ Agony aunts have had a long run. ‘The Auntie From Hell’ added a comic note in the 1990s, both with her replies and with her weekly tips, such as ‘Don’t imagine you can change a man unless he’s in nappies’ and ‘So many men – so few machine guns’.15 On 27 November 2017, ‘Agony McAuntface’ answered ‘I really fancy my housemate, will it make things awkward?’ and ‘A close friend of mine has feelings for me . . . What do I do?’ ‘Fitting in’ was repeatedly a theme. For 20 February 2012, the correspondent in ‘our problems solved’ was worried about going to a ‘party island’ for a summer holiday with her university friends and the drinking and seeking men involved, neither of which she wished to be pushed into doing: ‘I’m worried that they’ll think I’m a loser.’ Homesickness was the topic on 5 March 2012. Reports about blind dates (both heterosexual and homosexual) also became an Exeposé regular item anew from 2012, with each individual commenting on and marking the other, a version of the more general university engagement with feedback. Comments, but not marks, were the feature of ‘Recipe for Love,’ an earlier version.16 ‘The commercialism of Valentine’s Day,’ a complaint in Exeposé on 12 February 2018, was the topic of annual diatribes. Other aspects of romance were covered across the press. On 20 September 2018, in response to the forthcoming marriage of Princess Eugenie, the Daily Telegraph had a section on ‘The new rules for being father of the bride.’ Many classified advertisements related to the search for partners. At the same time as seeking internal consistency and thus character, newspapers sought to distinguish their own position from other newspapers. Indeed, that was a key aspect of their identity. The emphasis on variety in the press was inherently democratic, even if views were not covered equally. Moreover, newspapers explicitly contrasted themselves with other newspapers. Comparisons could not only be made about politics. Thus, on 6 May 2001, ‘Culture Vulture’ in the Sunday Telegraph produced a chart of the reviews, in the Daily Telegraph, Times, Guardian, Independent, Financial Times, Daily Mail, Daily Express and Evening Standard, of new films, and new productions of plays, operas and ballets, the chart using a pictorial key of ‘Great Carrion!’, ‘On the Turn’ and ‘Rotten’. This emphasis on comparisons was also seen with prices, which were a key issue, and not least in a world in which supermarkets bid against each

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other, including in newspaper advertisements, by comparing prices. The Sun in 2018 put on its front page that it was ‘25p less than the Daily Mirror’.

Notes 1 D. Healey, The Time of My Life (London, 1990), p. 497. 2 S. Tunney, ‘Neil Kinnock and Robert Maxwell: How Kinnock Changed his Perception when Maxwell Looked to the Mirror’, Media History, 10 (2004), pp. 201–11. 3 E. Steafel, ‘Life of Riley’, The Telegraph Magazine, 18 Aug. 2018, p. 17; L. Lamb, Sunrise: The Remarkable Rise and Rise of the Best-Selling Soaraway Sun (London, 1989); R. Grose, The Sun-sation: The Inside Story of Britain’s Best-Selling Daily Newspaper (London, 1988). 4 R. Harris, Gotcha! The Government, the Media and the Falklands Crisis (London, 1983). 5 Kenneth Baker to Black, email, 19 Aug. 2018. 6 J. Thomas, Popular Newspapers, The Labour Party and British Politics (Abingdon, 2005). 7 T. O’Malley and C. Soley, Regulating the Press (London, 2000). 8 Independent, 26 Mar. 2016, p. 2; S. Glover, Paper Dreams (London, 1993). 9 R. Keeble and J. Mair (eds), The Phone Hacking Scandal: Journalism on Trial (London, 2012). 10 BBC News, 21 Dec. 2010. 11 Carswell to Black, 11 Sept. 2018. 12 Observer, 26 Mar. 2017. 13 Andrew Roberts to Black, 9 Sept. 2018; for the more optimistic account, Roy Greenslade in Telegrafonline, 10 June 2011. Conversation with David Lidington, 28 October 2018. 14 J. Curran and J. Seaton, Power without Responsibility: Press, Broadcasting, and the Internet in Britain (Abingdon, 2009). 15 Exeposé, 3 Feb. 1997. 16 See e.g. Exeposé, 2 Dec. 1996.

8 Into the future People may become too lazy to read and news will be laid on to house or office, just as gas and water are now. The occupiers will listen to an account of the news of the day, read to them by much improved phonographs while sitting in the garden.

R

obert Donald, editor of the Daily Chronicle and Lloyd’s Weekly News, was forward-looking when addressing the Institute of Journalists in 1913 on the future of wireless (radio) news. Yet, alongside longstanding reports of the demise of the press, reports that have markedly gathered pace over the last decade, newspapers continue to have influence, or to be used as if they do. In 2009, after the Sun switched its allegiance to the Conservatives, Gordon Brown, the Labour Prime Minister, called Rupert Murdoch and, according to the latter, declared war on the company, a charge Brown denied. Moreover, senior political or ex-political figures were willing to write for the press, as in the Evening Standard on 3 March 2016 when Nick Clegg wrote at length on the editorial page about the need for more progress in tackling mental health issues. They could also be eager to be interviewed, as when Emily Thornberry, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, gave a lengthy interview to the Evening Standard on 21 September 2018 which provided the basis for an editorial presenting her as a contender to be the next Prime Minister. The government also briefed senior newspaper figures on the evening of 5 July 2018, the day before an apparently vital Cabinet meeting on BREXIT, Tony Gallagher, editor of the Sun, was seen heading into No 10. His counterpart, Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail, who had declared that BREXIT was in the DNA of the paper and its readers, had had dinner there with Theresa May, the Prime Minister, the previous evening. In November 2017, she had attended a banquet to celebrate 25 years of Dacre as editor. The results of the Cabinet meeting, in turn, were challenged, due to a political rift within the Conservative Party in which the dissidents drew strongly on the strong and continuing support of the Daily Telegraph which was willing 159

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to use charges of treason to attack ministers whom it thought insufficiently firm over BREXIT.1 The paper was unremittingly hostile to the Prime Minister, suggesting in its cartoon on 30 August 2018, with reference to the violent dispute between British and French scallop fishermen in the English Channel, that she lacked the Nelson touch. This criticism looked back to the longstanding problem that Conservative modernisers found in winning press support,2 but also served to raise the stock of Boris Johnson in which the Daily Telegraph had heavily invested. Dacre’s replacement as editor also became a news item focused on the question of whether his successor, Geordie Greig, would be so strongly for BREXIT. As editor of the Mail on Sunday, Greig had taken a REMAIN stance in 2016. The Observer reported on 16 September 2018 ‘The Mail leopard has changed its spots on Brexit.’ In July 2018, the principal news item during President Donald Trump’s brief visit to Britain arose from his interview with the Sun, and his subsequent claim that he had been misreported in what he declared was ‘fake news’. The Sun denied this and had a recording to prove their point. Theresa May, however, brushed the episode off as a characteristic piece of press coverage, which offered a classic instance of guilt by association. Trump’s choice of the Sun was instructive as a reading of the British press and of populism in British politics, and as a consequence of Murdoch’s media interest in the United States. The idea that the press provided ‘fake news’ robbed it of its distinctiveness. Moreover, an EU report indicated that the UK population had a particularly low level of trust in its newspapers, a process encouraged by, but not due to, the bad publicity linked to the Leveson Inquiry. This approach extended into the field of journalism. In the Harry Potter books, Rita Skeeter offered the example of a fictional journalist, a reporter for the Daily Prophet, who lacked scruples, is nasty, and appeared shifty. Separately, the Leveson Inquiry reflected the challenges posed to the press by the assertiveness of the judiciary and of an interventionist concept of the law. Ironically, the figure of the over-mighty judge was deplored after 1688–9 as an aspect of the Stuart legacy. There were also issues about trust in advertisements. In 2018, the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph carried a notice that, while they took ‘reasonable steps to check our advertisers are bona fide, readers should carry out their own checks before entering into any contract or agreement’. Criticism, however, did not really affect the tone of the press. Thus, the Times ended its leader on 12 May 2017 in a way that would have been familiar a century earlier: ‘Britain has a time-honoured role as a defender of world peace. This is no time to relinquish that role, but the Prime Minister must insist on more realism as to how it will be funded.’ The Times could still offer

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measured and realistic leaders, as on 3 October 2016 on BREXIT. So also with informed essays as also in other newspapers. For example, in City A.M. on 21 August 2018, Ryan Bourne provided a carefully considered piece on the mistake of assuming that Germany was an appropriate economic model. The principal problem therein was not the tone of newspapers, but rather that the flow of politics was by then very different in its character. Possible scenarios for the press are advanced in part by different timetables. Alongside longer-range discussion, both of the impact of technological development and of changes in consumption, came more specific issues, and this will continue to be the case. Again, these specific issues were partly to do with technological development, but there was also the problems posed by the likely end to the historically long run of low interest rates, and the related consequences for cash-flow, return on capital ratios, and profitability. There were also questions about how changes would affect both particular titles and models of press activity at the international, national, and local levels. Given the significance of international investment in the English press, by Canadian, Australian and Russian entrepreneurs after the Second World War, there was also the issue of the likely impact of greater regulation, both of the press and of capital flows, under a Labour government. Such regulation might well affect investment that would otherwise be encouraged by the fall of sterling that such a government was likely to bring. The sensitivity to foreign intervention in national politics that was seen in the mid-2010s might well spread from the ownership of digital to those of print formats. The Guardian, in turn, declared in its appeal for funds ‘our journalism is free from the influence of billionaire owners or politicians. No one edits our editor. No one steers our opinion.’ At the back of everything came the bigger questions as to whether, why and with what consequences print media as a whole was in decline, and also concerning the future distinctiveness of newspapers. In February 2018, the government announced a review into the future of the newspaper industry. In particular, it warned that the closure of regional papers was fuelling the rise of ‘fake news’ and was ‘dangerous for democracy’. From 2005 till then, over 200 local newspapers had closed in the United Kingdom, while the number of regional journalists had halved to about 6,500. Similar processes were seen elsewhere, notably in the United States. The change in England was part of a shift away from the local and the regional that was also seen in football teams, retail outlets, banks and services. Moreover, there were claims of a ‘democracy deficit’ in towns without local newspapers, not least because of more limited community contention. So also with questions of the scrutiny of local officials and politicians. With the demise of local newspapers, there appeared to be far fewer means of calling power to account, a development that clashed with attempts in other spheres to develop local democracy, for example with the election of Crime

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Commissioners. For example, in 2009, the Port Talbot Guardian closed after eighty-five years, and by 2013 all the planning stories carried locally by television and radio were from Council press releases. This was important to a community experiencing massive socio-economic change. In Exeter, the Express and Echo went from being a daily to a biweekly. In Kensington, the local newspaper became a freesheet written by a single person in Dorset.3 Linked to the latter process, newspapers ceased to have offices on urban high streets. In contrast, the Bristol Post, a daily, maintained a campaigning stance and local coverage. Thus, on 12 August 2015, the newspaper focused on a ‘sixhour wait before dying of meningitis’, both the leading news item and the topic of the editorial. The issue was one of local news and local concern. The Sheffield Telegraph provided good coverage in 2018 of the controversy about the city council removing many trees. The Bristol Post drew also on reader contributions, as in the ‘Your Say’ section. So also with newspapers such as the Western Morning Post which very actively encouraged reader contributions by 2018. In ‘The Khan Audit’ from 3 to 7 September 2018, the Evening Standard produced a series of pieces examining the record of the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, for example, on 6 September, a piece on air pollution. Newspapers have tried to adapt, for example becoming tabloids as the Reading Chronicle did in 2009. As with other newspapers, the Bristol Post provided an opportunity to query content: ‘Our policy is to provide a news and information service that is fair, balanced and accurate. We adhere to the Independent Press Standards Organisation’s code of practice. Our policy is to correct mistakes and apologise where appropriate. If you are unhappy about any matter concerning this newspaper, write to Mike Norton, Editor, The Bristol Post,’ whose address was provided. In 2018, Peter Luff, a former Worcestershire MP, observed: Local papers still have a role, but it is diminishing fast, overtaken by local blogs and other social media. The challenge now is how to communicate with local voters . . . Nowadays people know the very local (their village, street etc) and have some awareness of their wider region, but often don’t know what is going on in the neighbouring town. We have become simultaneously better informed about the world and less well-informed about our near communities.4 The current wisdom from party political experts is that local papers have little impact on voters. Fewer people read them, and young people probably hardly at all. Content is increasingly poor for two reasons. First, much of it is cut and pasted from indifferent web versions such as www.devonlive.com

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and, secondly, there is a lack of journalists. Some attempts have been made to redress this by funding reporters under the national Local Democracy Scheme established in 2017. This is designed to produce a network of journalists funded by the Licence Fee working for the entire local news sector in the UK and following in their shared data and local television and radio material a single set of standards. The intention was to produce 150 ‘impartial reporters out there working for the common good’. As of 2018, the distribution of reporters funded accordingly came to 144 for Britain, with 63 for Trinity Mirror, 38 for Newsquest, 33.5 for Johnston Press, 2 for KM Media Group, 2 for Stonebow/Media (the Lincolnshire Reporter), 2 for Archant Community Media, 1 for Citizen News and Media (the Hackney Citizen), 1 for Manx Radio, 1 for the London Evening Standard and 0.5 for Shetland News.5 It is unclear how well this system is working. Many of the stories in local papers are only of interest to people affected by them, but that can be a large number. The Hampshire Chronicle, an impressive Newsquest-owned weekly, provided not only details on local planning issues, but also ‘Your Say’, which on 13 September 2018 was on banning energy drinks for under-sixteen-year-olds, a campaign pressed by the Winchester MP. The same issue provided an article and editorial on the need to campaign that children receive dental care (which is free). Reader contributions are sought, as in ‘Got a Sports Story? Write to Chronicle Sport . . .’ Most of this information in these newspapers, however, can be obtained elsewhere, through the Internet and local radio, with the range of opinion offered by the former being endless. Local papers typically carry ‘What’s On’ sections, with a mix of paid-for and free events information. The old ‘social’ pages of photographs of locals squeezed into suits or frocks drinking with fixed smiles are now provided by illustrated magazines, such as Exeter Living, that are obtainable for free and funded by advertising. That denies the newspapers a self-regarding readership. Company results created a regular and repeated sense of crisis. This was compounded because it was the case for all types of newspaper. The popular national tabloids were especially hard hit in the late 2010s, and this was a particular problem because they were more dependent on circulation than ‘quality newspapers’ that had greater advertising revenue. In the first half of 2018, the overall UK national tabloid newspaper market declined by 9.3 per cent. That was also the fall for the Daily Express, while the circulation of the Sunday People fell by 16.4 per cent, the Sunday Mirror by 14.8 per cent, the Daily Mirror by 13.9 per cent, the Daily Star by 12.1 per cent, the Star by 9.2 per cent and the Sunday Express by 8.3 per cent. As a result, there was a half-year pre-tax loss of £113.5 million for Reach, formerly Trinity Mirror, which faced particular problems for its regional titles. These were nationwide and included the Birmingham Mail, the Bristol Post, the Express and Echo

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(Exeter), the Liverpool Echo, the Manchester Evening News and the Western Morning News. Indeed, in 2018, Reach wrote down the value of its local papers by £150 million because of a ‘more challenging outlook for our regional businesses’. That write-down entailed a compromising of the results of past investment. In effect, this process looked back to the late Victorian period, when the origins of this investment were made. Large-scale capitalism replaced the smaller-scale version that had been important hitherto, albeit with a continuation into the period of the larger scale, and this replacement was linked to a significant restructuring. However, unlike today, the earlier context was that of substantial growth. Reach’s results were more serious because it was the country’s biggest news publisher as a result in February 2018 of taking over, for £122 million, the Northern and Shell group, including the Express and Star titles. That group had been chaired by Richard Desmond. This was a good price for the titles. Whereas Reach’s group revenue in the six months to 1 July 2018 rose by 10.6 per cent to £353.8 million, reflecting this acquisition, it fell by 7.2 per cent on a like-for-like basis. Whereas, the first-night print of the Daily Star in November 1978, 1,400,000 copies, had sold out, by November 2017 the circulation was down to 402,000. At the same time, the Reach group opened a digital title in Leeds where it has no print titles. It requires growth in digital revenues to offset the continued decline from its print products, and that is a particular problem for popular tabloids. A 9.3 per cent decline in print revenue outweighed a 6.6 per cent increase in digital publishing revenue. Print advertising revenue dropped by 16.6 per cent on a like-by-like basis, despite a rise in national advertisements by bookmakers during the 2018 World Cup as well as the strength in supermarket advertising that reflected bitter competition in that sector. The advertising revenue was hit hard by a fall in classified advertising in regional titles, especially in recruitment and property. The Reach group also increased, to £70.5 million, its provision for settling civil claims after the phonehacking scandal. More positively, there were cost savings of £9 million and, stripping out the costs, underlying profit rose by 5.5 per cent. Yet, rising newsprint costs and the weaker outlook for the regional titles ensured that, in the first seven months of 2018, shares in Reach fell by 14.25 per cent. Furthermore, ‘cost savings’, which cut both current salaries and (crucially) future pensions, meant fewer jobs. These poor results were not unique. Johnston Press, whose group includes the i, the Yorkshire Post, and the Scotsman, produced a half-year report for the first half of 2018 that, although there was a strong performance from the i, there was a broader decline in revenues. Adjusted advertising revenues from continuing operations fell by 15 per cent, with revenue from classified advertising showing a decline of 28.5 per cent compared to the same period in 2017. This was consistent with pressures across the industry as a whole,

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and notably for regional and local newspapers. Digital audiences grew to a record 27.3 million average users per month, but total digital advertising revenues fell by 7.4 per cent. Algorithm and newsfeed changes by Google and Facebook contributed to this. Newspaper sales overall fell by 1.7 per cent, but price rises broadly offset the impact of circulation declines. Total revenue at £93 million was down 10 per cent, while adjusted net debt, which owed much to pension obligations, at 30 June 2018 was £203.2 million, compared to £195.9 million six months earlier. The operating profit was £7.4 million, up from £4.9 million. The Johnston Press’s print newspapers were hit by the increase in newsprint costs. The issue of i of 15–16 September 2018, the weekend issue, explained the increase in its cost of £1, or 47p for subscribers (compared to the Monday to Friday edition continuing at 60p), because the cost of new materials, notably newsprint, rose by 8 per cent in January and a further 8 per cent in July. After briefly going into administration on 17 November 2018, the company was taken over by its bondholders, refinanced and reborn as JPI Media. As general elements, rising digital subscriptions are not making up for the shortfall in the circulation of printed copies. Moreover, it is not proving possible to monetise interest in local news. The digital press itself has particular values. It is possible to allow for in-depth journalism and to maximise advertising revenue, without having to juggle space any more. However, that does not in itself bring profit. Although almost free to distribute, digital editions have added to production costs, as they are produced alongside the printed versions. With a change of editor and some investment, some newspapers, such as the Daily Telegraph, could bounce back. But it takes a curious beast who wants to invest in newspapers these days for financial as opposed to political reasons. The newspaper industry is characterised by a high level of operational gearing in Britain, usually referred to as operating leverage in the United States, with profits being highly sensitive to a change in sales. Fixed costs – premises, equipment, staff and distribution system – are high, the variable costs – newsprint – relatively low. This has been particularly the case because of the fall in the price of newsprint in recent years. As a result, if sales rise, the profits rise considerably. This, however, goes into reverse should sales drop, which is the recent situation, and notably so for local papers. After Reach, the second largest publisher of regional and local newspapers is the Newsquest Media Group which has 165 newspapers and 40 magazines. In 2016, it reached 28 million people a month online and 6.5 million readers a week in print. Newsquest is the product of investment in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It was founded in 1995 as a £210 million management buy-out of the Reed Regional Newspapers group financed by an American private equity partnership. After that it expanded, notably by buying the Westminster Press

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local newspapers group in 1996. In 1999, the American Gannett media group bought the company, and crucially its debt, for £922 million, and it subsequently expanded Newsquest’s holdings, especially with the Southampton-based News Communications and Media’s newspapers in 2000. Such a pattern of investment has not been seen in the 2010s. The circulation of the press, both individual and total, had fallen significantly. Whereas, in 1967, the Daily Mirror and the Daily Express had a combined sale of over eight million, today it is under a million, and the population meanwhile has grown substantially. Four million in 1949, the circulation of the Daily Express fell to less than three in 1975 and to less than two in 1984 and in November 2017 was only 365,000. The Daily Mail, the supposed voice of ‘middle England’, or at least a dyspepsic and frightened image of same, in June 2018 had daily sales of 1.3 million. Moreover, many references to the importance of the press were backward looking, as when Sajid Javid, who became Home Secretary in 2018, declared that, growing up in a rough part of Bristol, he had developed an early interest in capitalism thanks to reading the Financial Times in the local library. Age structures were a key element in the future of the press, with social media appealing more to the young, while print newspapers did so for their older counterparts, and both in news and advertisements. In 2017, the percentage of the Daily Mail’s readers over fifty-five was 63. For the Daily Express it was 64. This contrast in ageing has been linked to a crisis not only of circulation but also of content and, even more, editorial tone.6 The differences in views over BREXIT may be linked to this element. Demise, however, was not the sole issue. There were those also posed by the change of character as some newspapers become essentially free advertising periodicals, in the sense that they were free to readers and financed by advertising. That was the case with the established titles, such as the Evening Standard, and with many new local periodicals, such as Metro and City A.M. in London. City A.M. could provide carefully considered editorials on political matters, as, on 7 September 2018, with a discussion of Boris Johnson’s political options. Metro is far less absorbed with politics and tends to go for alarmist headlines, as with the issue of 29 August 2018 which led with the head of the Police Federation in London describing attacks on the police as part of a ‘breakdown of society’. Many advertising periodicals lacked even this level of engagement. Published in Coventry as part of a chain, the West Country Advertiser, in its undated issue 96 (available 7 September 2018), advertised holiday homes over several pages, as well as care homes, home improvements, cafés, ‘a hidden Cornish gem’, fishing on the Tay, pet care, and wedding preparations, with no news provided, unlike these London titles. The following issues began with an item on the Wells Beer Festival that in large part was an advertisement.

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Advertisements for houses were a major source of revenue and encouraged news sections accordingly, as in Metro where, in 2018, they were in association with Halifax Home Insurance. Sections included ‘The House Doctors’ in which ‘The Two Lovely Gays . . . solve your design dilemmas.’ The tone can be gauged by some of the replies, as on 21 August 2018: ‘This week’s obsession is clearly stains! Haha. But it is all good because that is real life.’ The page ended with readers being encouraged to follow them on Instagram for more tips and ideas. The problems affecting the housing market in 2018 – a decline in prices in some areas, notably London, which discouraged owners from selling, and, linked to this, a fall in the volume of sales – badly hit advertising. Housing remains important. Thus, the Reading Chronicle publishes a Property Chronicle twice-weekly. Yet, advertising revenue was hit by Internet sites, as was that from professional and managerial jobs. This has changed and constrained the financial model under which newspapers have to operate. Politics can provide advertisements. In the run-up to the 2017 general election, the Conservative Party paid for four-sided wraparounds using the local paper’s masthead and with a full front page showing a picture of Theresa May. They did this in eight cities, including Exeter, and it meant that her photo sat on newsstands for a whole week. There were complaints that this blurred the lines between advertising and editorial. In Exeter, ‘I and others protested to the editor that this blurred the lines between advertising and editorial and his response was broadly: money talks.’7 At the same time, local newspapers dependent on advertisements could engage with news. The Gillingham and Shaftesbury News, a free monthly newspaper with 15,000 copies distributed to more than 9,500 homes and to named shops and post offices, carried on the front page of its September 2018 issue, ‘North Dorset leads calls to take in child refugees.’ Whether free or paid for, local newspapers encouraged free material, as with the readiness to take photographs in the Express and Echo of 13 September 2018, an issue that included a column by the local MP, Ben Bradshaw, predicting another referendum. To refer, more generally, to emasculation or evisceration does not help other than in a rhetorical sense, for such emotive language underplays the continued varying and shifting character of the press. Separately, newspapers are not to blame if other formats, that have profited in market share from their relative decline, fail to match the same public purpose. It is certainly the case that local television in Britain has been unable, and/or unwilling, to match the onetime reporting energy and standards of local newspapers. Yet to assume that the past should be the model for behaviour, and indeed standards of judgement, is of only limited validity. In particular, the major combination of technological innovations, entrepreneurial activity, and the impact of social change on reader preferences, makes it less likely that

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the past is a reasonable model. The democratisation of opinion-forming potentially offered by social media platforms, as well as the interaction of providers and an essentially self-organizing phenomenon, can make the press appear redundant. On the other hand, clearly there are legacy issues, in that established titles command a value, for both sales and advertising, and this value reflects a continuity in product, certainly in terms of market approach and reader response. Format, content and style are all aspects of this equation. Equally, problems are involved in using modern judgements as the basis for establishing models of newspapers’ behaviour in the past. That has always been true but is particularly the case now. At the same time, allowing for significant change now, so that the current character of newspapers is far from static, should not lead to an underplaying of the degree to which that has always been the case. Indeed, the history of the English press has been one of frequent change, and notably so from the 1850s. There may well have been decades earlier where innovation was limited, for example the 1820s and (differently) 1830s, but that was not even an accurate account of the period prior to 1850 as a whole. Since then, this is certainly not the case. Given this situation, it is rather surprising to see change in the newspaper world the cause of sometimes almost automatic complaint today. Linked to this, but also separate, there are issues of great concern about the media and society, but that is not new. In practice, there are quantifiable indices of change that can indeed encourage marked disquiet, notably number of titles, which is an index of the diversity of views, and the number of journalists, which is significant due to the maintenance of talent. However, if the Internet is taken into account, both are present in great numbers, although it is very difficult to obtain the payment that may produce a revenue-stream able to support reporting. This situation is exacerbated by free online BBC news services funded by the licence fee. When an editorial in the Times on 13 May 2016 declared ‘The BBC is a broadcaster, not a publisher,’ it was implying a contrast that was no longer clearly applicable. More instructive on the international stage was the British habit of regarding the public broadcaster as a guarantor of freedom, an approach that underrated the issues posed by its dominant position. The BBC benefited from an elision that made it appear similar to the NHS. The Leveson Inquiry and the debates surrounding it led to research into the ethics of the press, the training of journalists, and the selection of news. Research suggested that most newspaper news came from information sheets sent to the press and that less than 20 per cent of content was based upon any form of critical investigative journalism.8 Yet, the latter was important in exposing scandals, such as those over MPs’ expenses, or the Indian cricket-match fixing that the News of the World reported before it was

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closed. Moreover, newspapers were ready to report what the BBC would not touch, for example, in 1995, the information on Michael Foot having been a Soviet ‘agent of influence’. Foot won damages from the Sunday Times apparently by not telling the truth.9 In certain respects, the run-down in newspaper reporting is a return to the ‘scissors-and-paste’ content of many early papers, albeit in a different context and against a very contrasting background. If many provincial papers today are weeklies, that was also true of the eighteenth century. Rather than being a sign of failure, it was a response to the nature of market opportunities. So also with the prevalence of magazine-type articles, and the rise in celebrity news values. On 4 March 2011, Richard Peppiatt, published in the Guardian his resignation letter from the Daily Star: ‘On the awe-inspiring day millions took to the streets of Egypt to demand freedom, your paper splashed on “Jordan . . . the movie.” ’10 Television was in effect advertised by the press, both with reviews and schedules, and with discussion of prominent programmes such as The Great British Bake Off and Strictly Come Dancing, as news. For these, newspapers covered contestants11 and controversies. They also drew more directly on them, as with the Daily Telegraph of 25 August 2018 when Bole’s cartoon, under the title ‘Bake Off Returns’ commented on different attitudes to BREXIT. In 2018, there were reports about criticism of Love Island for reinforcing misconceptions about firefighters.12 Radio and the press had a symbiotic relationship, with the morning radio (and television) programmes focusing on items covered in the press. Politicians had to heed both. Thus, Denis Healey, describing ‘a typical working day’, listened to the Today programme on the radio before breakfast and after it ‘read, marked and cut the newspapers’.13 In 2018, Laura Freeman, a journalist and novelist, referred to the changes in being a public author from that, in 1930 – of ‘Letters to the Times’ and also answering journalists who asked ‘for the information of newspaper readers whether they believe in God or what they eat for breakfast’; to that of today, which included spending much time on social media plus ‘to parse the papers on Sky News and be up in the dark for Today’.14 By 2018, the number and prominence of female journalists had risen greatly. As with the relationship between traditional broadcasters and streaming services, synergies were discerned between newspapers and new technology, and not only with newspaper websites. However, the relationship was unstable. Thus, in January 2018, Facebook downgraded the position of news stories in users’ news feeds and prioritised posts from friends and relatives. This hit news outlets. Facebook, nevertheless, introduced algorithms that are supposed to keep articles from reliable news sources prominent. The nature of digital campaigning in the mid-2010s suggested a crisis that had arrived. In

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July 2018, the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee of the House of Commons, a cross-party body, claimed: ‘We are facing nothing less than a crisis in our democracy.’ Social media advertising was the key issue, as it enabled the micro-targeting of voters. This process, it was claimed, could be manipulated to mislead them, and there was considerable basis for the allegation.15 The House of Commons’ report was in line with arguments in the Observer earlier in the year and led that paper, in its leader on 29 July 2018, to call for the urgent implementation of the Committee’s recommendations, including the regulation of political spending on social media. While desirable, it is less clear that such a response would work. Meanwhile, on 23 August 2018, in the Alternative MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival, Jeremy Corbyn, one-time reporter for the still active Newport and Market Drayton Advertiser and later columnist for the Morning Star, backed ‘enforced shareholder dilution’. This would entail equity and seats on boards handed to staff and readers, so as to end the ‘stranglehold of elite power and billionaire domination over large parts of our media’. Corbyn advocated the election of editors by journalists to make them accountable to their staff. Discussion of the press increased in late 2018 as a result of a prominent BBC1 series, Press that juxtaposed the Post, a leading right-wing tabloid clearly modelled on the Sun, and the Herald, a left-inclining broadsheet supported by a charitable trust, closest to the Guardian. Interviews linked to the series noted the pessimistic response of journalists to current developments, and also provided some perceptive accounts of newspapers. Thus, Mike Bartlett, the writer, noted of a research visit to the Sun: ‘These people are not brash or stupid. They know exactly what they’re aiming at, what their audience want, and they’re just striking a different balance between entertainment and content. And they’re very proud of that.’16 The press has often fascinated playwrights. In Samuel Foote’s late play The Bankrupt (1773), ‘Margin’, a newspaper editor, refers to the role of the seasons in providing material for the press: Plays and Parliament houses are winter provisions . . . I warrant you, if you are not idle, there’s business enough. The press teems with fresh publications – histories, translations, voyages – and what with letters from Paris or Spa, inundations, elopements, dismal effects of thunder and lightning, remarkable cases at country assizes, and with changing the ministry now and then, you will have employment enough the summer.17 When Foote was accused of homosexuality by the Public Ledger in 1775–6, he turned its editor, William Jackson, into Dr Viper, the editor of the Scandalous Chronicle, in his last play The Capuchin (1776).

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The Sun was, from the 1980s, particularly successful in making the news fun (to some), and notably so in its arresting and often punning headlines. ‘FREDDIE STARR ATE MY HAMSTER,’ carried on 13 March 1986, was the most famous. Starr, a comic, said that the incident was a total fabrication, one invented by the prominent publicist Max Clifford in order to focus interest on the star. Starr claimed the story came about because of an offhand remark he made. The other really famous headline, ‘GOTCHA,’ published in the Sun on 2 May 1982, referred to a real episode, the sinking of the Argentinean warship, the General Belgrano, by a British submarine, HMS Conqueror, during the Falklands War.18 Interest in non-political news, preponderantly, of a celebrity type, was much in evidence with the Daily Mail online in the 2010s. Whereas the print edition tended to begin with substantive stories about news, celebrity gossip occupied that position in the online edition. The contrast was very clear by 2018. On 1 September 2018, Mail Online led with ‘Roxanne Pallett Walks out of the Celebrity Big Brother house amid backlash over the ex-Emmerdale Star’s claim that former Coronation Street actor Ryan Thomas punched her.’ That day, the Daily Mail led on ‘Schools turn down children who live one minute away’, an item that appeared well down in the Online headlines. There was scant difference between the tone of such Online issues and social media items, but the relevant journalism rested in providing a mass of material of such type. Moreover, the ‘gossipy’ or ‘magaziny’ character of much of the press as a whole is clear with the Saturday supplements and the need to fill their bulk in order to match the would-be advertising. At the same time, this matched public preferences. ‘We live in a time of quite difficult, bleak news,’ pointed out a radio presenter in 2018 explaining why listeners were switching from Today on Radio 4.19 Duncan Allen, the fictional editor of the Post in Press, remarks ‘Life’s hard, and our readers want a giggle.’ He is described by Holly, the Deputy News Editor of the Post, as ‘a misogynistic, overbearing, welloiled bully, an offence to journalism’. The magazine character of the popular press is evident. Rob Rinder, a columnist in the Evening Standard, began an article on 31 August 2018: ‘I was flicking through the papers, shaking my head at another week of showbiz stories about spoilt pop stars making unreasonable demands, spending small fortunes on bling, holidays and cars, and demanding “Don’t You Know Who I Am!” ’ The Daily Mail of 11 September 2018 led on ‘Soup and Shake Diet on the NHS to reverse diabetes’ and included ‘Home Gadgets that spy on you – free pull out’ and ‘Have they really killed Keeley? 10 Bodyguard theories that will have you hooked,’ a two-page spread on a television series. So also with the quality press. Thus, the Sunday Telegraph on 2 September 2018 included quizzes as well as lots on wine, modern manners, and ‘The 20 questions that could lead to a more fulfilling life resolved by our team of

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experts’. A fortnight later, there was a headline at the top ‘Angela Hartnett joins The Telegraph. Her favourite Italian dinner party recipes’. The Times on 29 August 2018 offered commentary on a new BBC series about midlife raunchiness, while, reviewing the ‘stars’ social media before their dance debuts’, the Daily Mirror of 21 September 2018 asked ‘Who’s clicked on Strictly?’ Ultimately, the question becomes one of definition. Is the hardcopy element more, or as significant, as that of news? Probably not. Far from being a formulaic product and practice, the ‘paper’ is already read by many online, more so than the book on Kindle or in audio formats, and there is no reason why that process should not develop further. Indeed, in one respect, the dynamic response to the changing character of the press is an aspect of the complexities of constructing identities and the democratisation that are so prevalent in modern society. Thus, in 2018, the Times changed its online character in order to encourage reader debate. At the same time, there was a shift in emphasis that was readily apparent in the many coffee-houses of the present day. They tend to have far more people online than reading, whether newspapers or anything else. Moreover, the change in café culture is instructive. ‘Greasy-spoon’ cafes still tend to have (old-fashioned) tabloids and people reading them, but that is far less the case in metropolitan coffee-houses. Changes in society are hitting the places where people meet and read the traditional popular press. The element of democratisation was understood as latent from the very start of printing and, even more, the press, and led to both criticism and praise, both, to a degree, exaggerated as well as teleological. This is especially apparent in concern about polution. Thus, Richard Steele, in the Englishman of 7 November 1715, claimed, in terms that are reminiscent of some recent writing: as the vulgar are more affected with legerdemain tricks, than honest performances of art; so are they easier to be wrought upon by tricks in logic, by insidious fallacies, than by the most just and solid reasoning. They are equally incapable of discerning the force of a good argument, or the weakness of a bad one. This opens a wide field for men of ill designs, to impose what they please upon them; and there will never be wanting men who will have the hardiness and conscience to bring about their designs by such ungenerous arts. Thirteen years later, Richard Buckner, estate agent to the 2nd Duke of Richmond, reported from Sussex: Politics is the only prevailing conversation at present, and there is no company, or set of men of what degree soever, who does not take upon

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them to describe matters as peremptorily as if they were at the very bottom of the secret. These discourses perpetually produce murmurings, and when they are warm with ale and arguments, they launch out into such a liberty of speech as if they had letters patent of indemnification in their pockets. They loudly complain of stagnation of trade, the capture of so many merchant ships, the dilatory proceedings of the Congress, and such general topics, extracted from the Craftsman and Fog’s as furnishes them with sufficient matter for reflection.20 So also with the overlap between forms. Attacking some other newspapers on 9 December 1727 in terms that prefigure current discussion of social media, Applebee’s Original Weekly Journal complained of those: ‘whose only excellencies consist in their propagating and improving, with art and subtlety, every factious story, and idle rumour, they can glean up in coffee-houses and other places of public resort’. A history of the press that is at once constant in its themes, and cyclical in the forms it addresses, may not match modern interest in the teleological, or in the idea of a programmatic rise and decline; but it is still a history that is worthy of consideration.

Notes 1 Guardian, 10 June, 12 Aug. 2018. 2 D. Green, ‘Tory Press Barren’, Guardian, 17 Nov. 2014. 3 T. Baldwin, Ctrl Alt Delete: How Politics and the Media Crashed our Democracy (London, 2018). 4 Luff to Black, 27 Aug. 2018, email. 5 http://www.bbc.co.uk/corporate/insidethebbc/homewework/partnerships/ localnews 6 R. Greenslade, ‘Reactionary Politics Play their Part in the Demise of the Tabloids’, Guardian, 30 July 2017. 7 Peter Cleasby to Black, email, 28 Aug. 2018. 8 D. O’Neill and T. Harcup, ‘What is News? News Values Revisited (Again)’, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/fu. Accessed 5 December 2018. 9 B. Macintyre, The Spy and the Traitor (London, 2018). 10 D. O’Neill, ‘No Cause for Celebration: The Rise of Celebrity News Values in the British Quality Press’, Journalism Education, 1, 2 (2012), pp. 26–44. 11 Daily Telegraph, 21 Aug. 2018. 12 Evening Standard, 21 Aug. 2018. 13 D. Healey, The Time of My Life (London, 1990), pp. 569–70. 14 L. Freeman, ‘Write On’, Standpoint, 104 (Sept. 2018), p. 8.

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15 C. Watts, ‘Artificial Intelligence is Transforming Social Media. Can American Democracy Survive?’ DemocracyPost, Washington Post, 5 Sept. 2018. 16 Sunday Times, 19 Aug. 2018. 17 III, ii. 18 J. Essery (ed.), Classic Headlines from the Sun (London, 1993); R. Harris, Gotcha! The Media, the Government, and the Falklands Crisis (London, 1983). 19 Sunday Times, 26 Aug. 2018, p. 19. 20 Earl of March, A Duke and His Friends. The Life and Letters of the Second Duke of Richmond (2 vols, London, 1911), I, 165.

Conclusions ‘To the Printer of the Gazetteer. Inform the public, that a certain

coffee-house, not a mile from the Park, is now become an open market for the buying and selling of offices. A certain ostensible M---r [Minister] affirms, that he knows nothing of the matter, which may be true; but his dependents, before they fly away, are endeavouring to feather their nests.’ GAZETTEER, 11 AUGUST 1770.

‘

W

orld Saved’ and ‘World Doomed,’ those were the two versions of the front page of the Daily Express prepared at the climax of The Day The Earth Caught Fire, a British epic of 1961, an adventure film about the impact of nuclear explosions and the need to correct the tilting of the Earth by detonating more bombs. The story focused on a leading newspaper, the Daily Express, with Arthur Christiansen, the former editor, playing the role he had had, with some of the action in the iconic Daily Express Building in Fleet Street, and with the protagonist a Daily Express journalist. Nowadays, it is unlikely that a newspaper would have such a role. The Fleet Street building, designed in 1932, was left in 1989 and is now occupied by Goldman Sachs. A window on society, the press is one of the most vital tools for the historian. It is vital because to read newspapers is to be taken into the news, the hopes, the fears, and the culture, of a period. There are of course many limits to the coverage by newspapers and to the value of newspapers, notably in terms of social equity, and it is a responsibility of the scholar to draw attention to them. At the same time, to do so can entail a failure to appreciate the value and impact of the press. Grounded in a free-enterprise, commercial society, the press is both an aspect of it and also a means to understand it. Free enterprise is also a matter of political views and practices. Indeed, an engagement with politics is a subject as well as an attitude that joins press to public. There are naturally intermediaries in this free enterprise. As with 175

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business, so in politics, the market does not work without systems and mechanisms, and the market is a source of profit, and in terms of market share as well as operating benefit. Yet, both the marketplace of news and opinion, and the press as part of that market, are each only part of the story. The public as a consumer of news exists, as does news and comment, even if each of them are shaped by newspapers. The ability of the latter to do this shaping with impact, however, has declined. Certain of the standard tropes, realistic and/or otherwise, have also become more difficult. Social media has encouraged a degree of fracturing of opinion that has made harder the approach of newspapers as they seek a large readership, an approach that is at once partisan and yet also seeking a broad coalition of backing in support of this partisan stance. There are also the problems facing the construction of an apparently sensible middle-of-the-road position, unsurprisingly identified with the newspaper that claims to represent it. This is scarcely a new issue, but has become more urgent as matters relating to populism, and the related identification of the news itself, are to the fore. On 3 January 1799, the True Briton attacked a piece published in the Morning Chronicle on 26 December 1798 that claimed that the Irish were against parliamentary union: A few interested men may be averse to an union between this country and Ireland, and faction, we know, is ever clamorous and loud; but we are inclined to believe that when the subject comes to be fairly and fully discussed, the advantages of the measure will be so obvious, that ninetenths of the People of Ireland will embrace it with joy . . . We should as soon gauge the loyalty of the People of England by the drunken orgies of a few noble, honourable, and not honourable Democrats, as we would determine the sober opinions of a notion by a precipitate and intemperate proceedings of a tumultuous meeting. It was no longer clear that such a contrast could be drawn. At the same time, such items were part of a pattern in which commentary and dialogue-like pieces were presented in which one side allegedly was clearly correct.1 The English press emerges from its history not only as a medium (rather than a message), but also as a medium that both shapes and is shaped by the marketplace. It is no accident that the century, the eighteenth, in which the post-censorship, commercial, English press developed, as the leading sector in the news-media of the English-reading world, was also the century in which economic thought moved from mercantilism to the very different capitalism offered as a prospectus by Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776). Partly because it is a capitalist system, some commentators have found it difficult to cope with the press. Indeed, allowing for the possibility of overlap,

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traditionally writing on the press divided between congratulatory accounts, often linked to particular titles and frequently teleological in their general tone, and, on the other hand, more searching studies of the press as a whole. The latter could be critical of its capitalist character and consequences,2 and notably of the extent to which it did not provide adequate coverage of the perspectives of the poor and/or of radical solutions. Each approach, however, has its serious problems. These are both analytical problems and also lead to a misunderstanding of particular titles. Capitalism, democracy, a free press and the rule of law were all aspects both of modern British political culture and of how that culture represented itself. They did not, however, always sit easily together. Indeed, for long, the free press, as well as some/many of the specific titles, better represented democracy than the limited franchise of parliamentary government; or, at least, could present itself accordingly. The press indeed represented a populist thesis and means in politics. It was seen by supporters as inherently progressive and democratic, whether or not the agenda was explicitly democratic. The language of the press had to be that of the potential purchasers of newspapers. At the same time, this account, both as self-image and as outside assessment, was flawed. It rested on reductionist notions of influence, and on a simplifying homogenisation of the press and of society as units, units, moreover, with clear-cut internal distinctions of conservative and progressive, and élite and popular, respectively. There could be pejorative views bound up in both.3 An awareness of varied reader interests can be found both in surveys and in fiction, and with factors of habit, individual preference, and gender as significant as those of social class. For example, Richard Hull, a pseudonym for Richard Henry Sampson, has his protagonist in The Murder of My Aunt (1934) refer to Llwll (in reality Welshpool): ‘Of course breakfast should be eaten slowly and the pictures of one of the illustrated morning papers glanced at casually, but no paper reaches Llwll until lunchtime, and my aunt reads nothing but the Daily Telegraph. I can’t think why.’ In practice, aside from significant female ‘advocacy’ items and periodicals, such as the Women’s Suffrage Journal and Spare Rib, there was a distinctive pattern of female readership.4 In the current world, the putative role for the press as the Fourth Estate has been replaced by the democratisation, accountability and populism latent, alongside much else, within social media; and it is not surprising that there are implications for the relationship with business models and practices. Again, there are commercial benefits in the new media, and notably in the provision of advertising. There is also a formidable competitive challenge to existing media, including the press. The BBC in large part avoids this challenge thanks to its privileged position in receipt of a dedicated tax, but that facility, and the

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resulting exemption from competition over advertising, is enjoyed by no other part of the media. Competition from the BBC news website means that effectively the BBC is now producing its own electronic newspaper and competing directly with the press, and doing so with none of the financial constraints of the private sector. Social media brings together a range of challenges, issues, problems and threats; the choice of word, as so often, by no means readily apparent or value-free. The Internet has led to an explosion in informal channels of news, such as blogs and podcasts. Whether authoritative and coherent or ignorant and incoherent, these all attract readers and compete effectively for the readers’ time and attention. The use of social media to disseminate news has become the norm for politicians, public sector organisations, commercial companies, and anyone else who wants to engage directly with a wide public. This results in the press tagging along and playing catch up with the news stories and not leading them as it did only two decades ago. The parallel rise in individuals posting comments and criticism on social media has accentuated this issue. Nobody ‘owns’ the news now. Linked to the rise of social media, the thought that there might be some accuracy and authority in the reporting of news stories has been corrupted almost entirely. Everybody’s opinion is as good as anybody else’s. In the social media culture the facts do not matter. Instead, it is the loudness of the comments and the number making them that counts. For the readers, the situation may not be all bad. The ability to read news stories on the newspapers’ websites as the stories develop, and not to have to wait for a broadcast news programme or a newspaper, is attractive. For the opinionated, vocal and the narcissistic, there is presumably satisfaction in posting their own comments on social media. For the press, the future is obscure. The challenges posed by social media include its international dimension, and, very differently, due to it representing a reversion to the former world of gossip, that which essentially preceded the development of the press. Despite having gossip columnists, who, in practice, reported on only a narrow segment of society, the press was never able to draw on this tranche of news-making and news requirements. Social media is in a very different position, although that also poses major issues of legality and civility, both of which focus on questions of privacy and restraint. It is in this coverage that the news provided on social media better acts as a magnifying mirror of anxieties, angers, likes and dislikes, than the more cautious and more regulated medium of the print newspaper, however much technologies, such as dispersed printing, may affect the possibilities for the latter. In part, this contrast reflects the difficulties of establishing a legal level playing-field, but there were also longstanding tensions within the press between alarmism and sobriety, tensions that arose from a range of factors,

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including political and commercial strategies. In 1795, opposition newspapers emphasised public discontent over the price of food,5 but the Leeds Mercury of 18 July provided a cautious caveat: The words scarcity and famine are so alarming in their sound, and so dreadful in their consequence, that they are most efficacious arguments in the mouth of those who wish to seduce the unwary; and it is therefore necessary to caution every rank against giving implicit credit to the magnified evils of false representation, or joining in their complaint, before we have examined the truth of their assertions. – All good and evil is to be estimated by comparison. Opposition press claims that the high price of bread was due to the war were rejected.6 The English press in the 2010s could legitimately claim, notably with the administration of existing laws and with the recommendations of the Leveson Inquiry of 2011–12, that it was in a far more difficult, and more regulated, position than its social media counterparts. However, the Leveson recommendation for a new, independent, body to replace the Press Complaints Commission (which, in turn, had replaced the Press Council established in 1953) was rejected by the government, notably in a House of Commons’ statement in March 2018. The proposed statutory regulation of the press proved politically contentious, but, to an extent, that was an echo of the former prominence of issues relating to newspapers, and, in particular, the cry of freedom of the press;7 rather than one that necessarily captured the nature of the modern media. At the same time, the decision to reject the Leveson recommendation did not cause much controversy, suggesting that press regulation had gone off the boil as a central issue. Instead, it required a focus on individuals in order to engage that attention. That was provided later in 2018 when the press claimed, with some reason, that its freedom to report was threatened by a judicial ruling over privacy in the case of Cliff Richard with the player in the legal case being the BBC not any newspapers. The cost of addressing liability issues arising from potential litigation is already serious, notably for those newspapers involved in phone tapping, including the Daily Mirror. Looking to the future, liability issues will affect profitability if the reach of litigation is enlarged. That apparently may depend greatly on politics and, to that extent, the press is challenged by the possibility of the election of a radical Labour government, with another general election due by 2022 at the latest. Newspapers could be highly critical of Labour, and could also seek to make the news readily accessible. Thus, an editorial in the Daily Mail on 21 August 2018, noted of Venezuela:

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According to the International Monetary Fund, inflation in Jeremy Corbyn’s favourite Marxist utopia could reach one million per cent between now and the end of the year. To put it in context, this means a loaf of bread which sells for £1 now would cost £10,000 by December. In other words, your money (and any savings you may have) would be almost worthless . . . anyone thinking of voting Labour in the next election should heed this parable well. The same month, that paper published a video clip of Corbyn’s anti-Semitic remarks from 2013, a critique denounced by Camden Momentum as coming from ‘the corporate media’. The threat of regulation imposed by draconian legislation on libel actions, unless publications join the would-be regulator Impress is severe. So far, Parliament has not passed the law that will lead to this; but the menace to the press remains real. A press muzzled by such regulation will not be able to act as an effective defender of freedom and without the ability to be sufficiently robust, is likely to lose readership. At the same time, as Enoch Powell had pointed out, politicians complaining about the press were like sailors complaining about the sea, which was not a novel point. On 4 January 1734, the Daily Courant, somewhat differently, commenting on the attacks on Walpole in the Craftsman, noted that he ‘seems to be as little moved with all this, as the winds with the cry of mariners’. Irrespective of the specific political and other issues of the 2010s, the political capital of newspapers, and notably of national ones, is lower at present than at any time since the Second World War. Newspapers appear to be able to do little to improve the situation. Moreover, the Leveson Inquiry and related issues reduced the critical attention devoted to the BBC and to social media, the major competition to the press. Ironically, the BBC was also in serious decline among the young, indeed among those aged under fifty-five. In 2018, the House of Commons Media Committee drew attention to fake news, which it claimed had been weaponised by the Internet. Looked at differently, the latter was both the new social form and means, of consumption and opinion, and its weaknesses were a secondary consideration for its consumers. If the Internet was the cause of social panics, there was much that was familiar from earlier such panics about print media, for example the immorality that could centre on classified advertisements.8 Moreover, the press found it difficult to fight off criticism, and if the latter was less potent than in the early 2010s, that was a reflection of a decline in the salience of newspapers. Indeed, the strong links between the Labour leadership from 2015 and social media, links that were shown to be effective in the 2017 election and more

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generally, both suggested a degree of irrelevance for the press, and indicated its lack of political traction, and notably so among the young. Political attacks upon newspapers, especially the Daily Mail, a bitter critic of Corbyn, contributed to this situation. An old order appeared to be passing. Indeed, Patrick Barkham, writing in the Guardian on 16 February 2016, offered a comparison for the ‘endangered species . . . the Newspaper’ that was not a comfortable one: Brandishing a newspaper will always be a superior cinematic symbol to scrolling through a smartphone. Like onscreen smoking, it is too expressive to lose . . . I suspect that newspapers will not die for the same reason as cinema survives: on a good day, both remain a supreme pleasure. However, newspapers go on asking pertinent questions, as in the leader in the Evening Standard on 2 February 2018 which asked of London’s mayor: ‘Is Sadiq on the side of Momentum or London?’ They also fight restrictions on the availability of material, as with the editorial in the Times on 31 March 2010 criticising moves by police to restrict access to records of historic unsolved cases, on the grounds that they might lead to distressing ‘half-baked theories.’ Alongside the gloom and the definitely problematic business results, it is instructive to note other views. Sarah Baxter, the deputy editor of the Sunday Times, wrote a comment piece in the paper on 26 August 2018, criticising Corbyn’s plans for a British Digital Corporation and the press, as well as the BBC’s dominance of the news, adding: the media is ‘failing.’ We are in a golden age of journalism, in which the range of available information, breadth of opinion and depth of investigations – online and in print is unprecedented and dazzling. The problem is that Corbyn has a message the public isn’t buying, and he’d rather blame the media than alter his policies . . . shouldn’t a newspaper’s first loyalty be to you, dear reader? Views on this will vary, which indicates the continued value of the press for considering and reflecting on English society.

Notes 1 Monitor, 15 Sept. 1759 re war. 2 J. Curran, Media and Power (London, 2002). 3 J. Raymond, ‘Roundtable Discussion of Martin Conboy’s Journalism: A Critical History’, Media History, 12 (2006), p. 333.

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4 M.E. Tusan, Women Making News: Gender and Journalism in Modern Britain (Urbana, IL, 2005). For the earlier role of women, R. Snowdon, ‘Georgian Women and the Business of Print: Family, Gender and the Provincial Press of Northern England, 1700–1850’ (Newcastle, PhD., 2010); H. Barker, Family and Business During the Industrial Revolution (Oxford, 2017). 5 Oracle, 1 July 1795. 6 St James’s Chronicle, 19 Jan. 1796. 7 T. O’Malley and C. Soley, Regulating the Press (London, 2000). 8 H.G. Cocks, ‘Perils in the Personals: The Dangers and Pleasures of Classified Advertising in Early Twentieth-Century Britain’, Media History, 10 (2004), pp. 3–16.

Selected further reading There is no substitute for reading newspapers, and, thanks to digital sources, these are now more accessible than ever before. They obviously are only part of the story, notably for issues such as organisation, profitability, and political links. At the same time, the flavour of the news can only be gained by reading the newspapers. This means both national and non-national papers, and the full range of what is published. Stuart Allen, ed., The Routledge Companion to News and Journalism (London: Routledge, 2010). Richard Altick, The English Common Reader. A Social History of the Mass Reading Public 1800–1900 (Lincoln: Phoenix Books, 1957). Michael Bailey, ed., Narrating Media History (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008). Hannah Barker, Newspapers, Politics, and Public Opinion in Late EighteenthCentury England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). Laura Beers, Your Britain: Media and the Making of the Labour Party (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010). Adrian Bingham, Gender, Modernity, and the Popular Press in Inter-War Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Adrian Bingham, Family Newspapers? Sex, Private Life and the British Popular Press 1918–1978 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Jeremy Black, The English Press in the Eighteenth Century (London: Croom Helm, 1987). Martin Conboy, Tabloid Britain: Constructing A Community Through Language (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005). Martin Conboy, Journalism in Britain: A Historical Introduction (London: Sage, 2011). James Curran, Media and Power (London: Routledge, 2002). Ruth Dudley Edwards, Newspapermen: Hugh Cudlipp, Cecil Harmsworth King and the Glory Days of Fleet Street (London: Pimlico, 2004). Harold Evans, My Paper Chase: True Stories of Vanished Times: An Autobiography (London: Abacus, 2009). Victoria Gardner, The Business of News in England, 1760–1820 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2016). M. Hampton, Visions of the Press in Britain, 1850–1950 (Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2004). Martin Hewitt, The Dawn of the Cheap Press in Victorian Britain. The Campaigns against the Taxes on Knowledge, 1849–1869 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013). 183

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Richard John and Jonathan Silberstein-Loeb, eds, Making News: The Political Economy of Journalism in Britain and America from the Glorious Revolution to the Internet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). Aled Jones, Power of the Press: Newspapers, Power and the Public in Nineteenth-Century England (Aldershot: Scholar Press, 1996). Richard Keeble, The Newspapers Handbook (3rd ed, Abingdon: Routledge, 2002). Andrew Marr, My Trade: A Short History of British Journalism (Oxford: Pan Books, 2004). Andrew Pettegree, The Invention of News: How the World Came to Know About Itself (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014). Joan Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Mick Temple, The British Press (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2008). James Thomas, Popular Newspapers, the Labour Party and British Politics (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005). Jeremy Tunstall, Newspaper Power: The New National Press in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). Michelle Tusan, Women Making News: Gender and Journalism in Modern Britain (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2005). Joel Wiener, The Americanisation of the British Press, 1830s–1914: Speed in the Age of Transatlantic Journalism (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011).

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