HCJ - Tabloid Nation Chris Horrie Seminar Paper

Alfred Harmsworth, also known as Lord Northcliffe was born in 1865 near Dublin. His mother, Geraldine, was his idol, and his father, who liked drinking, was a successful barrister. Northcliffe was their eldest child. Creator of the original Daily Mirror, named his editorial offices “Geraldine House” after his mother, and an image of her was ever so evident in Carmelite House. Harmsworth studied in London and was keen on cycling and lawn tennis as academically he did far from excel. He left school early and started working on magazines for boys. Not long after this he became a reporter for a picture magazine the Illustrated London News and in 1886 at the young age of 21 was appointed editor of Bicycling News. However his breakthrough came when a piece of stolen paper and the presses from Bicycling News were the formula to his first magazine, Answers. The magazine’s circulation increased and was enhanced by Harmsworth’s greatest skill, competitions for cash and free giveaways.His first national daily newspaper was the Daily Mail, launched in May 1896. One rule Northcliffe installed was that no report in the newspaper was to be more than 250 words, writing to all his staff, he claimed that State-funded Board schools were now producing boys and girls who can read and his aim was to attract them as a major audience. He made himself editor-in-chief of the Mail. However day to day editing was done by Kennedy Jones who was feared by most of the staff at Carmelite House. Jones plied his trade in New York working for William Randolph Hearst’s ‘Journal’ and was therefore experienced in the yellow press wars. Northcliffe introduced a women’s section into the Daily Mail which included fashion, cooking and decorating features. This became so successful that Northcliffe later created a newspaper aimed solely at women, a paper named The Daily Mirror. Its first edition came off the press on Sunday, November 2, 1903. The new Daily Mirror had all hallmarks associated with Harmsworth. It was filled with competitions and giveaways, and its front page mirrored that of The Times, filled with adverts. The first editions lead article was written by Northcliffe himself and he promised a combination of female interests with political news. However, not all went smoothly as the quality of the paper was criticised, despite excitement surrounding its launch. Northcliffe criticised his writers for using foreign and unusual words. After eight weeks, the paper was selling less than 25,000 copies, losing £3000 a week and using up the profits from Northcliffe’s first newspaper The Mail. 1903: Alfred Harmsworth was the richest and most powerful man within the whole of British Journalism. He was in Carmelite House, headquarters for the Daily Mail, the London Evening News along with other specialist magazines. During this time at Carmelite House, Harmsworth was sat opposite Hamilton Fyfe who is the editor of the Morning Advertiser. After some small talk about Fyfe’s paper, Harmsworth offers him a job on the Daily Mirror, a paper recently launched and aimed at women. This idea was not successful, as Harmsworth claims that “women can’t write and don’t want to read” and so the Mirror had become “the laughing stock of Fleet Street”. Fyfe accepted this job without hesitation, and became the editor. His first job in this role was to dispose of the female journalists who had come from either the women’s page in the Daily Mail or from fashion magazines. The cousin of Lord Northcliffe, Geoffrey Harmsworth said that the change had been prompt over the space of one weekend. Fyfe had no issue in this but was not keen in sacking Mary Howarth, the first female editor of a daily newspaper in modern times. Yet, the Daily Mail, which Northcliffe also owned was another place of work for Howarth where she had been a fashion writer whereas the other women writers missed out. Fyfe hired Hannen Swaffer in 1904 to turn the fortunes of The Daily Mirror, at the same time Fyfe had changed the image of the newspaper, from ‘woman central’ to a picture paper. Swaffer was a violent drunk who was a huge supporter of the Labour party. He was a composer of racist music-hall songs. The first edition titled the Illustrated Mirror was a success for Fyfe and Swaffer as circulation rose dramatically to 71,000. After a month it doubled to 140,000 and then on its first anniversary it rose to 290,000, by now the newspaper was back to its original name, the Daily Mirror. In 1907 the paper joined again after Fyfe was replaced by Alexander Kenealy, another recruit from William Randolph Hearst’s ‘Journal’. Swaffer was intensely keen on photographic images within the paper. Fyfe’s campaigns of social conditions were rapidly erased and Swaffer replaced it with more photogenic ones. Swaffer encouraged dangerous situations for the photographers, demanding action shots, and despite the insanity of his demands, it paid off as the Mirror’s photographers got shots from Mount Vesuvius as well as images from a Zeppelin airship.
Swaffer and Kenealy were similar in initiative. Kenealy encouraged the ‘make your own news’ approach including stunts, something he learnt from Hearst in New York. These approaches varied from silly to severe, for example his idea to put a beehive on top of Carmelite House to prove that honey can be made in Central London. Yet there were others, like when he sent a reporter to experience and write about travelling with immigrants from Liverpool to New York. The paper’s greatest heist was the printing of deathbed photos of King Edward VII after Swaffer and Kenealy overheard Daily Express reporters talking about images taken the moment he died. The newspaper sold out the moment it turned up on news stands, and even extra editions released were not enough to please the craving public. This edition of The Mirror sold a then world record 2,013,000 copies. Some thought Swaffer and Kenealy would be put forward for treason; however they loved the idea of going to the tower as it would boost circulation of the newspaper with news and pictures. Despite their extreme transformation of the newspaper, Lord Northcliffe started disliking it referring to it as “a ghastly mess”. The Mail went to press earlier than The Mirror and Northcliffe ordered Swaffer to offer pictures first to The Mail. Swaffer hated this, and worked hard to make sure the Mail did not get their best pictures. Like Swaffer, Kenealy had a temper when drunk and he often referred to Swaffer as insane, to which point the pair began arguing. Swaffer heard about the sinking of The Titanic in the early hours of April 15, 1912. However the only pictures of the liner were for publicity, so Swaffer ran round buying every picture possible of the ship, before anyone else heard of the disaster. He wanted to use every page to display his pictures but Northcliffe over-ruled him because he felt that such an important story should be credited with a well-written piece. Swaffer threatened to hit Northcliffe, so there were no pictures of the Titanic on the back page of the Mirror, yet the next day the paper had lots more images than all other papers, and the paper’s sales rocketed. Northcliffe and Swaffer’s relationship soon hit the rocks when a row broke out over boxing and race riots. Shortly after this, Swaffer demanded that the paper’s photographers should be earning more money, and this annoyed Northcliffe. Fearing his job was on the line; Swaffer sacked himself and joined rival paper Daily Sketch. His career there only lasted a year and became a freelance writer, and this move changed his personal life as he gave up drink and became a spiritualist, interviewing famous dead people “on the other side”. Swaffer finally got revenge on Northcliffe after the chief-in-editor died in 1922. Swaffer claimed he had contacted Northcliffe through a spiritual meeting in which Northcliffe admitted he was wrong and that everything Swaffer did for the Mirror was correct. He published it as a book, ‘Northcliffe’s Return’ and is to this day a best seller among psychics. The 1930s came and Swaffer now called himself the most famous and successful journalist in the world. His articles became extremely left wing, he criticised fascism, stopped his early day racial slurs and become known as the Pope of Fleet Street and the creator of photojournalism. In 1905, Harmsworth donated money and gave political support to the Liberal Party and was given the title of Baron Northcliffe in the House of Lords. When he turned forty, Northcliffe decided that politics and not newspapers was his desire, however when he became Lord Northcliffe he had no ambition to become Prime Minister and this endangered his position in the House. Instead he saw himself as a seller of newspapers and to use his powers within them to ‘pull strings’. Lord Salisbury’s attack on Northcliffe made the Mail and the Mirror even more embarrassing, Salisbury referring to him as a man who created newspapers “written by office boys to be read by office boys”. Northcliffe believed the Mirror had a large amount of female readers – and they couldn’t even vote. The paper’s pictures and sensationalism attracted working-class readers who really did not have a political party to support. Northcliffe began disposing himself away from the Mirror after Swaffer published the pictures of King Edward VII and on the eve of the First World War in 1914, sold the majority of his shares in the paper to his younger brother Harold Harmsworth. Under Harold Harmsworth, also known as Lord Rothermere, the paper became victim to bad budget cuts and interference in the editorials. The First World War meant that Rothermere was too busy dealing with his job as the first Minister for Aircraft rather than the editing his newspaper. After Swaffer left the paper, his assistant Harry Guy Bartholomew had taken over as picture editor and continued what Swaffer had left on-success. The start of the war was a blessing to Bartholomew and to a paper like the Mirror. Northcliffe started going mad in 1922. He had completely changed, and had a short fuse. People knew something was wrong with him when he effectively appointed a “chief censor of advertising” and banned the advertisements from the Daily Mail, ones which he constantly encouraged in his early days. In mid 1922, he reached a stage of paranoia worrying that German or Russian spies had plans to shoot or poison him. It got to a point where he held a loaded gun during the night and one time fired a shot at his dressing gown after he thought it casted the shadow of an intruder. He died on August 14, 1922 at the age of 57. His cause of death was a heart disease that came from a rare infection which also caused brain damage. In 1922, after he died his brother took charge of the papers and this was to have a whole new change to the Mirror and the national press. In 1925 Rother mere used the money to set up an Anglo-Canadian Pulp and Paper Mill Company in Quebec. Along with this, Rothermere believed that keeping the Mail in check was the best plan to save his ‘empire’ and therefore, every bit of money available went straight to the Mail, whereas the Mirror received nothing. Rothermere became a huge supporter of fascism, after his plan to set up his own right wing party had been unsuccessful. His first campaign to the right wing began after the First World War involving Hungary. Then, Rothermere joined with Lord Beaverbrook launched the United Empire Party in 1929. However it wasn’t really until 1931 that he started moving toward extreme fascism. In 1934, the first fascist movement came to rise and the Mail and the Mirror supported and advertised it highly, and after six months of supporting the Blackshirts, both papers fell silent on the matter. Rothermere was an admirer of Hitler. He supported his movements and called him “a simple and unaffected man who was obviously sincere in his desire for peace in Europe” as well as referring to him as “a perfect gentleman”. In 1940, Rothermere died of cirrhosis in the liver after being forced into exile to the Bahamas. His last words were “there is nothing more I can do to help my country now”. Harry Guy Bartholomew, former apprentice of Hannen Swaffer took control of the Daily Mirror in 1934 and changed the paper. His greatest technical accomplishment was the “Bart-McFarlane System” which was used to transmit photos by radio. This meant the Mirror could obtain pictures from America within hours. It was rumoured that Bartholomew was one of Northcliffe’s illegitimate sons. When Bartholomew took over the Mirror, circulation was dropping and it would hit 0 by the time Rothermere died in 1940. Cecil Harmsworth King, nephew of Northcliffe and Rothermere led the demands for change. King and Bartholomew formed an allegiance soon to become the new lords of Fleet Street. Within a small amount of time, they created the biggest selling newspaper in the world and set up the grounding for Tabloid Britain.