Saturday 8 October 2011

Tabloid Nation - a very brief summary!

The reading for the first seminar this year was parts one and two of Chris Horrie's Book 'Tabloid Nation'. Below are a very brief set of notes from the book:

Northcliffe (Alfred Harmsworth/'The Chief')

  • Born in Dublin in 1865
  • Educated at minor public school - St John's Wood
  • Major success - Answers to Correspondents On Every Subject Under The Sun
  • Owned Daily Mail - introduced women's section
  • Created Daily Mirror - a magazine by women for women
Launch of The Mirror
  • Written by women
  • Production by men
  • Edited by Kennedy 'KJ' Jones
  • KJ said that 'the women fainted under the strain of meeting deadlines'
  • Appealed to 'suburban snobbery'
  • Front cover like The Times and covered in adverts
  • Lost £3000 a week
  • Northcliffe hired Hamilton Fyfe to take over/transform the Mirror
  • Over a weekend Fyfe fired all the women which he likened to 'drowning kittens'
Hannen Swaffer
  • Art editor of The Mirror
  • Rescued The Mirror
  • Transformed it into 'Britain's first 'picture paper' '
  • Revolutionary approach to photography
  • Willing to pay huge sums of money for the 'right sort of pictures' - accidents/disasters/crime/royalty/sporting heroes
  • Mirror photographers were the first to photograph inside Mount Vesuvius - revolutionary
  • Fyfe: "Mirror was calculated to be easy absorption by the more ordinary intelligence' - pictures easier than words
In 1914 Northcliffe sold Mirror to younger brother Harold Harmsworth

Other brother, Rothermer Harmsworth, was in charge of finances - not a journalist

Rothermer Harmsworth
  • Fascist
  • Anti-Semitic
  • Wrote that Britain could learn a lot from the Nazis
Harry Guy Bartholomew (Bart)
  • Born 1878
  • Joined Mirror in 1904 as photographic technician
  • Became the editorial director
  • Admired the New York Daily News - particularly after the case of Ruth Snyder when the Daily News front page was a photograph of her in the electric chair with the headline 'DEAD!'
  • Wanted the Mirror to mimic the style of the Daily News
Cecil Harmsworth King
  • Nephew of Northcliffe and Rothemere
  • Mirror's advertising director at the age of 33
  • Warned it was impossible to sell advertising in the Mirror because there was no audience
  • Wanted a complete re-launch of The Mirror
  • Hired American advertising agency: J Walter Thompson
Basil D Nicholson
  • Features editor of Mirror
  • Obsessed with market research
  • Introduced the cartoon strip to the newspaper = hugely successful
  • Philosophy = a) Think of a headline b) Write some "tosh" to go with it
  • Bart hated him
  • Eventually placed an advertisement in The Telegraph for a deputy feature's editor with the certainty of becoming editor - this was his was of telling Nicholson he was going to fire him
Hugh Cudlipp
  • Responded to the advert Bart placed in The Telegraph and got the job aged 22
  • Born in Cardiff in 1913
  • Family of journalists
  • Wanted to reinvent The Mirror with human interest stories
  • Hired freelance women's magazine writer Godfrey Winn = sex sells
  • First topless image of women on the front of the Mirror showing the native life of African women
  • Cudlipp recognised that the sex content was the most important change in The Mirror's success
  • Cudlipp was recruited to the army in the Second World War - but under law his position and salary would remain the same upon his return
  • Editor of The Express, Arthur Christiansen
During the Second World War Bart wanted The Mirror to be 'the soldier's paper'
  • Always sided with the soldiers
  • Hired Tom Winteringham to write about war tactics
Silvester Bolam
  • Hired at editor of The Mirror by Bart
  • Somewhat of a yes man
  • Imprisoned for 6 months for contempt of court after The Mirror published a picture of John Haign and labelled him as the 'Vampire Murderer' before his trial.
  • Although Bolam had not been involved in the publication of the story in any way, as editor of The Mirror it was ultimately he was responsible for what was printed.
Bart had employed Bolam as the editor instead of Cudlipp because Cudlipp had previously accepted a job as editor of The Pictorial, a failing paper which he transformed into a complete success.

Bart wanted Cudlipp out for this betrayal, and fired him at the Christmas party on Christmas Eve 1948.

In December 1951 Kind decided that Bart needed to go - he was getting too old, drunk and incompetent.

He attained a unanimous vote from the board of directors, including the once faithful Bolam, and Bart was told to leave. King offered £20,000 to Bart if he left quietly. Bart left The Mirror empty handed and 'drank himself to death within a few months.'

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