INTRODUCTION
Tabloid Nation is written with vivid description and acute humour, the Times review at the back of the book cover calls it “the funniest book of the year, perhaps of the decade”. Whilst the book is deeply informative most chapters end with a clue to the next chapter (a questioning that asks to be resolved) allowing the reader to turn the page and continue with the entertainment value of a novel. Chapter four ends with a description of the sort of help Rothermere needed to save his newspaper empire, and chapter five is conveniently entitled ‘A Helping Hand’. The characters are easy to engage with and are fascinating for their little quirks; Hannen Swaffer slept in a cupboard and hardly ever went home.
CHAPTER ONE: THE CHIEF’S MAD FROLIC
In the first chapter we are taken to Fleet Street, London in 1903, where we meet the powerful Alfred Harmsworth, with his beautifully established Daily Mail (which sold 397,215 (three million, ninety seven thousand, and two hundred and fifteen) copies on its first day of publication) and the recently launched but embarrassing Daily Mirror (which was selling less that 250, 000 copies after eight weeks). We are therefore introduced to Hamilton Fyfe who was employed by Harmsworth, to take charge of the Daily Mirror and improve it somewhat.
The Daily Mail was a successful ‘penny paper for a half penny’ (Horrie 2003, p. 19), Harmsworths first daily and national newspaper which was well planned and tested before it launched in 1896. It was to be a newspaper for busy men, each article no longer than 250 words. Harmsworth felt that his readers had “no interest in society” (Horrie 2003, p. 19) but that they needed “anything interesting and sufficiently simple” (Horrie 2003, p. 19).
The Daily Mail was the first daily newspaper to offer a section devoted to women; ideas on cookery and flower arranging for example. This delighted the women of society since the only alternative was a weekly women’s magazine that cost six pence. Since the women’s pages of the Daily Mail brought such utter delight, Harmsworth’s logic does not appear at all faulty in suggesting an entirely separate newspaper devoted to fulfil these domestic categorical requirements. The Daily Mirror was to be a ‘ladies newspaper’. It was written by ladies, to be read by ladies. The newspaper however, proved to be a “the laughing stock of Fleet street” (Horrie 2003, p. 17) and Harmsworth came to believe that “women can’t write and don’t want to read” (Horrie
2003, p. 17). Fyfe had to fire the team of lady journalists “a horrid experience … like drowning kittens” (Horrie 2003, p. 18). It was wonderful that these ladies gave weather reports for Cairo forgetting Cardiff
CHAPTER TWO: THE POPE OF FLEET STREET
The Daily Mirror became a picture paper, Hannen Swaffer its rescuer. Swaffer raised the sales from 250, 000 to close on a million in only a few years. He was a drunkard and ‘fantastically scruffy’ (Horrie 2003, p. 23), employed by Fyfe (who as we remember was employed by Harmsworth). Fyfe explained in his memoirs that the Daily Mirror was not supposed to be provider of serious factual information to the readers but “to entertain them, occupy their minds pleasantly, prevent them from thinking” (Horrie 2003, p. 24), since pictures are easier than words.
Swaffer was relentless in his efforts for the acquisition of many photographs, good photographs, and any photographs. He worked with Harry Guy Bartholemew, a technical expert, in making cameras lighter, easier to transport, easier to use. He even got his hands on a dramatic close up shot of the dead King Edward VII; a feat that sold 2,013,000 (twenty million and thirteen thousand) copies of the Daily Mirror. Swaffer called himself the Pope of Fleet Street since he was so influential.
CHAPTER THREE: GHOULS, CRIMINALS … ANIMALS BENEATH CONTEMPT
In 1905 Harmsworth became Baron Northcliffe, on his fortieth birthday he made the realisation that a life in politics was actually his calling, not to become Prime Minister and therefore have the chance in being voted out, but of using his newspapers to pull strings behind the scenes.
CHAPTER FOUR: HERALD OF DOOM – THE FREE GIFT WAR
In April 1922 Harmsworth, or Lord Northcliffe was in ‘a deep state of psychotic paranoia, babbling constantly about supposed attempts by German or Bolshevik Russian agents to poison or shoot him’ (Horrie 2003, p. 33). He died at the age of 57, August the 14th 1922, a rare bacteriological infection, but it could also have been syphilis. His brother Rothermere inherited the papers; a new shape of national press was about to begin; the age of ‘free gifts’ where newspapers competed with one another. A certain coal miner managed to clothe his whole family for free, canvassers were sent out to offer ‘cameras, tea-sets, laundry mangles, encyclopaedias …..’ (Horrie 2003, p. 34).
CHAPTER FIVE: A HELPING HAND
Rothermere began moving in the world of politics, the chapter opens with letters of correspondence between Rothermere and Adolf Hitler, Rotheremere thanks Hitler for his ‘bloodless solution’, saying that the people ‘are not so concerned with territorial readjustment as with dread of another war’ (Horrie 2003, p. 36).
CHAPTER SIX: BART… EL VINO’S VERITAS
Harry Guy Bartholemew was nick named ‘Bart’, as mentioned in chapter two he was a technical expert and a photography organiser; he had assisted Swaffer in rescuing the Daily Mirror when it changed from women’s paper to a picture paper. Bartholemew was always the helpful, quiet and unthreatening character but ‘by 1934 … Rothermere’s influence … was …starting to wane’ (Horrie 2003, p. 43) and the board began panicking about falls in sales. Bartholemew decided to take action, he spent time with all of the directors and worked to gain the trust and confidence of John Cowley, managing to persuade Cowley to make him editorial director of the Daily Mail and the Sunday Pictorial; he had big changes in mind, changes that were to become the ‘model for popular journalism throughout much of the world for the rest of the century’ (Horrie 2003, p. 44).
Bartholemew was born in 1878; and joined the Daily Mirror in 1904. He was extremely uneducated and found communication, reading and writing hugely difficult.
Someone described him as “vulgar, semiliterate, cantankerous, suspicious, and jealous of any who withstood his authority, a man with a passion for crude practical jokes, and a ruthless determination to trample on anyone who got in his way’ (Horrie 2003, p. 44). This account makes him sound like a selfish and spoilt child, someone who was so insecure that he had to be overtly obnoxious and authoritarian.
Swaffer was Bartholemew’s boss when he first came the paper, and Swaffer was his great influence and inspiration .Much like Swaffer, Bartholemew was also a heavy drinker and a frequent candidate for El Vino’s, a wine bar. It could be argued that Swaffer employed Batholemew because he could hold his ground in a drinking match. Bartholemew had a passion, to work all night to have his pictures ready for the next day’s paper, the Bartlane method allowed pictures to be transmitted by radio, so the Mirror could have quick access to American photographs. Bartholemew married a widow, thirteen years older than him; he certainly sobered up and behaved at home.
CONCLUSION
Part One of Tabloid Nation ends with tantalising hints of Bartholomew’s success; it seems a range of people had the chance of a season to improve the Mirror. In 1934 the Daily Mirror’s sales had dropped from over 2 million to 800, 000, sales essentially halved; there would be no readers by the year 1940 at such a rate. We are not yet told how Bartholemew succeeds but are briefed on a new member coming on board, Rothermere’s nephew, another Harmworth by the name of Cecil Harmsworth King, and we are given this positive ending sentence ‘Bartholemew and King, soon to become the new lords of Fleet Street. Within a few short years they were to create “the biggest-selling newspaper in the universe” and lay down the foundations of Tabloid Britain
The next time you take a glance at the Daily Mirror, on some pokey shops shelf, in the cement caked hands of a builder, poised in the possession of an eager bus reader; remember its legacy from women’s paper to humiliation of Fleet Street, to picture paper, to grotesque picture paper, to forgotten paper that merely provided money to improve the Daily Mail. Through drastic failures to incredible and unbelievable sales increases, and finally to the actual foundations of our tabloid journalism, as it exists today.
Bibliography
Horrie, C (2003). Tabloid Nation. London
1 comment:
very good, many thanks
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