CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
I. Background and General Characteristics
The United Kingdom possesses one of the most universally respected and widely read national presses. According to Brian McNair (1999), 80 percent of adults regularly read at least one national daily newspaper (not necessarily every day), and 75 percent read a Sunday edition. In addition, despite growing fears among many journalists and academics about the consequences increased concentration of ownership and the growing ability of governments to "spin" the media, the British press remains one of the freest and most diverse in the world. Compared to the United States, where papers based in a few large cities exert the most influence, in Britain the local and regional press takes a clear backseat to the London-based national press. The leading papers' access to a national market makes them among the best-selling newspapers in the world. The main titles in the national daily press appear in the mornings; many local dailies appear in the evening.
II. History of Media in United Kingdom
England's first news periodicals, called corantos, circulated in the 1620s. During the next few decades, English notions of the liberty of the press began to develop, and with them visions of the press as the bulwark of freedom against would-be tyrants. This vision helped to inspire more than a century of reform movements that resulted in the gradual elimination of state repression of the press. The most important of these developments include the 1694 act removing pre-publication censorship; Fox's Libel Act in 1792, which placed the verdict in libel trials squarely in juries' hands; and the repeal of paper, advertising, and newspaper stamp taxes, the so-called "Taxes on Knowledge," between 1853 and 1861. This long series of reforms, which came only after numerous popular campaigns, including a "war of the unstamped" (and hence illegal) press in the 1830s, reflected and reinforced a growing tradition of formal newspaper independence from the state that continues to influence journalists at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Daily newspapers in the nineteenth century typically consisted of four to eight pages of closely typed columns of often-verbatim reports of parliamentary debates or speeches by prominent statesmen. The most influential paper in the mid-century was the London Times. Following the repeal of the "Taxes on Knowledge," a provincial press flourished, as new titles joined such older papers as the Manchester Guardian and Yorkshire Post. Combined with London papers, such as the Morning Post and the new Daily Telegraph , a sober and editorially diverse press existed that some observers have pointed to as a "golden age" for the British press.
These titles coexisted with more popular (and initially less respectable) Sunday papers such as Reynolds News and Lloyd's Weekly News. During most of the nineteenth century, newspapers wore their partisanship like a badge of honor; this feature was as typical of The Times in the 1850s as it was of the Northern Star , the newspaper of the radical working-class Chartist movement in the 1840s. In the later decades of the century, in an effort to expand circulations and stimulated by changing ownership patterns and growing literacy rates, newspaper editors increasingly incorporated reader-friendly changes such as headlines, illustrations, interviews, and what would now be called human interest stories. "Views" gave way to news. Stories became shorter; columns gave way to paragraphs. These developments had precedents in American journalism. Defenders of these changes argued that they merely recognized the importance of the world beyond parliament; by aiming to satisfy readers' preferences, they were democratizing the press. Critics bemoaned the demise of the press's educational role and feared for the social consequences of the "New Journalism."
Alongside newspapers, throughout the nineteenth century, a thriving (and growing) body of periodicals existed, ranging from august titles such as the Edinburgh Review and Fortnightly Review , which spoke to the "questions of the day" to professional journals such as the Lancet (a medical journal) or the English Historical Review ; to recreational titles such as the Sporting Magazine ; to "penny dreadfuls" whose supposedly harmful effects on working-class readers preoccupied many moralists. As the nineteenth century progressed, it became clear that, under the right circumstances, the press could be very profitable. Particularly with the growth of consumerism in the second half of the nineteenth century, advertising became an important source of revenue for newspapers. This development helped to increase the importance of high circulations. Alfred Harmsworth is often credited with creating the modern popular press, particularly with the creation of the Daily Mail in 1896. Selling for a halfpenny when other papers cost a penny, this paper became, during the Boer War (1899-1902), the first to attain a daily circulation of one million. Harmsworth founded other papers, including the Daily Mirror in 1903. Originally pitched at female readers, it was reinvented in 1904 as a mass-market news pictorial and reached a circulation of 1.2 million by the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Ennobled as Lord Northcliffe in 1905, Harmsworth steadily built his newspaper empire, climaxing in 1908 with his acquisition of The Times . He became the archetypal "press baron," using his papers to attain influence over the government. For example, he has been widely credited with bringing down the Asquith government in 1916. In addition to his political interests, however, he was the consummate businessman, employing stunts to spike sales.
The first three decades of the twentieth century saw the continuing concentration of the press into fewer hands. Following Lord Northcliffe's death in 1922, the British press was dominated by four men: Lord Beaver-brook, Lord Rothermere (Northcliffe's brother), William Berry (later Lord Camrose), and Gomer Berry (later Lord Kemsley).
The popular press seemed increasingly commercialized, culminating in the "circulation war" of the early 1930s. The Daily Mail and Daily Express had offered insurance to subscribers throughout the 1920s, spending a million pounds per year by 1928. By the early 1930s, even the relatively sober Daily Herald had entered the fray. The three papers employed door-to-door canvassers to entice subscribers with gifts; these canvassers accounted for 40 percent of all press employees by 1934. Gifts included flannel trousers, cameras, kettles, handbags, and tea sets. This method of gaining circulation by bribery reflected the ever-growing importance of advertising as a revenue source; newspapers sought to attract circulation any way they could, in order to impress advertisers.
CHAPTER 2
DISCUSION
III. Markets and Readers
The twentieth century witnessed the ongoing conflict between lingering nineteenth-century ideals and the press's increasingly commercial environment. Over the course of the century, the press solidified into three distinct markets in the daily and Sunday national press: quality, middle market, and mass market. The quality press, including The Times , the Guardian (descendant of the Manchester Guardian ), the Daily Telegraph , the Independent , and the Financial Times , is published in a broadsheet format, while the middle market (including the Daily Mail and Daily Express ) and mass market (including the Daily Mirror and the Sun ) are published in tabloid format. A similar distinction exists on Sundays, with qualities ( Independent on Sunday , Observer Sunday Times , and Sunday Telegraph ), middle market ( Sunday Express and Mail on Sunday ), and mass market ( News of the World , People Mirror ).
These markets split across class lines and produced papers with distinctive qualities. Nearly 90 percent of the upmarket dailies' readers are considered middle class, compared to only about 30 percent of the downmarket dailies' readers. In 1995 daily newspaper sales were approximately 20 percent upmarket, 27 percent midmarket, and 53 percent mass market. Corresponding Sunday sales were approximately 17 percent upmarket, 22 percent midmarket, and 61 percent mass market. This distribution represents a dramatic shift during the second half of the twentieth century. In 1937, the daily breakdown was 8 percent upmarket, 72 percent midmarket, and 20 percent mass market; the Sunday breakdown had been 3 percent, 36 percent, and 61 percent (Tunstall). The increase in share for the quality press, at the expense of the middle market, reflects increased educational levels in Britain combined with television's greater challenge to the middle market.
IV. Three Most Influential Newspaper
The Times has, since the early nineteenth century, been the most prestigious British newspaper. During the nineteenth century, and above all during the Crimean War (1854-56), it developed a reputation for independence, truthfulness, and forcefulness that earned it the moniker "The Thunderer." More than any other paper, it can be considered a national institution, and is for many the "paper of record." For this reason, its 1981 takeover by Murdoch's multinational conglomerate (like its 1908 takeover by Northcliffe) alarmed many in Britain. Nonetheless, it retained its high reputation in most quarters, even as it adopted a somewhat lighter tone. Its politics shifted to the right during the 1980s, though in the mid-1990s it became increasingly critical of the Major government. It supported Labour's Tony Blair in the 1997 election in a move widely believed to be commercially inspired.
Founded in 1855 after the repeal of the stamp tax, the Daily Telegraph quickly became Britain's best-selling paper, with its mix of sport and politics and its peerless news service. Following a decline in the early twentieth century, it emerged in the 1930s as the upmarket leader, a position it retained in the early 2000s. Many believe its heyday was in the 1960s, when its news reporting was unparalleled. Owned by Conrad Black, the paper had broadly conservative politics and it is often called the Torygraph. It was the only British upmarket daily to have attained a circulation above one million, though its read-ership was aging.
The Guardian began as a provincial paper, the Manchester Guardian. During the nineteenth century and particularly under the editorship of C. P. Scott, it became associated with the left wing of the Liberal Party. Its willingness to take unpopular stands, sometimes at great financial
cost learned it many admirers. In particular, opposition to the Boer War and the Suez War cost both sales and advertising in the short-term. Its ownership by a trust, committing it to radical politics, provided it a measure of protection from market forces. Among the national broadsheets, it alone consistently supported the Labour Party during the period of Conservative dominance before the 1990s.
V. Role of advertising
Another important aspect of the economic framework is the role of advertising revenues. These revenues became a central part of newspaper finance in the second half of the nineteenth century, and they retained that position at the beginning of the twenty-first century. By paying a large share of any newspaper's revenues, advertisements allow newspapers to be sold significantly below cost. This arrangement simultaneously (and paradoxically) offers newspapers a buffer between their direct exposure to the consumer market while it also places a premium on high circulations. In effect, newspaper companies offer two distinct products for sale: the individual copy to readers and circulations to advertisers.
Advertisers do not regard all customers equally; they consider "quality" as well as quantity. This distinction gives advertising revenues a different role in broadsheet newspapers' finance than in the tabloids. Because the "quality press" has a more affluent readership, it is able to charge higher rates per thousand readers. These rates allow broadsheets to rely primarily on advertising revenues. By contrast, the tabloids, despite their higher circulations, charge much lower advertising fees per thousand readers; tabloids remain, for this reason, primarily dependent on sales or circulation revenue.
Tunstall contrasted the quality and mass-market leaders, the Daily Telegraph and the Sun respectively. In 1993, the , selling at 25 pence, earned a net advertising income of only 2-3 pence per copy. The Daily Telegraph , by contrast, selling at 48 pence, earned a net advertising income of about 40 pence per copy. Such contrasts allowed the quality press to earn profits with much lower circulations than the tabloids. The importance of advertising revenues to the tabloids should not be understated, of course; in 1993, the Sun drew 30 percent of its revenues from this source.
The important financial role of advertisers has attracted criticism. For example, press diversity can be restricted by reliance on advertisements. Taking a broad historical view, James Curran credited the prominence of advertising revenues with undermining the once-flourishing radical press. A newspaper can be forced out of business despite large circulations if the readers are the "wrong kind" of readers or if the content of the newspaper is too inimical to advertisers' business interests. Lack of advertising revenue doomed, for example, the News Chronicle and Daily Herald in the 1960s, despite robust circulations. At the same time, critics argued that the reliance on advertisers unduly influences editorial policy, effectively leading to censorship or self-censorship. It was widely believed that investigative reports that might embarrass an important advertiser would very rarely see their way into print. In addition, advertisers' perception that "happy" news was more conducive to sales than "negativism" challenged the longstanding journalistic value of uncovering disturbing facts that "someone, somewhere does not want uncovered." Other observers countered, however, that the large number of advertisers prevents any one advertiser from exerting a very great control over a newspaper. Moreover, in the long run, companies must advertise in the media that attract the readers (or viewers or listeners). Finally, the broadsheets' reliance on advertising offers a measure of protection for their news values, for broadsheets cannot pursue increased circulation at the cost of alienating upscale readers.
VI. The Local Press
The local press exemplifies some of the critics' worst fears, in terms of both concentration of ownership and reliance on advertising. According to Tunstall, the "British local press in recent decades has grown ever more local; it has also increasingly become a vehicle whose prime purpose is to deliver classified and retail advertising. The free local weekly has been the prime cause of both these trends." The local paid press is effectively squeezed between the national press and the free local press. In order to attract advertising, the local press has in the late 1990s increasingly dropped all but local news. For the little national or international news that remained, these papers relied on news agency reports.
VII. Electronic news Media
Freesheets, which emerged in the 1970s, contained very little editorial matter; they primarily consisted of advertisements, and much of their "editorial" matter consisted of puffs for the products advertised. Both the paid and free local press were owned by large chains, including Northcliffe Newspapers, United Provincial Newspapers, Westminster Press (Pearson), and Thomson Regional Newspapers. Few cities had competing local paid papers; for those few that did, the "rivals" typically were owned by the same chain. Northcliffe Newspapers, for example, owned two Plymouth papers. In addition, larger companies such as the Northcliffe group had increasingly purchased "adjacent" local newspapers that could be produced with the same equipment.
In September 1999, CommerceNet/ Nielsen Media Research found that of the 46 million adult residents in the United Kingdom, 12.5 million, or 27 percent of the population, had used the Internet in the past month. Less than two years later, in June 2001, a Which? Online annual survey reported that 36 percent of the British population, or 16 million people, were now using the Internet. Which? Online predicted that the numbers would continue to grow but that the rate of growth would slow down, particularly as a significant number of respondents professed to have no interest in going online. Users spent an average of five hours per week online, visiting an average of twelve Web sites. Electronic mail was one of the most popular uses, and half of Internet users had engaged in Internet shopping. Among the affluent and highly educated in Britain, the proportion was much higher than among the population at large. The two leading Internet service providers in the UK were Freeserve and America Online, both of which used the network provided by the Dutch firm KPNQwest. As of the early 2000s, the impending bankruptcy of the latter threatened to disrupt Internet use for up to half of Britain's users.
It became fashionable at the beginning of the twenty-first century to claim that the emergence of the Internet threatened the long-term existence of the newspaper as a medium. However, although its ability to distribute news instantaneously undermines one of the newspaper's historical functions (that is, to print what is "new"), more sober observers did not expect the Internet to signal the death of the physical newspaper in the near future. The convenience of carrying a newspaper, its suitability for reading in fits and starts over a period of several days, and the limited penetration of Internet access all supported the continued existence of newspapers. In addition, for many newspaper readers, the newspaper's aesthetic and tactile appeal, even to the extent of news-print on one's fingers, support their continued existence. Finally, advertisers remained unsure of the effectiveness of Internet advertising, raising crucial questions about the financial viability of the Internet as a news provider. Most newspapers had, of course, developed online editions.
Through the last decades of the twentieth century, the Internet's role in the gathering and dissemination of news met with a great deal of speculation. It is unwise to make predictions, particularly in such a rapidly changing field as the electronic media. Nonetheless, the development of the Internet has already affected journalism. Writing in 1999 in the British Journalism Review , Peter Hill heralded the growth of the Computer-assisted Reporter (CAR). Writing political profiles that appear on BBC News Online, Hill found the Internet an invaluable resource:
No longer do I go to the cuttings library, look up directories … to get my biographical information. I can get everything I need, and more, without moving from my office seat. If I want information about an MEP [Member of European Parliament], for instance, I can look him up on his party website, the European Parliament website, the EP register, the EP list of committees, and best of all in the BBC's new on-line cuttings archive, which produces on a word-search all references to my MEP going back five years.
In addition, news posted online is freed from the news cycles of newspapers and broadcast journalism; Internet newspapers are updated constantly throughout the day. As Brian McNair put it, the "speed, interactivity and comprehensiveness of the Internet as an information source are unprecedented in the history of communication media" (1999).
CHAPTER 3
CONCLUSION
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the media environment was changing rapidly, and some of the specific details of this article, inevitably, may be outdated by the time of its publication. Certain essential characteristics could, however, be discerned.
Newspaper readership had been in long-term decline over a 40-year period, but the United Kingdom remained one of the nations with the most avid newspaper readers. The London-based national press predominated. As business concerns, newspapers were locked in an increasingly and intensely competitive commercial environment, as other media competed for the newspapers' audience and advertising revenues. Ownership remained highly concentrated and had become increasingly global. In addition, cross-media ownership has become more pronounced in the past generation.
The British press is one of the most free in the world. In an increasingly competitive commercial environment, however, entailing staffing cuts and circulation wars, regulation might be necessary in order to protect high editorial standards and editorial diversity. Yet, the longstanding British association of any state intervention with censorship, combined with a general atmosphere of deregulation, makes both journalists and their proprietors unlikely to embrace regulation. Thus, the British press remains largely self-regulated. It is not clear, however, that it can avoid statutory regulation in the future, given widespread concerns about invasion of privacy.
The press survived and even thrived in competition with broadcasting. As of the early 2000s, it was under challenge from new information technologies, particularly the Internet. While some individuals warned of the impending death of print, more optimistic observers argued that newspapers' unique characteristics would ensure their survival. In particular, they mentioned portability, the possibility of reading a few items at a time for several days, and the emotional attachment of many British readers to the traditional medium.
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