Read All About It!

A History of the British Newspaper

Kevin Williams

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780415346238
• eBook ISBN: 9781134280520
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: History

This Text-book traces the evolution of the newspaper, documenting its changing form, style and content as well as identifying the different roles ascribed to it by audiences, government and other social institutions.

Starting with the early 17th century, when the first prototype newspapers emerged, through Dr Johnson, the growth of the radical press in the early 19th century, the Lord Northcliffe revolution in the early 20th century, the newspapers wars of the 1930s and the rise of the tabloid in the 1970s, right up to Rupert Murdoch and the online revolution, the book explores the impact of the newspapers on our lives and its role in British society.

Using lively and entertaining examples, Kevin Williams illustrates the changing form of the newspaper in its social, political, economic and cultural context. As well as telling the story of the newspaper, he explores key topics in detail, making this an ideal text for students of journalism and the British newspaper. Issues include:

• newspapers and social change
• the changing face of regional newspapers
• the impact of new technology
• development of reporting techniques
• forms of press regulation

1
SPREADING THE WORD

The pre-history of the British newspaper, 1486–1660

News (plus the printing press) created the newspaper¹

It took nearly two centuries for a publication devoted to the regular dissemination of news to emerge as a distinct form out of the variety of printed material that flowed from the development of the printing press in the late fifteenth century. These were the formative years of the British newspaper and the structure and content of modern newspapers were influenced by a number of things that happened in this period. Newspapers are a relatively recent invention but their basic ingredient is ‘one of humanity’s oldest pleasures’.² People have always had the desire to know about what is happening around them, and the spreading of news, or ‘tydings’ as it was referred to in the medieval era, responds to what the anthropologist Claude Lévi Strauss³ labels a basic human trait. Long before people could read and write they exchanged news and information. The advent of the printing press was an essential catalyst in the emergence of the newspaper but many of the features we associate with the newspaper pre-date printing. They can be traced back to the era of handwritten manuscripts and even further back to when societies were dominated by oral communication. Printed news material developed within the context of — and was influenced by — the communication of news by word of mouth and handwritten manuscript. The early newspapers not only had to survive in a predominantly oral culture but also had to compete with other forms of printed news material, such as posters, ballads and handbills. Understanding the history of the newspaper requires some knowledge of the struggles of these forerunners of today’s newspaper to establish themselves.

Word of mouth

Prior to the printing press the dissemination of news and information was dominated by word of mouth. Most towns and communities in medieval Europe gained their news from passing travellers. Merchants and mercenaries, drovers and peddlers, singers and seasonal workers spread the news of occurrences in the outside world. Certain kinds of people specialised in the oral dissemination of news and stories. Town criers had responsibility for announcing deaths, decrees and royal proclamations. Balladeers and travelling players, poets and troubadours would carry stories throughout the countryside, playing at fairs and usually embellishing their accounts to attract a larger audience. Much of what they imparted would be familiar to us today. Death, war and destruction figured prominently. People then as today sought news not only for practical reasons but also for pleasure and entertainment,⁴ but unlike now ordinary people relied on face-to-face communication. Song, poetry and storytelling were the predominant forms of popular expression. The centrality of oral communication was acknowledged in the titles of many of the early newspapers, whose names — such as Herald, Messenger and Mercury — reflected the oral form of communication which dominated the world into which they were born. Oral communication did not disappear with the appearance of handwritten manuscripts or the arrival of the printing press and continues to play a role in the imparting of news up to the present day. Recent research suggests the resurgence of the spreading of news by word of mouth in Britain’s newly emerging digital world.⁵

Newspaper titles

It is possible to argue that newspaper titles in different periods reflect the generally accepted role of a newspaper in society. Early newspaper titles incorporated the predominant view that newspapers were messengers conveying accounts of events, hence names such as Herald, Messenger and Mercury. Later in the seventeenth century the involvement of the newspapers in gathering information in a world turned upside down by ideological conflict was reflected in titles such as Intelligencer, Scout, Spy and Informer. The accurate and faithful reproduction of news and information was considered significant to the early newsbooks of the Civil War period — hence Perfect Diurnall, True and Perfect Diurnall and Perfect Passages. Speed, time, technology, methods of distribution and production and nature of readership have been central to other stages of the development of newspapers. The early eighteenth century placed emphasis on the importance of means of getting the newspaper to readers, with terms such as Post, Flying Boy, Mail, Courier, Dispatch and Packet in the titles. Fascination with new technology in the nineteenth century was manifested in titles such as the Telegraph and Telegram, although the Abergavenny Telephone never caught on. Times, Express, Courant and Journal reflect the newspaper’s obsession with speed and deadlines, while Observer, Guardian, Sentinel, Independent, Moderator, Tribune, Monitor, Record, Recorder, Examiner, Ledger, Register, Spectator, Tatler and Standard suggest basic dispositions to society or guiding properties. Gazette, Reporter, Chronicle, Review, Sketch, Advertiser, Correspondent, News and Bulletin incorporate notions of what are believed to be the functions of a newspaper. Star, Sun, Comet and Lantern can be seen as representing what many papers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries believed was one of their main objectives, to enlighten their readers. The growing importance of the visual components of the newspaper from the end of the eighteenth century is reflected in titles such as Pictorial, Graphic and Mirror.

Handwritten manuscripts and printed forms of news emerged into a world in which oral communication was pre-eminent. Scholars, most notably Walter Ong⁶ and Marshal McLuhan,⁷ have drawn attention to the differences between oral and written cultures. The time- and space-bound nature of oral communication is emphasised; speaker and audience have to be co-present and recall is limited to those present. The reliability of what is communicated is a crucial matter of concern in oral cultures. Human memory is far from infallible and spoken news is open to manipulation and miscommunication. Inevitably, after much telling and retelling, the news becomes completely distorted. In oral cultures, free from the capacity to provide a permanent record of knowledge which written cultures supply, rumour abounds. Magic and superstition could prevail in such conditions and news of the fantastic and phantasmagorical was commonplace. As news was primarily spoken, sung or recited, attention was paid to dramatisation to ensure people listened. However, as Mitchell Stephens⁸ points out, the limitations of the oral communication of news and information went beyond the problems of inaccuracy, embellishment and dramatisation. Oral communication is only capable of sustaining and supplying local communities. The oral transmission of news and information proved increasingly inadequate with the growth of more sophisticated forms of social and economic organisation. The rise of urban communities, nations and empires in the late Middle Ages increased the demand for a reliable flow of news and information that could reach more people more quickly. Particular sections of medieval society sought news and information of greater reliability. Miscommunication of what was going on at court or what had happened in foreign wars or about the price of commodities could have profound consequences for monarchs, mercenaries and merchants. The need to manage and understand the more sophisticated and complex society that was emerging led to more value being placed on specialist writers, scribes and copyists, who could document knowledge and communicate more reliable forms of news and information.

The rise of the written word

Handwritten newssheets had appeared in China about 200 years before the birth of Christ. Produced by the government, they circulated primarily amongst officials. In the Western world the handwritten communication of news and information can be traced back to the early days of Rome. News was disseminated more widely than in China, travelling along the roads and seaways of the Roman Empire to most major centres of population. For nearly 300 years these handwritten manuscripts, acta diurna, would be posted in public places displaying details of the major political and military events of the day as well as news of births, deaths, marriages, ceremonies and human interest stories. They contained accounts of the proceedings of the Senate and the pleadings in the courts of law,⁹ as well as much trivial and erroneous information. The philosopher Cicero complained about the quality of what appeared in the handwritten dispatches sent out from Rome, which he found too full of‘tittle-tattle’ and ‘reports of gladiatorial pairs and the adjournments of trials’.¹⁰ Historians emphasise the social value of these publications. They are seen as helping to hold the Empire together, playing a key role in the socialisation of the Empire’s citizens and the effective dissemination of official information and decrees throughout the Empire.¹¹ Published ‘by authority’, they represent an early written form of promulgating the news, spread from above to the rest of the population.

Following the collapse of the Roman Empire transportation and communication networks across Europe withered and the forward march of written news was temporarily halted. Literacy declined in the so-called ‘Dark Ages’ and written material became more inaccessible due to the ornate handwriting employed in its reproduction and to the use of Latin, a language which most ordinary people in Europe could not read.¹² They spoke only their vernacular languages. The dominance of Latin was a reflection of the cultural monopoly of the Church, which was an obstacle to the dissemination of news and information and the development of reading and writing. Medieval life was deeply embedded within the Church. Most people gained news through the pulpit. Gothic cathedrals have been called ‘encyclopaedias of stone and glass’.¹³ Papal control over the institutions of mental production was virtually complete, and by managing the means of mass communication of the day, the pulpit, altar and religious rituals and imagery, the Papacy was able ‘to transmit not merely its claims of church leadership but an ideological perspective of the world that legitimated its domination of Christendom’.¹⁴ To ensure that only ideas that conformed to the doctrines and desires of the religious establishment were communicated, the Church propagated its message through an elaborate system of non-verbal communication reinforced by the spoken words of priests, who, from the pulpit, promoted their interpretation of the Bible. The written word was a potential threat and had to be carefully policed by the religious authorities. Hence the use of ornate styles and Latin to ensure that knowledge was maintained in the hands of the approved few. The copying of material was dominated by the Church. The monasteries had a virtual monopoly over the means of manuscript production; most scribes learned their trade in the shadows of the Church. They worked in scriptoria for free, serving the interests of their masters and superiors. The Church’s hegemony over the supply of written material placed restrictions on the exchange of ideas, which acted as a barrier to the freedom of public expression and an impediment to the development of public forms of news.

The Church’s influence over the transmission of literate culture slowly diminished from the thirteenth century. The waning of the Middle Ages corresponded with the expansion of the numbers of those interested in gaining knowledge and information. The balance between information which could be ‘passed on freely’ and that which could only be ‘whispered in confidence’ slowly began to change.¹⁵ Public communication was enhanced by the growth of independent centres of learning and knowledge in the form of universities, first established in the twelfth century.¹⁶ Centres of secular learning in medicine and the law, these bodies increased the demand for reliable and accurate information. They also promoted ‘disputation’; establishing that opinions could diverge on a given topic or matter. However, the majority of teachers and students in medieval universities were members of the clergy and the disputations between them took place within parameters laid down by the Church.¹⁷ The outcome was the growth of demand for a wide range of non-papal texts on medicine, law, astronomy, travel, mathematics and Greek philosophy. Responding to the growth in demand for books and material from the universities and mendicant orders, lay stationers gradually began to replace monastic scribes. Copyists were employed in greater numbers to produce parts of texts for payment as a mean of speeding up production.¹⁸ The process of manuscript production was transformed as paper replaced parchment. Costs of production fell and output rose. There was a substantial increase in the number of manuscripts as the laborious preparation involved in the use of parchment was replaced by the ‘simpler, quicker and cheaper techniques of paper production’.¹⁹ Commercial and university scriptoria emerged as the copying of manuscripts became an industry. The growth of lay influence over cultural production as well as the development of lay consciousness not only eroded the Church’s monopoly over knowledge but undermined papal authority. The result was the publication of a wider range of material in spite of the efforts of the Church to proscribe and regulate the reproduction of what it saw as undesirable. The extension of scribal culture is also associated with the rising demand for secular education and literacy. The late medieval period witnessed the ‘gradual penetration’ of reading and writing into everyday life, the emergence of unorthodox opinion, the establishment of the foundations of a publishing industry and the birth of a broader ‘reading public’.²⁰ These changes were to be crucial to developing and sustaining news as a form of public communication.

The gradual emergence of a group of people and institutions devoted to the pursuit of learning and knowledge was accompanied, if not promoted, by the expansion of the dynastic order across Europe. Pressure for access to information from kings, princes and merchants was a crucial factor in the rise of the written word. Political rulers required information to pursue their efforts to centralise...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures
• Preface
• History of the Newspaper in Britain
• Introduction: News, newspapers and society
• 1 Spreading the Word: The pre-history of the British newspaper, 1486–1660
• 2 Newspapers for the Few: Politics, the press and partisanship, 1660–1789
• 3 Knowledge and Power: The Radical press, 1789–1850
• 4 Transition to Democracy: The press as ‘the fourth estate’, 1850–90
• 5 The Northcliffe Revolution: The rise of the commercial newspaper, 1890–1922
• 6 Newspaper Wars: The press in the inter-war years, 1922–39
• 7 War, Social Change and Reconstruction: Newspapers at war and peace, 1939–67
• 8 The Land of the Rising Sun: The emergence of the tabloid newspaper, 1967–89
• 9 The Long Goodbye: The newspaper and technological change, 1989 to the present
• Further Reading
• Notes
• Bibliography