Tabloid Nation

Chris Horrie- Tabloid Nation: From the birth of the Daily Mirror to the death of the tabloid

Chris Horrie’s book begins with the quote made by George Orwell in 1941 “Like the music halls, they are sort of saturnalia, a harmless rebellion against virtue. They express only one tendency in the human mind, but a tendency which is always there will find its own outlet, like water. On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.”

Below are my notes on the book...

Foreword by John Tulloch:
- The assertion that the Daily Mirror is the most loved, loathed and untrue tabloid.
- Do tabloids hold significant authority in today’s society? For example, have tabloids changed how we view the Royal family, or even damaged their security? Its an interesting idea that tabloids have the power to change how society is run.
- Are all tabloids the same because they follow the same format? Do they still have a strong journalistic ethic?
- Dick Rooney wrote in 2000 that tabloids have “abandoned the public sphere” and are not “anything other than vehicles for non-serious material”


Part One: Those Horrible Hamsworths
- The book begins with the birth of the Daily Mirror, which transpires as a conversation between Alfred Hamsworth (Lord Northcliffe) and Hamilton Fyfe – the first editor of the new Daily Mirror. Northcliffe’s attitude towards women is clear “women can’t write and don’t want to read”. The new tabloid is re-born with a new image, away from the disastrous beginnings as a newspaper written for and by gentlewomen.
- Fyfe compares firing the all female staff of the old Daily Mirror to like “drowning kittens” but Northcliffe decided a fresh outlook was needed to rescue the newspaper

- Alfred Hamsworth’s early life:

- Born near Dublin 1865 to a barrister and a mother who he adored (even to the extent that he wrote to her almost every day and named the editorial offices Geraldine House)
- Educated at public school in London but left school early to pursue a career in an illustrated magazine for boys.
- Became a reporter on The Illustrated London News
- Aged 21 became part of the editorship of Bicycling News
- Used his instinct and stole paper and used Bicycling News’ printing press to print his own magazine – Answers to Correspondents On every Subject Under the Sun or Answers. This was a complete rip-off of Tit-Bits, the best selling weekly magazine. “Facts” included “What the Queen Eats” and “Why Jews Don’t Ride Bicycles”. The beginnings of this magazine provide valuable insight into what Northcliffe did professionally in later life.
- Un-winnable competitions boosted circulation
- Daily Mail May 1896. Sold 397, 215 copies on the first day of sales
- Kennedy KJ Jones
- Dreyfus Affair
- 1903 Daily Mirror – women based which after eight weeks was selling less than 25,000 copies

The Pope of Fleet Street
- Hannen Swaffer was one of the first journalists to be head-hunted and hired by Fyfe in 1904 when The Mirror was re-launched
- Beginnings of The Illustrated Daily Mirror, which saw circulation treble to over 71,000 overnight after pictures of the Royal family were published
- The Mirror’s fake seriousness and sincerity won over their audience through the medium of campaigns and crusades, and the editorial team believed that pictures were easier to understand than words so filled the newspaper with full pages of images
- Within a month circulation reached 140,000 and after a year reached 290,000
- Alexander Kenealy
- The crusade of the pit ponies’ plight was a massively successful campaign for the Mirror which saw the paper even buy a pony
- Revolutionised photography
- Ideology of making your own news – proving that you can make honey in the middle of London caused a frantic bee hunt leading to increased sales and advertising
- Always self advertising
- Deathbed photos of King Edward VII
- Printed the same picture the next morning, which was an extremely well thought out move. The previous day copies had sold out, the next day they did not make the same mistake again and managed to sell a record breaking circulation of 2,013,000
- The fights between Swaffer and Kenealy and Northcliffe which lead to the downfall of the paper. Disagreements about the coverage of the Titanic – Swaffer wanted all pictures. Northcliffe wanted “real reporting”
- Coverage of the Johnson and Jeffries boxing game, which sparked race riots
- The Chiefs death in 1922


Ghouls, Criminals… Animals Beneath Contempt
- The Times – Northcliffe’s new newspaper, his brainchild
- Northcliffe became increasingly less interested in the Mirror and sold his shares in 1914
- Lord Rothermere took over but used the paper primarily for shares purposes, eg hyping particular shares
- “The forces paper” – during the First World War
- Came out of the First World War with highest sale of any daily paper


Herald of Doom – The Free Gift War
- Daily Herald proved to be competition in 1922 after it was taken over by the TUC, had the philosophy of ‘buying’ readers with free gifts and competitions
- Spent £3 million a year on promotions
- The Mirror was used to finance other papers, buy shares and finance other projects… it was doomed


A Helping Hand
- Ties with Hitler

Bart – El Vinos Veritas
Bartholomew and king lay the foundations of tabloid Britain