# History of the British press

# Reading Activity

Newspapers can be published daily or weekly, in the morning or in the afternoon; they may be published for the few hundred inhabitants of a small town, for a whole country, or even for an international audience. A newspaper differs from other forms of publication in its immediacy, characteristic headlines, and coverage of a miscellany of topical issues and events. According to a report in 1949 by the Royal Commission on the Press in the United Kingdom, to qualify as news “an event must first be interesting to the public, and the public for this purpose means for each paper the people who read that paper.”

Origins

The British press made its debut—an inauspicious one—in the early 17th century. News coverage was restricted to foreign affairs for a long time. As it developed, the British press would remain principally a national one centred on Fleet Street in London. After 1691, improvements in the postal system made daily publication practical, the first attempt at doing so being the single-sheet Daily Courant (1702–35), which consisted largely of extracts from foreign corantos. A more radical departure was the triweekly Review (1704–13), produced by Daniel Defoe, in which the writer’s opinion on current political topics was given, introducing the editorial, or leading article.

Era of the Industrial Revolution

New technology influenced newspapers both directly, through the revolution in printing techniques, and indirectly, through the rapid developments in transport and communications. In printing technology, necessity determined invention when the demand for newspapers exceeded the few thousand weekly copies required of the most popular titles. In 1814, the steam-driven “double-press” was introduced at The Times in London, allowing an output of 5,000 copies per hour. The higher output was a contributing factor in the rise of The Times’s circulation from 5,000 to 50,000 by the middle of the century.

The content of newspapers was also transformed by the speeding up of communication, which allowed news to be gathered instantly from distant cities via the telephone or even from foreign countries through the seabed cables laid between Dover, England, and Calais, France, in 1851 and across the Atlantic in 1866.

The foundations of modern journalism

The creation of new industrial occupations in society as a whole was reported by a new set of newspaper reporters who had far more specific jobs than their 18th-century predecessors. Earlier journalists might write, edit, and print each copy of the paper by themselves.

With the expansion of newspapers, full-time reporters, whose job was to go and get the news, were recruited, and they replaced many occasional correspondents, although there was always room for the stringer, a part-time reporter based in a small town or a remote region. The expense of employing a large team of reporters, some of whom could be out of the office for months, proved impossible for smaller papers, thus paving the way for the news agency. Expansion soon led to the creation of the Reuters service of foreign telegrams to the press, an organization that grew with the spread of the British Empire to cover a large part of the world.

Growth of newspapers. Great Britain

In Europe, Britain alone could boast the presence of an independent press in the first half of the 19th century. The London Times demonstrated the value of journalistic objectivity and the need to criticize governments if hard-won rights were to be preserved. The Times became a model for most serious British newspapers. More characteristic of the age was the Daily Telegraph (1855), a penny paper, but one that competed directly with The Times by covering serious news stories and including thoughtful editorial comment on four sides of print, but at a quarter of the price of the fourpenny Times.

The rise of the popular press

The British press was slower to emerge as a popular, sensational medium, but a major turning point came in 1855 when the stamp tax was abolished.

At the turn of the century, popular journalism came into its own in Britain with the rise of Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe), who can be called the first of the British press barons both for his title and for his enduring influence on the press. During his lifetime he owned, at various times, the Daily Mail, the Mirror, The Times, and the Observer. As his first effort he launched a cheap weekly magazine in 1888, when he was only 23. Using short sentences, short paragraphs, and short articles, the new style of editing was aimed at attracting a large following among those who had learned to read as a result of the 1870 Education Act that made school compulsory for all British children. In 1894 Harmsworth bought the Evening News, and by combining his editing style with some of the methods of American yellow journalism, he quadrupled its circulation within a year.

The Modern era

After World War II, radical changes in newspaper production in particular and mass communication in general occurred on a par with those brought by the Industrial Revolution. Electronic and communications technology have continued to revolutionize the ways in which newspapers are written, edited, and printed, while radio, television, and the Internet have developed into serious competitors as sources of news, official information, and entertainment—and as vehicles for advertising.

Technological advances were accelerated in the 1970s, especially through the introduction of computers and computer programs that were tailor-made for the newspaper publisher. Many newspaper companies replaced their 19th-century printing systems with the new technology almost overnight. This new technology has introduced changes in the production of pages but also in other production purposes. This has decreased real estate or rental costs for many urban newspapers, and it has also made possible the printing of simultaneous editions of the same newspaper in different cities and even on different continents, an advantage first exploited by the British-based Financial Times and the U.S.-based Wall Street Journal. As the computer increasingly streamlined the basic functions of newspaper production, the proprietor was able to replace highly skilled production workers with less qualified and lower-paid staffs to handle the more routine jobs such as typing.

Despite the challenges presented by competing mass media such as radio, television, and Internet news sites, many newspapers, both large and small, have remained attractive to readers and have been run profitably.

(1) https://www.britannica.com/topic/publishing/Newspaper-publishing

# Multi-select

# Question

1.The main characteristics of newspapers are

# Answers

Option 1

its immediacy

Option 2

the headlines

Option 3

the variety of news

Option 4

The variety of programes

# Feedback

# Solution

1. Correct
2. Correct
3. Correct
4. Incorrect

# Question

2. The first newspapers included

# Answers

Option 1

foreign news

Option 2

local news

Option 3

national news

Option 4

opinion articles

# Feedback

# Solution

1. Correct
2. Incorrect
3. Correct
4. Correct

# Question

3. The era of the industrial revolution influenced newspapers

# Answers

Option 1

in the number of copies printed

Option 2

in their access to the news

Option 3

in the demand for newspapers

Option 4

in the type of news they printed

# Feedback

# Solution

1. Incorrect
2. Incorrect
3. Incorrect
4. Incorrect

# Question

4. Modern journalism is characterized for

# Answers

Option 1

the rise of news agencies

Option 2

the creation of specific jobs

Option 3

the rise of permanent correspondents

Option 4

the end of temporary correspondents

# Feedback

# Solution

1. Incorrect
2. Incorrect
3. Incorrect
4. Incorrect

# Question

5. "The Times"

# Answers

Option 1

was the first independent newspaper.

Option 2

used the most innovative technology.

Option 3

was the cheapest newspaper at the time.

Option 4

played an important role in politics.

# Feedback

# Solution

1. Correct
2. Correct
3. Incorrect
4. Correct

# Question

6. The rise of popular newspapers

# Answers

Option 1

meant that newspapers were seen as business.

Option 2

happened in Britain later than in other countries.

Option 3

provided compulsory schooling for all British children.

Option 4

increased the number of readers.

# Feedback

# Solution

1. Incorrect
2. Incorrect
3. Incorrect
4. Incorrect

# Question

7. In the modern era of newspapers,

# Answers

Option 1

many workers have been replaced by computers.

Option 2

the cost of producing newspapers has been reduced.

Option 3

local newspapers are no longer appealing to readers.

Option 4

most newspapers have had to face great competition.

# Feedback

# Solution

1. Correct
2. Correct
3. Incorrect
4. Correct

# Activity

Check if your ideas about the evolution of the British press were right or not.

EXTRA ACTIVITY

Click on the Britannica link and find out about the role of advertising in the British press.

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