Chris Horrie’s ‘Tabloid Nation’ studies the birth of the Daily Mirror right up to the death of the tabloid. The first two parts of the book cover the creation of the Daily Mirror up to the redundancy of the company’s director, Harry Guy Bartholomew, in the final chapter.
The first chapter begins by explaining how the Daily Mirror was created. Alfred Harmsworth, later to be known as Lord Northcliffe, created ‘Answers’, a successful magazine popular for it’s bizarre stories and enticingly difficult competitions. His next venture was the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail offered a broadsheet newspaper at half the price of any other broadsheet newspaper. The Mail saw a sharp increase in readers after introducing a section for women. The success with this section inspired Northcliffe to produce a newspaper by women, for women, known as the Daily Mirror.
After a huge launch campaign the newspaper was a flop as the number of readers dropped drastically following its release. John McCannon acknowledges that ‘in most times and places, women have occupied a secondary status in society, whether because of general division of labor, cultural and religious bias, or simple sexism.’ This derogative stereotype suggests that the lack of confidence men had in women thereby halted the progression of the newspaper further in the hands of women. Northcliffe reaffirms this contemporary belief by saying, ‘women cant write and don’t want to read.’
Hannen Swaffer, otherwise known as ‘The Pope of Fleet Street’ transformed the Daily Mirror into what can be considered today as the beginning of photo journalism. It was picture based news. Fyfe who was head of the Advertiser newspaper at the time explained how, ‘everything in the Daily Mirror was calculated to be easy absorption by the most ordinary intelligence’. Extraordinary pictures filled the pages which people in 1900’s England would never have been able to see without the Mirror. Pictures ranged from the coronation of the King Siam to the funeral of the Emperor of Japan.
Despite attaining astronomical profits and sales figures, the Daily Mirror became an embarrassment and its lack of intellectual news stories started to take a toll on the papers reputation. Shocking pictures of a dead king’s face as well as the boxing match which sparked riots in England were flaunted to the public on the front page. Lord Northcliffe branded it ‘a good newspaper for cab drivers’ and ‘beyond redemption’ and began cutting links with the Mirror in 1910. Photographers working for the Mirror were labelled as ghouls or creeps due to their heartlessness approach of capitalising on anything out of the ordinary no matter how morally wrong it may be.
Lord Rothermere was handed down ownership of the papers after Lord Northcliffe passed away. Newspapers such as the Herald and the Express began giving away free gifts because of low sales figures leading up to the recession of 1929. This led to an all out free gift war. The various papers would give away an increasingly expensive variety of gifts for free. Horrie explained how; ‘the canvassers were dispatched to offer cameras, tea sets, laundry mangles, encyclopaedias, tea kettles, overcoats, children’s shoes and boots to all comers.’ This ultimately resulted in the collapse of any kind of financial stability throughout the industry.
Rothermere became obsessed with nationalism and fascism and led the Daily Mirror into a right wing political stance. His political agenda supported that of Adolf Hitler’s and he even wrote to him on the 1st of October praising his leadership qualities;
‘My dear Fuhrer, everyone in England is profoundly moved by the bloodless solution to the Czechoslovakian problem. People are not so much concerned with territorial readjustment as with dread of another war with its accompanying bloodbath. Frederick the great was a great popular figure. I salute your Excellency’s star which rises higher and higher.’
Because of this obsession both papers, the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror have had their reputation trampled upon by competing newspapers. The independent in October 2003 attacked the paper for its previous right wing stance and drew attention to the fact that; ‘The paper was burned on the streets after running the headline “hurrah for the blackshirts” and backing Oswald Mosley’s plan to make himself Britain’s equivalent of Adolf Hitler”.
Harry Guy Bartholomew, Bart, was one of the most influential directors in the Daily Mirrors history. He started off in the Daily Mirror in 1904 as a photographic technician which led to his creation of the Bartlane. The Bartlane was a technical system which meant English papers could receive American pictures in a matter of minutes or hours. This created the first link between the Daily Mirror and American newspapers, namely the New York Daily. Bart now aimed at making the Daily Mirror into a very Americanised newspaper. Introducing features such as cartoon strips, he brought sensationalism into the Mirror.
With the arrival of Hugh Cudlipp the American idea of sensationalism took off in the Daily Mirror newspaper. Nudity was introduced and stories of disaster and scandals filled the paper. It was the first newspaper to show boobs. Horrie explains that ‘the photos illustrated a supposedly anthropological pictorial study of ‘native life’ in Africa, featuring two nude African girls washing in a stream.’ The mirror now displayed the vulgarity and suggestiveness which could only be found elsewhere in England in Blackpool’s ‘golden mile.’ Further down the line page three was introduced and curiously named; ‘a study of springtime’ which featured naked women standing in gardens.
The Daily Mirror had such great influence at the time of the war in promoting propaganda against the Nazis that their offices were targeted during the war by German bombings. However, much of the mirrors staff discussed their most significant ideas in a bar nearby called El Vinos. Horrie wrote that, ‘if the Germans had wanted to knock the mirror out of the war they should have dropped a bomb on El Vino’s wine-bar’. At this point the Daily Mirror was the most successful newspaper in England as it had the ability to feel the public’s mood at the time. Horrie explained that, ‘the paper’s skill in judging the mood of times seemed to sweep it along on the crest of a tidal wave of generational and political change.’
Overall, the first two parts of ‘Tabloid Nation’ effectively explain the Daily Mirror’s history and influence from the early 1900’s to just after the Second World War. The newspaper pioneered photo journalism and becoming incredibly rich and influential by doing so. Losing all of it’s self-respect and moral backbone it had in the early stages of it’s production was a small price to pay for it’s widespread commercial success.
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