The English Press: Into the Future (Part 2)
The press has often fascinated playwrights. In Samuel Foote’s late play The Bankrupt (1773), ‘Margin,’ a newspaper editor, refers to the role of the seasons in providing material for the press:
‘Plays and Parliament houses are winter provisions…. I warrant you, if you are not idle, there’s business enough. The press teems with fresh publications – histories, translations, voyages – and what with letters from Paris or Spa, inundations, elopements, dismal effects of thunder and lightning, remarkable causes at country assizes, and with changing the ministry now and then, you will have employment enough the summer.’
When Foote was accused of homosexuality by the Public Ledger in 1775-6, he turned its editor, William Jackson, into Dr Viper, the editor of the Scandalous Chronicle, in his last play The Capuchin (1776).
The Sun was, from the 1980s, particularly successful in making the news fun (to some), and notably so in its arresting and often punning headlines. ‘FREDDIE STARR ATE MY HAMSTER,’ carried on 13 March 1986, was the most famous. Starr, a comic, said that the incident was a total fabrication, one invented by the prominent publicist Max Clifford in order to focus interest on the star. Starr claimed the story came about because of an offhand remark he made. The other really famous headline, ‘GOTCHA,’ published in the Sun on 2 May 1982, referred to a real episode, the sinking of the Argentinean warship, the General Belgrano, by a British submarine, HMS Conqueror, during the Falklands War.
Interest in non-political news, preponderantly, of a celebrity type, was much in evidence with the Daily Mail online in the 2010s. Whereas the print edition tended to begin with substantive stories about news, celebrity gossip occupied that position in the online edition. The contrast was very clear by 2018. On 1 September 2018, Mail Online led with ‘Roxanne Pallett Walks out of the Celebrity Big Brother house amid backlash over the ex-Emmerdale Star’s claim that former Coronation Street actor Ryan Thomas punched her.’ That day, the Daily Mail led on ‘Schools turn down children who live one minute away,’ an item that appeared well down in the Online headlines. There was scant difference between the tone of such Online issues and social media items, but the relevant journalism rested in providing a mass of material of such type.
Moreover, the ‘gossipy’ or ‘magazine-y’ character of much of the press as a whole is clear with the Saturday supplements and the need to fill their bulk in order to match the would-be advertising. At the same time, this matched public preferences. ‘We live in a time of quite difficult, bleak news,’ pointed out a radio presenter in 2018 explaining why listeners were switching from Today on Radio 4. Duncan Allen, the fictional editor of the Post in Press, remarks ‘Life’s hard, and our readers want a giggle.’ He is described by Holly, the Deputy News Editor of the Post, as ‘a misogynistic, overbearing, well-oiled bully, an offence to journalism.’
The magazine character of the popular press is evident. Rob Rinder, a columnist in the Evening Standard, began an article on 31 August 2018: ‘I was flicking through the papers, shaking my head at another week of showbiz stories about spoilt pop stars making unreasonable demands, spending small fortunes on bling, holidays and cars, and demanding “Don’t You Know Who I Am!.” The Daily Mail of 11 September 2018 led on ‘Soup and Shake Diet on the NHS to reverse diabetes’ and included ‘Home Gadgets that spy on you – free pull out’ and ‘Have they really killed Keeley? 10 Bodyguard theories that will have you hooked,’ a two-page spread on a current television series.
So also with the quality press. Thus, the Sunday Telegraph on 2 September 2018 included quizzes as well as lots on wine, modern manners, and ‘The 20 questions that could lead to a more fulfilling life resolved by our team of experts. A fortnight later, there was a headline at the top ‘Angela Hartnell joins The Telegraph. Her favourite Italian dinner party recipes.’ The Times on 29 August 2018 offered commentary on a new BBC series about midlife raunchiness, while, reviewing the ‘stars’ social media before their dance debuts,’ the Daily Mirror of 21 September 2018 asked ‘Who’s clicked on Strictly?’
Ultimately, the question becomes one of definition. Is the paper element more, or as significant, as that of news? Probably not. Far from being a formulaic product and practice, the ‘paper’ is already read by many online, more so than the book on Kindle or in audio formats, and there is no reason why that process should not develop further. Indeed, in one respect, the dynamic response to the changing character of the press is an aspect of the complexities of constructing identities and the democratisation that are so prevalent in modern society. Thus, in 2018, the Times changed its online character in order to encourage reader debate.
At the same time, there was a shift in emphasis that was readily apparent in the many coffee-houses of the present day. They tend to have far more people online than reading, whether newspapers or anything else. Moreover, the change in café culture is instructive. ‘Greasy-spoon’ cafes still tend to have (old-fashioned) tabloids and people reading them, but that is far less the case in metropolitan coffee-houses. Changes in society are hitting the places where people meet and read the traditional popular press.
The element of democratisation was understood as latent from the very start of printing and, even more, the press, and led to both criticism and praise, both, to a degree, exaggerated as well as teleological. This is especially apparent in concern about population. Thus, Richard Steele, in the Englishman of 7 November 1715, claimed, in terms that are reminiscent of some recent writing:
‘as the vulgar are more affected with legerdemain tricks, than honest performances of art; so are they easier to be wrought upon by tricks in logic, by insidious fallacies, than by the most just and solid reasoning. They are equally incapable of discerning the force of a good argument, or the weakness of a bad one. This opens a wide field for men of ill designs, to impose what they please upon them; and there will never be wanting men who will have the hardiness and conscience to bring about their designs by such ungenerous arts.’
Thirteen years later, Richard Buckner, estate agent to the 2nd Duke of Richmond, reported from Sussex:
‘Politics is the only prevailing conversation at present, and there is no company, or set of men of what degree soever, who does not take upon them to describe matters as peremptorily as if they were at the very bottom of the secret. These discourses perpetually produce murmurings, and when they are warm with ale and arguments, they launch out into such a liberty of speech as if they had letters patent of indemnification in their pockets. They loudly complain of stagnation of trade, the capture of so many merchant ships, the dilatory proceedings of the Congress, and such general topics, extracted from the Craftsman and Fog’s as furnishes them with sufficient matter for reflection.’
So also with the overlap between forms. Attacking some other newspapers on 9 December 1727 in terms that prefigure current discussion of social media, Applebee’s Original Weekly Journal complained of those: ‘whose only excellencies consist in their propagating and improving, with art and subtlety, every factious story, and idle rumour, they can glean up in coffee-houses and other places of public resort.’
A history of the press that is at once constant in its themes, and cyclical in the forms it addresses, may not match modern interest in the teleological, or in the idea of a programmatic rise and decline; but it is still a history that is worthy of consideration.
