Tabloid Nation

The book looks deeply into the Daily Mirror, as well as the Daily Mail.

• Alfred Northcliffe hired Fyfe as the editor of the Daily Mirror. He wanted Fyfe to turn the paper around and improve its circulation which was at the time, poor.
• Although at the time the Daily Mirror was considered as a female's paper, Fyfe nonetheless fired every single female journalist employed by the apart apart from Mary Howarth who stayed on as a fashion writer.
• The most influential change to the paper came when Hannen Swaffer was appointed and managed to turn the papers circulation from 25,000, to just under a million in just a few years by making it a picture paper and starting the trend of the celebrity obsessed culture which we have come to strongly link to photo journalism.
• This change all started with the death of King Edward III. Swaffer and Kennedy Jones (whom Northcliffe pinched from Hearst's organisation) overheard a conversation of a rival paper talking about pictures of King Edward III on his death bed. Swaffer managed to get hold of these pictures and put them on the front page, and led to the paper selling around 71,000 copies over just two days, and established their reputation as a tabloid newspaper.

Modernism - The Age of Analysis

Modernism evolved from Romaniticism, and was a reaction against the Enlightenment.

Freidrich Nietzsche:

• Nietzsche's style has a great influence in Journalism, even today. He started advertisement slogans, hook lines, as well as tabloid headlines.
• Nietzsche is considered as a flawed genius, and in the closing stages of his life he was simply insane, taking a vow of silence in the last 10 years.
• Nietzsche saw Christianity as the religion of the weak, and as mankinds greatest problem.

William Randolph Hearst

• In 1846 New York Newspapers set up 'the association press.' They were required to be objective, as they supplied content for a variety of papers which covered all sides of the political spectrum.


• In 1887, William Randolph Hearst took over the 'San Francisco Examiner' and revolutionized it.


• Hearst was a big exponent of the front page of Newspapers, previously front pages were filled with text and very little illustration, however Hearst, who had a background in art, reduced the length of stories, expanded the size of headlines, and eliminated advertisement.


• Hearst included many illustrations, stating that they 'attract the eye and stimulate the imagination of the lower classes, and materially aid comprehension.'


• New York at the time was a city dramatically on the rise, because of a number of factors including; cheap labour, urban concentration, very low commodity prices, capital accumulation, and vast investment in infastructure.
• In 1896, Hearst brought the New York morning journal and poached the 'Yellow Kid' from under Joseph Pulitzer's nose. Pulitzer however, tried to stay in the game and hired his own cartoonist to produce the 'Yellow Kid' for his own newspaper. So for a while, there were two major New York newspapers running the same cartoon. Due to a lack of copyright laws at this time, there was never a legal battle about the ownership of the 'Yellow Kid.'
• The 'Yellow Kid' was vastly popular among the working class due to the language used and attitude towards the upper classes.
• The 'New York Morning Journal' and the 'New York World' were constantly at loggerheads, and even went head to head in solving crimes.
• The American - Spanish war led to great oppurtunities for stories for the newspapers, and in particular Hearst who sent reporters over to cover the story.
• In short, Hearst directly influenced modern journalism by creating the models for modern and popular tabloid journalism. The style of 'yellow papers' was later copied in the UK by Northcliffe, Rothermere (Daily Mail and Daily Mirror), as well as Rupert Murdoch (The Sun).