20th century journalism

So the first lecture of another semester was based around 20^th century journalism. Newspapers throughout the 1950’s transformed dramatically and their format remains similar to tabloid newspapers of today such as The Mirror and the Daily Mail. Following the end of the Second World War there was a huge baby boom in England and by the late 50’s and 60’s this generation of youngsters were in their teenage years. Britain during the 50’s and 60’s was very affluent with full employment across the country and the introduction of the welfare state meant that every citizen was entitled to free healthcare and education. But the most influential event during this time was the popularisation of commercial television and the broadcast of ITV in 1968. In addition, ITV contained advertisement breaks which allowed companies to advertise their products to the younger generation who had disposable income, unlike their parents who suffered the hardships of the war. This allowed advertisers who had previously only been able to advertise to a newspaper audience to reach out to a wider target audience on the small screen.  As a result newspaper companies had to make changes in order to remain competitive with television. For example, The Mirror under the charge of Hugh Cudlipp began reporting on the world of celebrities and popular music in order to persuade the younger generation especially young working class men to read the newspaper.  The newspaper became an even greater success as sales of the newspaper increased to around 8 million by the late 1960’s. It ignored television and continued to report on the latest events in the celebrity and music worlds but slowly television would take over the crown.

The image of the newspaper below shows a typical front page headline of the 1960’s with the death of rock star Eddie Cochrane in 1960.

After the introduction of ITV soap operas such as Coronation Street began to attract more viewers than newspapers could manage and so television became the more dominant form of media.  Young people were tuning in to watch the latest episode of Coronation Street rather than read the Daily Mirror and sales of the newspaper began to decline. 

Rupert Murdoch began his British newspaper empire in the late 1960’s when he purchased The Sun and bought the rights to the Daily Mirror in an attempt to persuade young people to stop watching television and pick up a newspaper. He relaunched The Sun as a modern newspaper for the “cool generation” by including a free pop out magazine containing gossip, horoscopes and the sports results. This became a trademark of the newspaper and magazines are included in the newspaper today. Sales of the newspaper increased and so did Murdoch’s empire. Currently, he is the owner of News Corporation and Twentieth Century Fox television who owns rights to major American TV shows such as The Simpsons. 

The video above is an interview with Rupert Murdoch himself and discusses how techology such as television has changed and revolutionised new media. It is well worth a watch as it is very relevant to the lecture.