1. Dr. Carolina Matos
Lecturer in Sociology
Department of Sociology
City University London
WK 3 – The Invention of Journalism: the
industrialisation of the press and the second
information revolution

2. Core readings
 Essential reading
 Curran, J. and J. Seaton (2010) Power Without Responsibility - 7th
Edition.
Routledge. Routledge. Chapter 4.

 Highly recommended reading
 Briggs, A. and P. Burke (2002) A Social History of the Media: From
Gutenberg to the Internet. Polity. Chapter 5.
 Chalaby. J. (1998) The Invention of Journalism. Macmillan. Chapter 2.
 Additional reading
 Seymour-Ure, C. (1996) The British Press and Broadcasting since 1945.
Blackwell. Chapter 3.

3. Key points
The British press before and after the abolition of the taxes on
knowledge
 Press freedom and the growth of the UK press
UK newspapers: political alignments and ideology
The second information revolution and the 19th
century
industrial revolution
The emergence and impact of the press industry
Telegraph lines and the rotary press
The development of journalism
Conclusions
Readings for next week

4. The industrialization of the press: some trends
Britain developed a newspaper industry earlier than most European
nations
The end of direct state censorship was a turning point in the
development of the British press. The 18th
century saw a sustained growth of
the London press: by 1760 there were 89 newspapers published in the capital
city.
The 19th century industrial revolution provokes the second information
revolution
The press becomes an industry and independent field of discursive
production
Journalism develops finally
Journalism is a way of thinking and writing about social reality that is
distinct from politics and literature

5. The industrialization of the press*
 During the half-century following the repeal of the ‘taxes on
knowledge’ during the period of 1853-61, a number of radical
newspapers closed down or were incorporated into mainstream
journalism
 Historians attribute their decline to a change in public opinion. This
also occurred during a period of rapid press expansion
 The collapse of Chartism in the early 1850s produced a wave of
disillusion, with trade unions becoming more inward looking and
seeking to improve their own working conditions
 A predominantly right-wing press came into existence, including
newspapers such as the People (1881), Daily Mail (1896), Daily
Express (1900) and the Daily Mirror (1903)
 Lucy Brown argued that the political elite devoted more time and skill
to cultivating the press (* Curran and Seaton, 2012)

6. The industrialization of the press*
 Some argue that the decline was a consequence also of the
‘commercialization’ of the ‘popular press’
 Newspapers that were business ventures came into existence, and
which concentrated on entertainment
 During the first half of the 19th
century, many left-wing papers evolved
from being journals of opinion into broadsheets newspapers publishing
news as well as commentary.
 During the period, newspapers like the News of the World and Lloyds
Weekly also emerged
 Curran and Seaton ask: why was the field of popular press coverage
and entertainment taken up by the commercial press?

7.  1. The British press during the first half of the 19th century
- Around 10 daily newspapers at most in the UK
- A press for the elite
- A political press
(A “bourgeoisie public sphere”)
What was the impact on the press of the abolition of the “taxes on
knowledge”?:
This was the trigger mechanism that unleashed the industrialisation and
modernisation of the British press
Lower prices, increased sales and the development of one print
technology to service the market
 Rotary presses were introduced in the 1860 and 70s, and were replaced
by web rotary machines of increasing size and sophistication in late
Victorian England.
The British press before and after the abolition of
the Taxes on Knowledge

8. 1830 (formation of a Whig Cabinet)
Ministerial newspapers
(Whig)
Opposition
newspapers (Tory)
The Morning Chronicle The Morning Post
The Times The Standard
The Courier The Albion
The Globe
The Sun
The Morning Herald

9. The British press before and after the abolition of
the Taxes on Knowledge
The journalism field:
Journalistic norms and standards were not yet established
Anthony Smith:
‘The preoccupation of the journalist lay quite outside the
accurate reporting of facts; there were no facts more important,
nor more urgent, than the fact of factions.
Another historian, W.A. Speck, writes that the accounts of the
British press were ‘so shamelessly biased in favour of one side
or the other that it is impossible to take any of them at face
value. They are scarcely even pretending to report
occurrences objectively or accurately’.

10. The British press before and after the abolition of
the Taxes on Knowledge
What more?:
The rise in the fixed costs made it more difficult for people with limited
funds to break into mass publishing, generating a relationship of
economic inequality
Leading publishers were able to obtain large economies of scale,
forcing up the costs of newspaper publishing
National newspapers became substantial enterprises, with growing staff
costs
The combination of rising expenditure and lower cover prices forced
up the circulation levels that newspapers needed to achieve in order to be
profitable
Statistic show the privileged position of capital in the modern press
(in Curran and Seaton, 2012, 27).

11. The second information revolution in the context
of the 19th
century industrial revolution
 The industrialisation of the production of newspapers
The development of the press as an industry and independent
field of discursive production
 The development of journalism (or its ‘invention’)
 Emergence of new fact-centred discursive practices such
as the news report and the interview
 Emergence of new professional standards, such as
objectivity
 News and information became more abundant, more recent,
more frequent, more international, more factual and more
reliable.

12. The industrialisation of the press*
 The newspaper industry went through rapid industrialization in the
second half of the 19th
century
 I.e. In 1868, the rotary press was introduced which made possible larger
print runs
 The second stage came in 1876 with the introduction of linotype which
increased the quality of the product and increased print runs
 Between 1860 and 1900, the electric telegraph, telephone, typewriter and
the means to reproduce photographs were invented
 I.e. The telegraph assisted in the growth of the provincial press by
permitting it to gather news for itself, reducing its dependency on the
London press* (Williams, 1998).

13. A rotary press

14. The emergence of the press industry
Growth of the total number of newspapers
Number of daily newspapers: 1836: 11 daily newspapers were
published in Britain; 1868: 43; 1886: 139; 1900: 172 (all-time
record)
Increase in average circulation:
Between the 1850s and 1890s, the average daily circulation of the
main London daily newspapers was multiplied by 40, to reach 200,000
copies.
“The industrialization of the press, with its accompanying rise in
publicity costs, led to a programme transfer of ownership and control
of the popular press from the working class to wealthy businessmen,
while the dependence on advertising encouraged the absorption…of the
early radical press and stunted its development before the First World
War.”
(Curran and Seaton, 2012, 27)

15. The expansion of the press and the “invention” of
journalism (in Curran and Seaton, 2012; Chalaby, 1998)
 “The launch of publications was stimulated by large external subsidies given to
those who conformed to marketing requirements. Between 1866 and 1896, the
number of magazines increased form an estimated 557 to 2097….
 Increase in the number of national daily and Sunday papers, founded between
1880 and 1918
 Expansion in newspaper consumption, with average sales raising from 85
million in 1851 to 5604 million in 1920. Sunday and local daily papers achieved
aggregate circulations of 13.5 million and 9.2 million by 1920.
 Argument on the “free marketplace of ideas”
 The new press weakened the radical press, and encouraged their readers to
identify with political parties controlled by the Establishment (i.e. the new local
dailies that emerged between 1855 and 1860 were affiliated with the Liberal
Party)

16. The role of advertising in the expansion of the
commercial press
 Strategic role occupied by advertising after the repeal of the
advertisement duty in 1853
 Most newspapers had been reliant on advertising, but it was only with
the abolition of the advertisement duty in 1853 that popular press
advertising came fully into its own.
 “The surge in advertising expenditure, combined with the repeal of the
stamp and paper duties, transformed the economic structure of the
popular press.” (Curran and Seaton, 2012).
 Important: Political considerations also played a role in the choice of
papers that the advertisers chose to advertise in (i.e. resulting in the
marginalization of more militant papers). It also put pressures on the
more radical press to move upmarket if it was to survive.

17. The abolition of the taxes on knowledge and the
mass circulation press
 Repeal of the ‘’taxes on knowledge’’ made economic profit a rational
aim for press owners to pursue
 The expanding circulations following the abolition of the duty reflected
the pursuit of readership for economic gain
 The previous political struggles associated with of the age of the
‘radical press’’ gave way to economic competition between dailies for
readers and for profits
 Thus the 1855 abolition created a new dynamic in the press, with
economic competition making newspaper production a vibrant activity
(in Chalaby, 1998).

18. Gradual growth of a “mass” circulation press
 I.e. The Daily Mail was selling more than 800.000 by the 1900s.
 During the few decades following the repeal, the Daily Telegraph was
the leading paper in terms of circulation.
 The Daily Telegraph passed The Times sales to reach 141.700 by 1861
and 242.000 copies by 1877 (Wadsworth, 1955)
 The next circulation leader was the Daily Mail, which outdid its rivals
from 1896 to 1933
 The Daily Mail stabilised itself at 800.000 copies until the outbreak of
the First World War.
 Competition for readers: At the peak of the war, The Daily Herald
offered the complete work of Dickens.

19. The new technologies and their impact on the
press industry
Printing technology: improves more during the 19th century
than during the five preceding centuries
 Steam power (The Times, 1814)
 Web-fed rotary press
The electric telegraph: the “Victorian Internet”
 London and New York connected in 1866
 By the 1880s, British newspapers were printing news
from all over the world that they received from the
telegraph wires
 News agencies
 Reuters
 AP (Associated Press)

20. Flat bed presses

21. An early Richard Hoe printing press, 1856

22. The growth of the media industries during the
19th
century: key trends
a) Transformation of media institutions into commercial enterprises
b) Technical innovations – electrical energy was one of the most
important discoveries (19th
century)
c) The “invention” and transformation of journalism
d) Radio came along in the 1920s; television in the 1940s

23. Telegraph machine

24. Telegraph lines, mid-19th
century

25. The new technologies and their impact on the
press industry: the case of journalism
Newsgathering methods
 News becomes a commodity
 Supply/demand
 News agencies
 The emergence of the newsroom
 Michael Schudson: “The Age of the Reporter”
 I.e. Reynold News changed under the impact of the new economic
implications for newspaper publishing, with the paper continuing to
take a radical stand on most major events, but expressing also the
individualistic values of more affluent readers (in Curran and
Seaton, 2012)

26. The new technologies and their impact
on the press industry
The distribution system
 Railways system
 Network of newsvendors and agents
 Emergence of daily national newspapers
Newsgathering methods
 Newspapers must deliver news and information to their readers.
Their primary function is to gather news and deliver it to their
readers on a daily basis.
 There was still room for partisanship in British journalism though:
 The Daily Herald only survived when it was taken over as the
official organ of the Labour Party and the TUC in 1922.

27. The invention of journalism
 Chalaby (1998) argues that the press saw a transition to a journalistic
discourse in the 19th
century, with this beginning when the taxes on
knowledge were imposed on the press, and stamped papers were priced
at 7 pence.
 The repeal of the taxes between 1855 and 1861 opened the possibility
of selling newspapers for one penny and for half a penny, enlarging the
market for newspaper readers
 With the development of the press industry and journalism came the
press baron
 Economic struggles defined the limits of the journalistic field:
 “Between the 1830s and the 1890s, the amount of information
processed, the number of copies to be printed and the number of pages
per issue had increased” (1998, 35).

28. The invention of journalism*
 These economic struggles also restricted the number of players in the
market, leading to concentration in the marketplace
 There was no state intervention in this market, until the emergence of
the BBC
 Three competitive mechanisms introduced by the repeal and the
subsequent creation of the penny market:
 1) the sudden growth of the newspapers;
 2) the increase in the coverage of circulation of pages
 3) the limitations on the newspaper’s ability to generate financial
resources
 I.e. Within one year of the repeal, Mitchell’s Newspaper Directory
registered an increase of 115 newspapers. However, the one-penny
market was limited and the supply started to exceed the demand.
 (Chalaby, 1998).

29. The development of journalism
 The Daily Telegraph (founded in June
1855)
 The ‘New Journalism’ - The Pall Mall
Gazette. Editor: William Stead.
 The Sunday popular press
The News of the World, founded in
1843
* The age of the press barons (WK 4)

30. Conclusions and questions
What were the factors that assisted in the development of
the commercial press?
Does only fact-based journalism exist today?
What role had advertising in the growth of the commercial
press?
Class topics:
- Explain why the repeal of the taxes on knowledge in 1855 had
such momentous consequences for the British press.
- Analyse the factors that contributed to the industrialization of
the British press in the 19th
century.
- Analyse the key features of the second information revolution.

31. Core reading for week 4 – The invention of
popular journalism
 Essential
 Curran, J. and J. Seaton (2010) Power Without Responsibility - 7th
Edition.
Routledge. Chapters 4 & 5.
 OR
 Williams, K. (1998) Get Me a Murder a Day: A History of Mass Communication in
Britain. Arnold. Chapter 3.
 Recommended:
 Chalaby, J. (2000) ‘“Smiling Pictures Make People Smile”: Northcliffe’s
journalism’, Media History 6(1): 33-44.
 Additional
 Catterall, P., Seymour-Ure, C. and A. Smith, (2000) Northcliffe’s Legacy: Aspects
of the British Popular Press, 1896-1996. Macmillan.