All the nudes fit to print
Simon Jenkins
'Sex fiend murders girl', 'Wonder bra! Stop-go lights will, show time to have a baby', 'Picture exclusive — the Magnificent bitch', 'Build a better bosom', 'The love bug', The House of Horror', 'Marriage — Who needs it?'
Monday 12 February was an amazing day for front page headlines, even in the jaded , world of Fleet Street's tabloid newspapers. It was the day, you may recall, when war broke out between China and Vietnam, When the Queen visited Saudi Arabia and When an end to the public service workers strike seemed in sight. For 11 million readers of British newspapers, however, these were relatively insignificant events. For that Monday came one week after the southern launch of the Daily Star, pushing its hesitant circulation up over the million mark. So — 100,000 of this came from the Mirror and the Express and at least 200,000 from the Sun. Stung into retaliation, these rivals duly responded in what is fast becoming their Industrial lingua franca: a babble of sex, violence, television gossip and giveaway competitions (though the southern edition of the Daily Express was slightly more restrained). That Monday marked the culmination of What has been a ten-year transformation of the British tabloid press. It was a process begun by the popular Sundays after the war, as they left 'hard news' to their more serious colleagues and went in search of 'human interest' — mostly sex, the exposure of private emotions and violence. In 1968, Rupert Murdoch acquired the most successful of these Sundays, the News of the World. The following year he bought the Sun from IPC and proceeded to apply the News of the World formula to the daily market — with the significant addition of the full-page nudes which were proving a great success in magazines such as Men Only and Playboy.
When Murdoch started, the popular press still saw itself as a competing news medium to television. It carried daily political and parliamentary reports, it took at least a passing interest in economic news, it had foreign correspondents, it noted the appearance of a new book or play and it prided itself on the late-night topicality of its front pages. News pictures were an important part of its coverage; political persuasion an important part of its image. Yet over the quarter century since the ending of newsprint rationing and the coming of mass television, these papers experienced a remorselessly downward slide in circulation (though not necessarily in profitability). The quality press, by comparison, was steadily improving. Television's ability to provide equivalent news coverage the night before, and with film to support it, battered the self-confidence of the popular newspaper's news desk. And television's ability to give the advertiser a wider market penetration — and with a regional breakdown — did the same for its advertising departments. The decline of the 'middle-ground' populars was most dramatic of all. After the war, the four of them — the Herald, Express, Mail and News Chronicle — held 60 per cent of the British newspaper market. Two have since closed, and with the defection of the Express to the 'down market' tabloid sector last year, there is now only the Daily Mail left in this category, with a mere 15 per cent.
What was happening behind their backs, however, was intriguing. Murdoch produced his Sun in competition with the Daily Mirror and the Sketch. Its like had not been seen in Fleet Street since Northcliffe's launch of the Daily Mail in the 1890s. Much attention has been paid to what Murdoch provided for his readers in his new paper. Less attention has been paid to what he did not provide: anything that might have been prominently displayed on television the night before. His success was remarkable. In four years he took the Sun from under a million circulation to over three million. He drove the Sketch into closure. And he forced the Mirror into years of acute agony over whether or not to follow suit — not least over the vexed question of female nipples. By 1977 it had largely given in — protesting bitterly nonetheless that 'it would not join the Sun in the gutter'. Last year, Murdoch was paid an even greater compliment when Victor Matthews's newly-acquired Daily Express lowered the flag of the great Lord Beaverbrook and hoisted in its place the black lingerie of the new tabloid journalism. Matthews appointed as editor of the Express the man whose photographic daring had enabled the Mirror to stave off the Sun's challenge in the north of England, Derek Jameson. And when he launched his Daily Star in Manchester last November, he significantly recruited the deputy editor of Reveille, Peter Grimsditch, as its editor.
These manoeuvres have constituted an extraordinary metamorphosis of the British newspaper scene. At a cursory glance, between five and ten per cent of, the editorial coverage of the Sun, Mirror and Star and perhaps 15 per cent of the Daily Express are what would normally be termed news of the day — the sort of news, for instance, which would qualify for a home or foreign news page of a quality paper or a radio or television newscast. With the exception of sport, the rest is becoming more and more like a weekly magazine. Indeed I would argue that the new tabloid journalism is now no longer in competition with either the quality press or radio and television; its true rivals are the weekly publications, Reveille, Titbits, Weekend and Men Only.
Meanwhile, the features which once distinguished the Mirror and the Express from their rivals are being driven further into the background. The Express has dropped its overnight critics, and its once-famous foreign news service is now often reduced to a series of one-sentence agency items labelled 'Dialling the World'. The Mirror's political personality still pushes to the fore on occasions — notably during the recent round of strikes — but its 'serious' coverage has shrunk and politics is carried without any of its old conviction.
This, however, is mere nostalgia. These papers are now swimming in a different sea. And indeed it may well be that in future years, 'journalism' as such will be confined to the quality press and broadcast media; the remainder will owe more to Hugh Hefner and Paul Raymond than to Northcliffe and Guy Bartholomew.
This remainder, however, now comprises a phenomenal 80 per cent of the daily newspaper market. It must not be forgotten — particularly by journalists who regard the tabloid press with patronising scorn — that the tabloids have increased their total sale in the past decade from some five millions (the Mirror and Sketch) to over 11 millions today. They have taken a weekly market and succeeded in making it a daily one. They may be a depressing comment on British mass culture: more depressing even than the lower reaches of commercial television. But after many years in which the popular press seems to have been supplanted by television as a barometer of that culture, they have at least found a reason for existing. The only question now is for how long?
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