MEDIA STUDIES
We all remember Northcliffe and Rothermere, but who has heard of Kennedy Jones?
STEPHEN GLOVER
Sally Taylor has received the assistance of the present and third Viscount Rothermere, proprietor of the Daily Mail, in writing her gripping book, The Great Outsiders (Weiden- feld & Nicolson, £20). The family archives have been opened up for her, though not, it seems, without a few strings attached. She tells the story of how Alfred and Harold Harmsworth (later Northcliffe and Rother- mere) built up the greatest press empire of their time. On Monday, 4 May, exactly 100 years ago, the two brothers launched the Daily Mail, this country's first national popu- lar paper, and the first to cater for women.
Alfred and Harold were the newspaper's principal shareholders, but there was another man who also has a claim to be described as a founder of the Mail. His name was Kennedy Jones. Who has ever heard of him? Miss Taylor is aware of his existence but does not cast him in a major role. Jones, who has been described by another writer as 'a pushful Scot with Irish blood and the face of a gangster', seems to have been written into the margins of offi- cial history. His photograph — not reprint- ed in this book — shows a jowly sort of fel- low in a wing collar. He was the grandfath- er of Reginald Bosanquet, the occasionally tired and emotional but always engaging newscaster. Think of Reggie's face and you will almost see Kennedy Jones.
He was chief sub-editor of the Sun newspa- per when he observed from his office the comings and goings of the two Harmsworth brothers. They were proprietors of a group of magazines, the most successful of which was called Answers and Questions. Jones proposed to them that they should buy the Evening News, which they did for £25,000. Within a year the paper was making as much in annual profits — about two and a half million pounds in today's money. When the Harmsworths decided to launch the Daily Mail, they turned to Kennedy Jones, who had a lot of street credibility as a popular journal- ist. He was the Sir David English of his day.
Northcliffe was undoubtedly a brilliant journalist, but Kennedy Jones also made an enormous contribution to the Daily Mail in its early life. In 1903 he was put in charge of another title started by Northcliffe the Daily Mirror. After a shaky start as a paper written for women by women, it was relaunched by Jones as a picture paper, and became a great success. Yet when Jones died in 1921, Northcliffe, admittedly by this time nearly crackers, made a mean-spirited assessment of the man who had helped to start him off: 'His political work and fre- quent absences abroad had rendered our meetings increasingly rare of late, but I shall always preserve my regard for a col- league of ability, worth and character.'
In the end Northcliffe and Rothermere were geniuses at making money and Jones was not. He is one of many talented jour- nalists who passed through their hands and are now forgotten. No one now remembers George Warrington Steevens, a Balliol man with a First, who died while reporting the Boer war for the Daily Mail; or Thomas Marlowe, for over 20 years editor of the paper; or Hamilton Fyfe, the Mail's star reporter in the Great War. I suppose we may just recall the name of Wickham Steed, editor of the Times, which was also owned by Northcliffe. Sally Taylor convinc- ingly paints Steed as a creepy sycophant during Northcliffe's prime and as a black- ener of his reputation after he was dead.
I suppose it is understandable that read- ers should no longer care about these peo- ple, since newspapers are ephemeral things, and we can hardly be expected to stack them up in our garages for future refer- ence. It is a bit surprising that most journal- ists should be so little interested in what has gone before. We arrive on the scene with as much curiosity about our anteced- ents as a plumber might feel in respect of the person who originally installed the pipe which he has been asked to mend.
Northcliffe and Rothermere certainly paid for their fame and great wealth. Nei- ther man seems to have been particularly happy. Both were repeatedly unfaithful to their wives, as their wives were unfaithful to them. Rothermere's had an affair with one of his brothers. His two elder sons died in the 1914-18 war. As for Northcliffe, he was a hypochondriac, though after a time he became genuinely ill. He ended his days a raving lunatic in a but which had been con- structed on the roof of a neighbouring house in Carlton Gardens, a prisoner of his doctors. Rothermere, who seems to have been a much nicer man, and a fantastically generous one, died in scarcely happier cir- cumstances 18 years later in 1940, con- vinced that Britain would lose the war.
It is perfectly right to celebrate the achievements of these two men. I am even happy to go some of the way with Miss Tay- lor's apologia for Rothermere's flirting with Hitler — he was at least at the same time strongly urging rearmament — though I don't think she manages to exonerate him for his brief support of Mosley. But it won't do to describe the brothers as outsiders. They brought grand houses and were absorbed into grand society. Rothermere's granddaughter in due course became a lady-in-waiting to the Queen. They were no doubt rebellious, and because they were born outside the establishment they were perhaps more inclined to see its faults. But they were not outsiders. Nor is the present Lord Rothermere, though he said in a recent edition of Desert Island Discs that he saw himself as such.
Kennedy Jones, who was an outsider, left the employment of the Harmsworths in 1912 and become an independent Member of Parliament. His glorious days were over. He did, however, write an autobiography in which he said: 'It is my hope that when in 1996 [the Daily Mail's] centenary is cele- brated then shall K. J. be remembered.' On behalf of all forgotten journalists, I think we should do that.
Although no one has pointed it out, last week I made a mistake. I said that Arthur Chris- tiansen became editor of the Daily Express in 1926. In fact he was appointed assistant editor in 1928 and editor in 1932.
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