In an interview on Newspaper Dynasties

About 80 years before Rupert Murdoch entered the UK tabloid market, Alfred Harmsworth was pioneering the populist tactics of tabloid journalism at London’s Daily Mail. Your first choice is a book about the Harmsworths by Sally Taylor. Tell us about The Great Outsiders.

The name captures the Harmsworth family pretty accurately – they came from poverty in the late 19th century to become central figures in Britain through their new breed of newspapers; particularly, as you said, The Daily Mail. They pioneered a shorter simpler type of newspaper that was easier for the common man to read. It was sometimes said that their newspapers were run by office boys for office boys.

Their meat and potatoes was jingoism, militarism, imperialism and a focus on the royal family. They also were groundbreaking in that they created more space for women’s pages and fiction. And there were larger illustrations, which eventually gave way to new technological breakthroughs like using photographs. They were sneered at sometimes, in more established circles, not only for writing in monosyllables or catering to lowbrow tastes but also for not always being especially accurate. But they did democratise news.

Their growth paralleled the growth of a commuting class. The Daily Mail became an actual tabloid – a half-sized paper – rather late, in the early 1970s. But it had all the hallmarks that we associate with tabloids since the 19th century. A tabloid is a working man’s paper that, because of its smaller size and simple prose, is easy to open up and read while you are commuting to work on a train or bus. The Harmsworth family really pioneered that style.

Northcliffe, the elder Harmsworth, was a real innovator in terms of the content of the papers. And he became very influential in British politics and World War I, and his brother, who eventually became Viscount Rothermere, was the business brains of the operation. The model they created was imitated in the American newspaper market. The Daily Mail really was the inspiration for The New York Daily News. For better or worse, they really changed the types of newspapers the public came to expect and the tenor of news coverage that is prevalent throughout the English-speaking world and beyond.

It is said that Harmsworth dominated British press as no one has since – I’m wondering if that includes the Murdochs.

It’s hard to say, because the Murdochs have new media available to them that the Harmsworths didn’t at the time. But the Harmsworths, like the Murdochs, were very conscious of new technologies that would make their newspapers more appealing. So I think they’re similar figures in the history of journalism.

I read that their anti-German journalism was considered instrumental in pushing Britain toward World War I. So much so that the Kaiser bombed Lord Northcliffe’s estate.

They were instrumental in the way that William Randolph Hearst was influential in getting the United States into the Spanish-American War. These newspaper dynasties, the really powerful ones, often give rise to figures who, although not elected, have a bully pulpit. Presidents and prime ministers had, from time to time, decried them as anti-democratic or unelected kings. Yes, the Harmsworths were incredibly influential.

An ennobled press baron, like Harmsworth, figures in the second season of the transatlantic hit television programme Downton Abbey. How did the Harmsworths come to be ennobled?

My understanding of it is that with their power and success they ended up being given titles in a way that the British do for people who are considered to have contributed something to the United Kingdom. The details I don’t know much about.