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The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market[2][3] tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust.[4]

First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun.[5] Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982. Scottish and Irish editions of the daily paper were launched in 1947 and 2006 respectively. The Daily Mail was Britain's first daily newspaper aimed at the newly literate "lower-middle class market resulting from mass education, combining a low retail price with plenty of competitions, prizes and promotional gimmicks",[6] and the first British paper to sell a million copies a day.[7]

It was at the outset a newspaper for women, the first to provide features especially for them,[8][9] and as of 2012 had a 52% female readership,[10] the only British newspaper whose female readers constitute more than 50% of its demographic.[11][12]

It had an average daily circulation of 1,991,275 copies in April 2012.[13] Between June and December 2011 it had an average daily readership of approximately 4.371 million, of whom approximately 2.803 million were in the ABC1 demographic and 1.596 million in the C2DE demographic.[13] It has over 100 million unique visitors per month to its website.[14]

Contents[]

 [hide*1 Overview

Overview[]

The Mail was originally a broadsheet, but switched to a compact format[15] on 3 May 1971, the 75th anniversary of its founding. On this date it also absorbed the Daily Sketch, which had been published as a tabloid by the same company. The publisher of the Mail, the Daily Mail and General Trust, is currently a FTSE 250 company and the paper has a circulation of around two million which is the fourth-largest circulation of any English language daily newspaper in the world.[16]

Circulation figures according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations in July 2011 show gross daily sales of 2,050,132 for the Daily Mail.[17] According to a December 2004 survey, 53% of Daily Mail readers voted for the Conservative Party, compared to 21% for Labour and 17% for the Liberal Democrats.[18] The main concern of Viscount Rothermere, the current chairman and main shareholder, is that the circulation be maintained. He testified before a House of Lordsselect committee that "we need to allow editors the freedom to edit", and therefore the newspaper's editor was free to decide editorial policy, including its political allegiance.[19] The Mail has been edited by Paul Dacre since 1992.

History[]

Early history[]

The Daily Mail, devised by Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe) and his brother Harold (later Lord Rothermere), was first published on 4 May 1896. It was an immediate success. It cost a halfpenny at a time when other London dailies cost one penny, and was more populist in tone and more concise in its coverage than its rivals. The planned issue was 100,000 copies but the print run on the first day was 397,215 and additional printing facilities had to be acquired to sustain a circulation which rose to 500,000 in 1899. Lord Salisbury, 19th-century Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, dismissed the Daily Mail as "a newspaper produced by office boys for office boys."[20] By 1902, at the end of the Boer Wars, the circulation was over a million, making it the largest in the world.[21][22]

With Harold running the business side of the operation and Alfred as Editor, the Mail from the start adopted an imperialist political stance, taking a patriotic line in the Second Boer War, leading to claims that it was not reporting the issues of the day objectively.[23] From the beginning, the Mail also set out to entertain its readers with human interest stories, serials, features and competitions (which were also the main means by which the Harmsworths promoted the paper).

In 1900, the Daily Mail began printing simultaneously in both Manchester and London, the first national newspaper to do so (in 1899, the Daily Mail had organised special trains to bring the London-printed papers north). The same production method was adopted in 1909 by the Daily Sketch, in 1927 by the Daily Express and eventually by virtually all the other national newspapers. Printing of the Scottish Daily Mail was switched from Edinburgh to the Deansgate plant in Manchester in 1968 and, for a while, The People was also printed on the Mail presses in Deansgate. In 1987, printing at Deansgate ended and the northern editions were thereafter printed at other Associated Newspapers plants.

In 1906, the paper offered £1,000 for the first flight across the English Channel and £10,000 for the first flight from London to ManchesterPunch magazine thought the idea preposterous and offered £10,000 for the first flight to Mars, but by 1910 both the Mail's prizes had been won. (For full list see Daily Mail aviation prizes.)

The paper was accused of warmongering before the outbreak of World War I, when it reported that Germany was planning to crush the British Empire. Northcliffe created controversy by advocating conscription when the war broke out.[24] On 21 May 1915, Northcliffe wrote a blistering attack on Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War. Kitchener was considered a national hero, and, overnight, the paper's circulation dropped from 1,386,000 to 238,000. Fifteen hundred members of the London Stock Exchange ceremonially burned the unsold copies and launched a boycott against the Harmsworth Press. Prime Minister H. H. Asquith accused the paper of being disloyal to the country.

When Kitchener died, the Mail reported it as a great stroke of luck for the British Empire[citation needed]. The paper then campaigned against Asquith, who resigned on 5 December 1916.[25] His successor, David Lloyd George, asked Northcliffe to be in his cabinet, hoping it would prevent him from criticising the government. Northcliffe declined.[26]

Inter-war period[]

As Lord Northcliffe aged, his grip on the paper slackened and he might have nothing to do with it for months at a time. But light-hearted stunts might enliven him, such as the Hat campaign in the winter of 1920. This was a contest with a prize of £100 for new design of hat—a subject in which Northcliffe took a particular interest. There were 40,000 entries and the winner was a cross between a top hat and a bowler christened the Daily Mail Sandringham Hat. The paper subsequently promoted the wearing of it but without much success.[27] In 1922, when Lord Northcliffe died, Lord Rothermere took full control of the paper.

In 1919, Alcock and Brown made the first flight across the Atlantic winning a prize of £10,000 from the Daily Mail. In 1930, the Daily Mail made a great story of another aviation stunt, awarding another prize of £10,000 to Amy Johnson for making the first solo flight from England to Australia.[28]

The Daily Mail had begun the Ideal Home Exhibition in 1908. At first, Northcliffe had disdained this as a publicity stunt to sell advertising and he refused to attend. But his wife exerted pressure upon him and he changed his views, becoming more supportive. By 1922, the editorial side of the paper was fully engaged in promoting the benefits of modern appliances and technology to free its female readers from the drudgery of housework.[29] The Mail maintained the event until selling it to Media 10 in 2009.[30]

On 25 October 1924, the Daily Mail published the forged Zinoviev letter, which indicated that British Communists were planning violent revolution. This was a significant factor in the defeat of Ramsay MacDonald's Labour Party in the1924 general election, held four days later.[31]

From 1923, Lord Rothermere and the Daily Mail formed an alliance with the other great press baron, Lord Beaverbrook. Their opponent was the Conservative party politician and leader Stanley Baldwin. By 1929, George Ward Price was writing in the Mail that Baldwin should be deposed and Beaverbrook elected as leader. In early 1930, the two Lords launched the United Empire Party which the Daily Mail supported enthusiastically.

[1][2]A page from the Daily Mail Silver Jubilee Issue, 1935

The rise of the new party dominated the newspaper and, even though Beaverbrook soon withdrew, Rothermere continued to campaign. Vice Admiral Ernest Augustus Taylor fought the first by-election for the United Empire Party in October, defeating the official Conservative candidate by 941 votes. Baldwin's position was now in doubt but, in 1931, Duff Cooper won the key by-election at St George's, Westminster, beating the United Empire Party candidate, Sir Ernest Petter, supported by Rothermere, and this broke the political power of the press barons.[32]

In 1927, the celebrated picture of the year Morning by Dod Procter was bought by the Daily Mail for the Tate Gallery.[33]

Lord Rothermere was a friend of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, and directed the Mail's editorial stance towards them in the early 1930s.[34][35] Rothermere's 1933 leader "Youth Triumphant" praised the new Nazi regime's accomplishments, and was subsequently used as propaganda by them.[36] In it, Rothermere predicted that "The minor misdeeds of individual Nazis would be submerged by the immense benefits the new regime is already bestowing upon Germany". Journalist John Simpson, in a book on journalism, suggested that Rothermere was referring to the violence against Jews and Communists rather than the detention of political prisoners.[37]

Rothermere and the Mail were also editorially sympathetic to Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists.[38] Rothermere wrote an article entitled "Hurrah for the Blackshirts" in January 1934, praising Mosley for his "sound, commonsense, Conservative doctrine",[39] and pointing out that: "Young men may join the British Union of Fascists by writing to the Headquarters, King's Road, Chelsea, London, S.W."[40]

The Spectator condemned Rothermere's article commenting that, "..the Blackshirts, like the Daily Mail, appeal to people unaccustomed to thinking. The average Daily Mail reader is a potential Blackshirt ready made. When Lord Rothermere tells his clientele to go and join the Fascists some of them pretty certainly will."[41]

The paper's support ended after violence at a BUF rally in Kensington Olympia later that year.[42] Mosley and many others thought Rothermere had responded to pressure from Jewish businessmen who it was believed had threatened to stop advertising in the paper if it continued to back an anti-Semitic party.[43]

Post-war history[]

On 5 May 1946, the Daily Mail celebrated its Golden Jubilee. Winston Churchill was the chief guest at the banquet and toasted it with a speech,[44]

I remember lunching at Londonderry House on the day when the Daily Mail first came out, and Alfred Harmsworth sat as the guest of honour at a very small party—a very remarkable man, a man of great influence and independence. In a free country where enterprise can make its way, he was able to create this enormous, lasting, persuasive and attractive newspaper which had its influence in our daily lives and with which we have walked along the road for 50 years.


In reply, Lord Rothermere II had something to say about the newsprint shortages at that time for, while the Mail of 1896 was eight pages, the Mail of 1946 was reduced to just four.[44]

The Daily Mail was transformed by its editor of the 1970s and 1980s, Sir David English. Sir David began his Fleet Street career in 1951, joining The Daily Mirror before moving to The Daily Sketch, where he became features editor. It was the Sketch which brought him his first editorship, from 1969 to 1971. That year the Sketch was closed and he moved to take over the top job at the Mail, where he was to remain for more than 20 years. English transformed it from a struggling rival selling two million copies fewer than the Daily Express to a formidable journalistic powerhouse, which soared dramatically in popularity. After 20 years perfecting the Mail, Sir David English became editor-in-chief and chairman of Associated Newspapers in 1992. The paper won a libel case against the satirical fortnightly magazine Private Eye while Sir David was editor.[citation needed] The latter publication still consistently signs spoof right-wing rant articles "Sir David Fester", a reference to English and his assertion that The Eye's libel had festered.

The paper enjoyed a period of journalistic success in the 1980s, employing some of the most inventive writers in old Fleet Street including the gossip columnist Nigel Dempster, Lynda Lee Potter and sportswriter Ian Wooldridge (who unlike some of his colleagues—the paper generally did not support sporting boycotts of white-minority-ruled South Africa—strongly opposed apartheid). In 1982, a Sunday title, the Mail on Sunday, was launched (the Sunday Mail was already the name of a newspaper in Scotland, owned by the Mirror Group.) There are Scottish editions of both the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, with different articles and columnists. In 1992, the current editor, Paul Dacre, was appointed.

In late 2013 the paper will move its London printing operation from the city's Docklands area to a new £50 million plant in Thurrock, Essex.[45]

Scottish, Irish, Continental and Indian editions[]

Scottish Daily Mail[]

[3][4]The Scottish Daily Mail header

The Scottish Daily Mail was published as a separate title from Edinburgh, starting in 1947.[46] The circulation was poor though, falling to below 100,000 and the operation was rebased toManchester in December 1968.[47] In 1995 the Scottish Daily Mail was relaunched, and is printed in Glasgow. With a circulation in December 2009 of 113,771, it has the third-highest daily newspaper sales in Scotland.[48]

Irish edition[]

Main article: Irish Daily Mail

The Daily Mail officially entered the Irish market with the launch of a local version of the paper on 6 February 2006; free copies of the paper were distributed on that day in some locations to publicise the launch. Its masthead differs from that of UK versions by having a green rectangle with the word "IRISH", instead of the Royal Arms. The Irish version includes stories of Irish interest alongside content from the UK version. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the Irish edition had a circulation of 63,511 for July 2007,[49] falling to an average of 49,090 for the second half of 2009.[50] Since 24 September 2006 Ireland on Sunday, the Irish Sunday newspaper acquired by Associated in 2001, was replaced by an Irish edition of the Mail on Sunday (the Irish Mail on Sunday), to tie in with the weekday newspaper.

Continental and Overseas Daily Mail[]

Two foreign editions were begun in 1904 and 1905; the former titled the Overseas Daily Mail, covering the world, and the latter titled the Continental Daily Mail, covering Europe and North Africa.[51]

Mail Today[]

Main article: Mail Today

The newspaper entered India on 16 November 2007 with the launch of Mail Today,[52] a 48-page compact size newspaper printed in Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida with a print run of 110,000 copies. Based around a subscription model, the newspaper has the same fonts and feel as the Daily Mail and was set up with investment from Associated Newspapers and editorial assistance from the Daily Mail newsroom.[53]

Editorial stance[]

In the late 1960s, the paper went through a phase of being liberal on social issues like corporal punishment, but soon returned to its traditional conservative line. The Mail has always traditionally been a supporter of the Conservativesand has endorsed this party in all recent general elections.

The paper is generally critical of the BBC, which it says is biased to the left.[54] The Mail has also opposed the growing of genetically modified crops in the United Kingdom,[55]

On international affairs, the Mail broke with the establishment media consensus over the 2008 South Ossetia war between Russia and Georgia. The Mail accused the British government of dragging Britain into an unnecessary confrontation with Russia and of hypocrisy regarding its protests over Russian recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia's independence, citing the British government's own recognition of Kosovo's independence from Russia's allySerbia.[56]

Melanie Phillips, once known for her journalism at The Guardian, moved to the right in the 1990s and wrote for the Daily Mail, covering political and social issues from a conservative perspective. She has defined herself as a liberal who has "been mugged by reality".[57] Phillips' Monday column in the Mail ended in September 2013.[58]

Awards[]

Received[]

The Daily Mail has been awarded the National Newspaper of the Year in 1995, 1996, 1998, 2001, 2003 and 2012 by the British Press Awards[59]

The Daily Mail journalists have won a range of British Press Awards, including:

  • "Campaign of the Year" (Murder of Stephen Lawrence, 2012)
  • "Website of the Year" (Mail Online, 2012)
  • "News Team of the Year" (Daily Mail, 2012)
  • "Critic of the Year" (Quentin Letts, 2010)[60]
  • "Political Journalist of the Year" (Quentin Letts, 2009)
  • "Specialist Journalist of the Year" (Stephen Wright, 2009)[61]
  • "Showbiz Reporter of the Year" (Benn Todd, 2012)
  • "Feature Writer of the Year - Popular" (David Jones, 2012)
  • "Columnist of the Year - Popular" (Craig Brown, 2012)
  • "Best of Humour" - (Craig Brown, 2012)
  • "Columnist - Popular" (Craig Brown, 2012)
  • "Sports Reporter of the Year" (Jeff Powell, 2005)
  • "Sports Photographer of the Year" (Mike Egerton, 2012; Andy Hooper, 2010, 2008)

Other awards include:

Famous stories[]

On 7 January 1967, the Mail published a story, "The holes in our roads", about potholes, giving the examples of Blackburn where it said there were 4,000 holes. This detail was then immortalised by John Lennon in The Beatles song "A Day in the Life", along with an account of the death of 21-year-old socialite Tara Browne in a car crash on 18 December 1966, which also appeared in the same issue.[63]

In 1981, the Daily Mail ran an investigation into the Unification Church, nicknamed the Moonies, and branded them "the church that breaks up families" in the article, which accused them of brainwashing converts. The Unification Church, which always denied brainwashing, sued for libel and lost heavily. A jury awarded the Mail a record-breaking £750,000—then the biggest libel payout. In 1983 the paper won a special British Press Award for a "relentless campaign against the malignant practices of the Unification Church."

On 16 July 1993 the Mail ran the headline "Abortion hope after 'gay genes' finding";[64] this headline has been widely criticised in subsequent years, for example as "perhaps the most infamous and disturbing headline of all" (of headlines from tabloid newspapers commenting on the Xq28 gene).[65]

The Mail campaigned on the case of Stephen Lawrence, a black teenager who was murdered in a racially motivated attack in Eltham, London in April 1993. On 14 February 1997, the Mail led its front page with a picture of the five men accused of Lawrence's murder and the headline "MURDERERS", stating that it believed that the men had murdered Lawrence and adding "if we are wrong, let them sue us".[66] This attracted praise from Paul Foot and Peter Preston.[67]However, other journalists have criticised the Mail's coverage, contending that it was very late to change its stance on the reporting surrounding Lawrence's murder, with the newspaper's earlier focus being the alleged opportunistic behaviour of anti-racist groups ("How Race Militants Hijacked a Trajedy", 10 May 1993) with very little coverage of the case (20 articles in three years).[68][69]

A 16 October 2009 Jan Moir article on the death of Stephen Gately,[70] which many people felt was inaccurate, insensitive, and homophobic, generated over 25,000 complaints, the highest number of complaints for a newspaper article in the history of the Press Complaints Commission.[71][72] Major advertisers such as Marks & Spencer responded to the criticism by asking for their own adverts to be removed from the Mail Online webpage around Moir's article. The Daily Mail removed all display ads from the webpage with the Gately column.[73]

On 13 June 2011, a study by Dr Matt Jones and Michal Kucewicz[74] on the effects of cannabinoid receptor activation in the brain was published in The Journal of Neuroscience[74][75][76] and the British medical journal The Lancet.[77]The study was used in articles by CBS News,[78] Le Figaro,[79] Bild[80] and others. In October 2011, the Daily Mail printed an article citing the research, titled "Just ONE cannabis joint can bring on schizophrenia as well as damaging memory." UK political party Cannabis Law Reform (CLEAR), which campaigns for ending drug prohibition, criticised the Daily Mail,[81] and contacted Dr Matt Jones, author of the study, who said he was "disappointed but not surprised" at the Daily Mails reporting, and clarified: "This study does NOT say that one spliff will bring on schizophrenia".[81] Dorothy Bishop, professor of neuroscience at Oxford University, in her blog awarded the Daily Mail the "Orwellian Prize for Journalistic Misrepresentation",[82][83][84][85] calling the Daily Mails article "the worst misrepresentation of a scientific article in a national newspaper."[86]

The Daily Mail was the sole nominee for the award, with Bishop commenting: "I'm pleased not to have had more nominations this year: it suggests that, despite all the grumblings about science journalism, the field is in rude health." TheMail later changed the article's headline to: "Just ONE cannabis joint 'can cause psychiatric episodes similar to schizophrenia' as well as damaging memory."[87][88]

On 3 April 2012, the freelance journalist Samantha Brick wrote an article on the Daily Mail website titled "There are downsides to looking this pretty': Why women hate me for being beautiful".[89] The article went viral on social media websites and Brick trended globally on Twitter.[90]

In September 2013, the Mail was criticised[91] for an article about Ralph Miliband,[92] father of the Labour Party leader Ed Miliband which claimed that he "hated Britain".

Libel lawsuits[]

Successful lawsuits against the Mail[]

  • 2001, February: Businessman Alan Sugar was awarded £100,000 in damages following a story commenting on his stewardship of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club.[93]
  • 2003, October: Actress Diana Rigg awarded £30,000 in damages over a story commenting on aspects of her personality.[94]
  • 2006, May: £100,000 damages for Elton John, following false accusations concerning his manners and behaviour.[95]
  • 2009, January: £30,000 award to Dr Austen Ivereigh, who had worked for Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, following false accusations made by the newspaper concerning abortion.[96]
  • 2010, July: £47,500 award to Parameswaran Subramanyam for falsely claiming that he secretly sustained himself with hamburgers during a 23-day hunger strike in Parliament Square to draw attention to the Tamil diaspora protestsin 2009.[97]
  • 2011, November: the former lifestyle adviser to Cherie Blair and Tony BlairCarole Caplin received "substantial" libel damages over claims in the Mail that she was about to reveal intimate details about her former clients.[98]

Unsuccessful lawsuits[]

Supplements and features[]

Daily Mail

  • City & Finance: City & Finance is the business part of the Daily Mail, and the Financial Mail is the business paper free with the Mail on Sunday. City & Finance features City News and the results from the London Stock Exchange, and also has its own website called This is Money.[103]
  • Travelmail: Contains travel articles, advertisements etc.
  • Femail: Femail is an extensive part of the Daily Mail's newspaper and website, being one of four main features onMail Online others being News, TV & Showbiz and Sport. It is designed for women.
  • Weekend: The Daily Mail Weekend is a TV guide published by the Daily Mail, included free with the Mail every Saturday. Weekend magazine, launched in October 1993, is issued free with the Saturday Daily Mail. The guide does not use a magazine-type layout but chooses a newspaper style similar to the Daily Mail itself. In April 2007, the Weekend had a major revamp. A feature changed during the revamp was a dedicated Freeview channel page.

Mail on Sunday

  • Financial Mail on Sunday: now part of the main paper, this section includes the Financial Mail Enterprise, focusing on small business.
  • YouYou magazine is a women's magazine featured in the Mail on Sunday. It is a mix of in-depth features plus fashion, beauty advice, practical insights on health and relationships, food recipes and interiors. The Mailmarkets it, with Live magazine, as the only paper to have a magazine for him (Live) and for her (You). The Mail on Sunday is read by over six million a week.[104]
  • Live: this magazine is aimed at men. The main features are columns by well-known people.[citation needed]
  • Mail on Sunday 2: This pullout includes review, featuring articles on the arts, books and culture and it consists of reviews of all media and entertainment forms and interviews with sector personalities, property, travel and health.
  • Sportsmail: on the back pages of the Mail. It features different sports including an emphasis on alternative sports such as darts and snooker.[citation needed]
  • Football Mail on Sunday: this reviews Premier LeagueChampionship and Football League games from Saturday as well certain international games.

Regular cartoon strips[]

  • Garfield
  • I Don't Believe It (discontinued)
  • Odd Streak
  • The Strip Show
  • Chloe and Co. (by Knight Features)
  • Up and Running (by Knight Features)
  • The Gambols (Sunday, in the Cartoons section)
  • Fred Basset
  • Peanuts (Sunday, in the Cartoons section)

Current cartoon strips that are in the Daily Mail include Garfield which moved from the Daily Express in 2006[citation needed]and is also included in The Mail on SundayI Don't Believe It is another 3/4 part strip, written by Dick Millington.[citation needed] Odd Streak and The Strip Show, which is shown in 3D are one part strips. Up and Running is a strip distributed by Knight Features and Fred Basset follows the life of the dog of the same name in a two-part strip in the Daily Mail since 8 July 1963.[105] The Gambols are another feature in the Mail on Sunday.

The long-running Teddy Tail cartoon strip, was first published on 5 April 1915 and was the first cartoon strip in a British newspaper.[106] It ran for over 40 years to 1960, spawning the Teddy Tail League Children's Club and many annuals from 1934 to 1942 and again from 1949 to 1962. Teddy Tail was a mouse, with friends Kitty Puss (a cat), Douglas Duck and Dr. Beetle. Teddy Tail is always shown with a knot in his tail.[107][108]

Year Book[]

The Daily Mail Year Book first appeared in 1901, summarizing the news of the past year in one volume of 200-400 pages. Among its editors were Percy L. Parker (1901–1905), David Williamson (1914–1951), G. B. Newman (1955–1977), Mary Jenkins (1978–1986), P.J. Failes (1987), and Michael and Caroline Fluskey (1991).

Online media[]

Main article: Mail Online

The majority of content appearing in the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday printed newspapers also forms part of that included in the MailOnline website. MailOnline is free to read and funded by advertising. In 2011 MailOnline was the second most visited English-language newspaper website worldwide.[109][110]

Contributors[]

Notable regular contributors (present)[]

Journalists

Cartoonists

Photographers

Past writers[]

Editors[]

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