Daily Express
''Daily Express'' | |
---|---|
|
|
Type | Daily newspaper |
Format | Tabloid |
|
|
Owner | Richard Desmond |
Publisher | Northern and Shell Media |
Editor | Peter Hill |
Founded | 1900 |
Political allegiance | Right-wing |
Headquarters | 10 Lower Thames Street, London EC3R 6EN |
Circulation | 761,637[1] |
|
|
Website: www.express.co.uk |
The Daily Express is a conservative, middle-market British tabloid newspaper. It is the flagship title of Express Newspapers and is currently owned by Richard Desmond. As of February 2007, it has a circulation of 761,637.[1]
Express Newspapers publishes the Daily Express, Sunday Express (launched in 1918), Daily Star and Daily Star Sunday.
Contents |
History
The Daily Express was founded in 1900 by Cyril Arthur Pearson, publisher of Pearson's Own and other titles. Pearson sold the title after losing his sight and it was bought in 1916 by the future Lord Beaverbrook. It was one of the first papers to carry gossip (an innovation by the Newspaper's editor, Frederic Salusbury), sports, and women's features, and the first newspaper in Britain to have a crossword. It moved in 1931 to 133 Fleet Street, a specially-commissioned art deco building. Under Beaverbrook the newspaper achieved a phenomenally high circulation, setting new records for newspaper sales several times throughout the 1930s.[2] Its success was partly due to an aggressive marketing campaign and a vigorous circulation war with other populist newspapers. Beaverbrook also discovered and encouraged a gifted editor named Arthur Christiansen, who showed an uncommon gift for staying in touch with the interests of the reading public. The paper also featured Alfred Bestall's Rupert Bear cartoon and satirical cartoons by Carl Giles. An infamous front page headline of these years was "Judea Declares War on Germany", published on March 24, 1933.
The arrival of television and the public's changing interests took their toll on circulation, and following Beaverbrook's death in 1964, the paper's circulation declined for several years.[2]
It switched from broadsheet to tabloid form in 1977 and was bought by in 1977. It was briefly renamed The Express in 1996 and focused more on moral panic stories than actual news.[2]
It moved from Fleet Street to Blackfriars Road in 1989 and was sold to publishing mogul Richard Desmond in 2000. In 2004 it moved to its present location on in the City of London.[2]
Desmond era
In 2000, it was bought by Richard Desmond, publisher of a range of magazines including the celebrity magazine OK!. Controversy surrounded the acquisition because, at the time, Desmond also owned a selection of pornographic magazines such as Big Ones and Asian Babes (which led to him being nicknamed "Dirty Des" by Private Eye). He is still the owner of the most popular pornographic television channel in the UK, Television X. Desmond's purchase of the paper led to the departure of many staff including the then editor, Rosie Boycott, and columnist Peter Hitchens joined the Mail on Sunday. Boycott, despite her different politics, had an unlikely respect for Hitchens. Other stars of old Fleet Street, like the showbiz interviewer and feature writer Paul Callan, were brought in to restore some of the journalistic weight enjoyed by the paper in its heyday.
The Daily Express has for many years been a rival of the Daily Mail, and each frequently attacks the other's journalistic integrity. In the 1990s the Express had a less stridently right wing political stance than the Mail and, under editor Rosie Boycott, presented an agenda to the left of the Mail's. Since then, however, the paper has moved back considerably to the right. In the 2001 general election it supported the Labour Party, but in 2004 switched its support to the Conservative Party.[3]
On October 31, 2005 UK Media Group Entertainment Rights secured majority interest from the Daily Express on Rupert Bear. They paid £6 million for a 66.6% control of the character. The Express Newspaper retains minority interest in Rupert Bear of 33.33% plus the right to publish Rupert Bear stories in certain Express publications.
The newspaper does not have a "newspaper of the year" banner on its front page, and instead has one saying the oddly more strident (and somewhat less probable) "The World's Greatest Newspaper", as well as the recent addition of "5 pence cheaper than the Daily Mail - and ten times better" due to recent price cuts.
Criticisms
"Diana Express"
The Daily Express has a reputation for consistently printing conspiracy theories based on the death of Princess Diana as front page news; this is often satirised in Private Eye and the newspaper is joked as being called the Diana Express or the Di'ly Express (possibly due to Desmonds close friendship with Mohamed Al Fayed). [4] Even on July 7, 2006, the anniversary of the London bombings (used by most other newspapers to publish commemorations) the front page was given over to Diana. This tendency has also been satirised by the website Mailwatch[5], which also satirises and discusses the Express in addition to the Daily Mail, and other newspapers.[6] BBC News Online's Magazine Monitor has frequently noted that articles about Princess Diana are often printed on Mondays regardless of the existence of more pressing news.[7] Furthermore, the newspaper's obsession with the late princess actually extends to its official website: sending a blank request through the site's search engine causes the search field to be filled with "Princess Diana" when the results page loads[8].
The Daily Express devoted its front page to Diana on 46 occasions during 2006 alone [9]. For the week beginning August 27, 2006, the paper printed the "Diana Dossier" in which it claimed to ask all the questions related to the death. Diana was on the front page every day (except Sunday) that week.
"Real values"
In January 2006 the Daily Express introduced its new advertising tagline - "The paper that stands for real values and gives you real value for money". These "real values" include "traditions, progress, good manners, family fun".
These values have often manifested themselves, however, in nationalist ways, such as the post-July 7th headline, "Bombers are all spongeing asylum seekers" (which earned the Daily Express a substantial amount of negative attention from media watchdogs and other newspapers such as The Guardian). None of the bombers were asylum seekers, and when the headline was printed the identities of two of them were still unknown. The newspaper has also been criticised by the Press Complaints Commission for its repeated use of the self-contradictory term "illegal asylum seeker".[10] The Express's obsession with the asylum issue even led to a member of the British National Party crediting the paper with boosting the BNP's electoral fortunes by focusing on the issue.[11]
The paper has made such sweeping generalisations about numerous other targets, such as Tony Blair, the Labour Party and self-injurers (the paper published an ill-received editorial under the title "all self-harmers are tiresome attention seekers", in parody of the original asylum seeker heading, claiming that self-injurers are all teenagers who are looking for attention and should not be treated by the NHS). In addition, many of its articles have been considered homophobic.
"Non-newsworthy front pages"
The Daily Express often dedicates its front page to stories that would appear to rotate around several key themes including; house prices, food scares, miracle medical cures and the weather. These front pages are generally not based on a major news story of the day and are often sexed up with spurious headlines with little factual content to follow, for example 'The Secret Killer in our Food' - creating a front page headline about the dangers of hydrogenated vegetable oil in food or 'The Amazing Protein Diet' creating a front page headline about ketosis. Both such medical stories would appear to have been in the public domain in some form for several years making it hard to see how they could be worthy of newspaper front pages. House prices or inheritance tax stories also appear to be extremely popular, e.g.'House Prices to Rise by 50%'.
Nicknames for the Daily Express include Daily Excess and Daily Sexpress, due to its ownership by Richard Desmond, and also its tendency to print a lot of pictures of attractive young women, especially murder victims, and a lot of sex-related "non-news" stories.
Editors
- Arthur Pearson (April 1900 - 1901)
- (1901 - 1909)
- R. D. Blumenfeld (1909 - 1929)
- Beverley Baxter (1929 - October 1933)
- Arthur Christiansen (1933 - August 1957)
- (1957 - 1961)
- (acting) (November 1961 - February 1962)
- (1962 - May 1963)
- (1963 - July 1965)
- (1965 - April 1971)
- Ian McColl (1971 - October 1974)
- Alastair Burnet (1974 - March 1976)
- Roy Wright (1976 - August 1977)
- Derek Jameson (1977 - June 1980))
- (1980 - October 1981)
- (1981 - April 1983)
- Sir Larry Lamb (1983 - April 1986)
- (1986 - November 1995)
- Richard Addis (November 1995 - May 1998)
- Rosie Boycott (May 1998 - January 2001)
- Chris Williams (January 2001 - December 2003)
- Peter Hill (December 2003 - )
See also
- Scottish Daily News
- Daily Express, Pakistan - similar name
References
- ^ a b ABC Circulation Figures. Audit Bureau of Circulation. Retrieved on 2007-04-12.
- ^ a b c d "Daily Express: A chequered history", BBC, January 25, 2001.
- ^ "Express switches after Euro shift", BBC, April 22, 2004.
- ^ For instance in the "Hackwatch" column of Private Eye #1174, December 19, 2006.
- ^ The Daily Mail Watch. Weblog. Unknown. Retrieved on 2007-03-20.
- ^ Mailwatch. Retrieved on 2006-07-05.
- ^ The Magazine Monitor : A service highlighting the riches of the daily press. BBC Magazine. BBC. Retrieved on 2006-09-01.
- ^ Daily Express Search Page. Express website. www.dailyexpress.co.uk. Retrieved on 2007-05-12.
- ^ Diana: A year in headlines. BBC Magazine. BBC. Retrieved on 2007-01-09.
- ^ Media Guardian December 31 2004
- ^ The Guardian April 30 2003
External links
- Daily Express official website
- Mail Watch - Archive of each Daily Express cover featuring Princess Diana since January 2006.
- Online e:edition
Broadsheets: The Daily Telegraph • Financial Times • The Sunday Telegraph • The Sunday Times
Compact: The Times • The Independent • The Independent on Sunday
Berliner: The Guardian • The Observer
Middle-market tabloids: Daily Mail • Daily Express • The Mail on Sunday • Sunday Express
Tabloids: Daily Mirror • The Sun • Daily Star • Sunday Mirror • The People • The News of the World • Daily Star Sunday
Freesheets: Metro