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.
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, 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 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]
The Daily Express switched from broadsheet to tabloid in 1977 and was bought by the construction company Trafalgar House in the same year. Its publishing company, Beaverbrook Newspapers, was renamed
Express Newspapers. In 1982 Trafalgar House spun off its publishing interests into a new company, Fleet Holdings, but this
succumbed to a hostile takeover by United Newspapers in 1985. Under United's ownership, the
Express titles moved from Fleet Street to Blackfriars Road in 1989. As part of a
marketing campaign designed to increase circulation, the paper was renamed The Express in 1996 (with the Sunday Express
becoming "The Express on Sunday").
Express Newspapers was sold to publishing mogul Richard Desmond in 2000, by which time the names had reverted to "Daily
Express" and "Sunday Express". In 2004 the newspaper moved to its present location on Lower Thames
Street in the City of London.[2]
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.
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 moved to
The Mail on Sunday, stating that he could not morally work for a newspaper owned by a
pornographer. Boycott, despite her different politics, had an unlikely respect for Hitchens.[citation needed] 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.
Sunday Express
The Sunday Express was launched in 1918. It is currently edited by Martin
Townsend.
The Daily Express and the Daily Mail
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 late 1990s, as Tony
Blair's New Labour government was at its most popular, the Express
attempted to reinvent itself somewhat: it developed 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, referring to itself as "the voice of New Britain". Since its acquisition by Richard Desmond,
the paper has moved back considerably to the right. In the 2001 general
election it supported the Labour Party, in 2004 switched its support to the
Conservative Party.[3]
Unlike the Mail, the Daily Express 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".
Circulation figures to July 2007 show gross sales of 794,252 for the Daily Express, compared with 2,400,143 for the Daily
Mail, twenty five years ago the Daily Express was selling over 2 million copies a day, the Mail was selling 1.87 million copies a
day.
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, earning it the nickname, the Daily Ex-Princess; this
is often satirised in Private Eye, the newspaper being labelled the Diana
Express or the Di'ly Express, possibly due to Desmond's close friendship with regular Eye target
Mohamed 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 was also mocked on Have I Got News for You when on 6 November 2006, the day other papers reported the death sentence given to
Saddam Hussein on their front pages, the Express led with “SPIES COVER UP DIANA
'MURDER'”. According to The Independent "The Diana stories appear on Mondays because
Sunday is often a quiet day." [5] 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.
"Maddie" Express
Like many other media sources, the Daily Express has in 2007 given much coverage to the missing toddler Madeleine McCann (see Response to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann). During what is
sometimes described as the media silly season, it began to treat this as daily front page
material, regardless of wider events such as the situation in Burma. From August 3 2007 onwards, the Express ran an article or banner on every front page
about Madeleine, making 76 front pages in a row (as of October 17, 2007) - 64 of which have been the main headline. This approach
has been criticized[attribution needed] as unjustified, bordering on the
obsessive, and not adding anything to the case.
"Stupid" Express
The Daily Express has been criticised for its readers, regarded as even worse than Daily
Mail 'punters'. The criticism is arguably quite complex, given that the readers shape the newspaper, and the newspaper
shapes the readers. This is an aspect of Reflexivity theory.
Editors
- Arthur Pearson (April 1900 - 1901)
- Fletcher Robinson (1901 - 1909)
- R. D. Blumenfeld (1909 - 1929)
- Beverley Baxter (1929 - October 1933)
- Arthur Christiansen (1933 - August 1957)
- Edward Pickering (1957 - 1961)
- Robert Edwards (acting) (November 1961 - February 1962)
- Roger Wood (1962 - May 1963)
- Robert Edwards (1963 - July 1965)
- Derek Marks (1965 - April 1971)
- Ian McColl (1971 - October 1974)
- Alastair Burnet (1974 - March 1976)
- Roy Wright (1976 - August 1977)
- Derek Jameson (1977 - June 1980))
- Arthur Firth (1980 - October 1981)
- Christopher Ward (1981 - April 1983)
- Sir Larry Lamb (1983 - April 1986)
- Sir Nicholas Lloyd (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 - )
Columnists
Present columnists:
Past columnists:
See also
References
- Derek Jameson, ‘Matthews, Victor Collin, Baron Matthews (1919–1995)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford
University Press, 2004 accessed
9 September 2007
External links
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