Daily Mail Newspaper Unofficial web page on the paper

Daily Mail Newspaper

Unofficial web page on the paper

This is newspaper in the UK. It has been well known, and is seen as popular newspaper to some.

The Daily Mail is a UK newspaper, currently published in a tabloid format. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is Britain's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper, The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982. An Irish version of the paper was launched on 6 February 2006 and a Polish version of the paper in 2007. The Daily Mail was Britain's first daily newspaper aimed at what is now considered the middle - market and the first to sell 1 million copies a day. The Mail was originally a broadsheet, but switched to its current compact format on 3 May 1971, the 75th anniversary of its founding. On this date it also absorbed the Daily Sketch, which had previously been published as a tabloid by the same company. Its long-standing rival, the Daily Express, has a broadly similar political stance and target readership, but nowadays sells one third the number of copies. The publisher of the Mail, the Daily Mail and General Trust is currently a FTSE 100 company, and the paper has a circulation of more than two million, giving it one of the largest circulations of any English language daily newspaper, and the twelfth highest of any newspaper in the world.

Notable regular contributors (past and present)

Journalists ;

Peter Allen, Charlie Bain, Alex Brummer, Rebecca Camber, Nick Craven, Richard Simpson, Paul Revoir, Laura Roberts, Rebecca English, Charlotte Gill, Sam Greenhill, Christian Gysin, Beth Hale, Roy Hattersley, Liz Jones, Des Kelly, Chloe Rhodes, Matthew Bond, Phillip Hensher, Jaci Stephen, Kathryn Hughes
, Bill Mouland, Tom Kelly, Olinka Koster, Antonia Hoyle, Rebecca Hosking, Alexis Parr, Polly Dunbar, Ann Leslie, Edward Lucas
, Richard Littlejohn, Bob Cass, Kurt Bayer, Daniel Cochlin, William Rees-Mogg, Joe Bernstein, Ian Ridley, James Mills, Bill Mouland, Dan Newling, Graham Poll, Melanie Phillips, Gwyneth Rees, Michael Seamark, Neil Sears, David Mellor, Simon Garfield
,Georgina Brown , Paul Sheehan, David Williams, Sarah Oliver, Claudia Joseph, Jason Lewis, Michael Winner, Stephen Wright, Jason Solomons
Rupert Christiansen, Tahira Yaqoob, Glen Owen, Craig Brown, Frank Barrett, Patrick Collins, Derek Draper, Peter Hitchens, Keith Waterhouse, Harry Blackwood, Julie Burchill, Christopher Leake, John Junor, Norman Tebbit, Angella Johnson, Martin Delgado, Dennis Rice, Sharon Churcher, Antonio Hoyle, Daniel Boffey, Suzanne Moore, David Bennun, Freddie Windsor

Cartoonists

Roger Mahoney, Alex Graham, Jim Davis, Stanley McMurtry

Photographers/Picture editors,

Tobi Jenkins, David Crump, Colin Davey, Jenny Goodall, Roland Hoskins, Les Wilson, Mark Large, Dave Parker, Mark Richards, Murray Sanders, Jamie Wiseman, Terry Bradford, Dr. Kenneth Wilson

Other people who have worked for the paper include;

Paul Callan, William Comyns Beaumont (left in 1903 to create The Bystander), Anthony Cave Brown (worked from mid-1950s through mid-1960s, won 'Reporter, of the Year' award in 1958), Nigel Dempster, Simon Heffer

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 and 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. Soon after its launch it had more than half a million readers.

Controlled editorially by Alfred, with Harold running the business side of the operation, the Mail from the start adopted a imperialist political stance, taking a strongly patriotic line in the Second Boer War, leading to claims that it was not reporting the issues of the day objectively. 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 1906, the paper offered £1,000 for the first flight across the English Channel, and £10,000 for the first flight from London to Manchester. Punch 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.)

In 1908, the Daily Mail began the Ideal Home Exhibition, which it still runs today.

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. 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. 1,500 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. The paper then campaigned against Asquith, who resigned on 5 December 1916. His successor, David Lloyd George, asked Northcliffe to be in his cabinet, hoping it would prevent him from criticising his government. Northcliffe declined.

Inter - war period

In 1922, when Lord Northcliffe died, Lord Rothermere took full control of the paper.

In 1924 the Daily Mail published the forged Zinoviev Letter which indicated that British Communists were planning violent revolution. It was widely believed that this was a significant factor in the defeat of Ramsay MacDonald's Labour Party in the 1924 general election, held four days later. (In some Labour circles, e.g. by former Labour leader Michael Foot, the paper is often referred to as 'The Forgers' Gazette').

Support for Nazism and Fascism

In early 1934, Rothermere and the Mail were sympathetic to Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists. Rothermere wrote an article, "Hurrah for the Blackshirts", in January 1934, in which he praised Mosley for his "sound, commonsense, Conservative doctrine" , though after the violence of the 1934 Olympia meeting involving the BUF, the Mail withdrew its support for Mosley.

Rothermere was a friend and supporter of both Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, which influenced the Mail's political stance towards them up to 1939. During this period, it was the only British newspaper consistently to support the German Nazi Party. Rothermere visited and corresponded with Hitler on many occasions. On 1 October 1938, Rothermere sent Hitler a telegram in support of Germany's invasion of the Sudetenland, and expressing the hope that 'Adolf the Great' would become a popular figure in the UK.

In 1937, the Mail's chief war correspondent, George Ward Price, to whom Mussolini once personally wrote in support of him and the newspaper, published a book, I Know These Dictators, in defence of Hitler and Mussolini.

Rothermere and the Mail supported Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement, particularly during the events leading up to the Munich Agreement. However, after the Nazi invasion of Prague in 1939, the Mail changed position and urged Chamberlain to prepare for war, not least, perhaps, because on account of its stance it had been threatened with closure by the British Government.

In 2001 at the 27th G8 Summit held in Genoa, Italy; 93 peaceful anti - golobalisation protesters were brutally beaten by the Italian police, falsely imprisoned and made to chant fascist slogans. Posing as a British Embassy official, a woman from the Daily Mail took pictures of some of the prisoners including journalist Mark Covell. The next day the Daily Mail ran a front page story including an entirely false report describing Covell as having helped mastermind the riots. It took 4 years for the newspaper to apologise and pay Covell damages for invasion of privacy.

The paper continues to be referred to on occasion by critics as the Daily Heil, referring to its conservative stance and its past support for Mosley.

Recent history

The Daily Mail was transformed by its editor of the seventies and eighties, 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 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.

Another common criticism of the Mail is its treatment of asylum seekers. Several opponents (including London Mayor Ken Livingstone in a well-publicised argument) have claimed that the newspaper panders to racism in this respect.

It 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 and is steadily increasing on each survey. 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. The newspaper entered India on November 16, 2007 with the launch of Mail Today, 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. Mail Online ( also known as dailymail.co.uk ) is the name of the website for the newspaper, Daily Mail in the United Kingdom. It contains almost all of the stories from the Daily Mail and includes a large archive of main stories. The Daily Mail's sister paper The Mail on Sunday has its own website, but the format and stories are basically the same.

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