Daily Express

From Free net encyclopedia

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. It has a circulation of just under a million.

Express Newspapers publishes the Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Star and Daily Star Sunday.

1 History
2 Desmond era
3 Editors
4 See also
5 External links

[edit]

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 new records for newspaper sales several times throughout the 1930s. 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.

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.

It switched from broadsheet to tabloid form in 1977 and was bought by United Newspapers in 1977. It was briefly renamed The Express in 1996.

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 Lower Thames Street in the City of London.

[edit]

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. 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.

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 a relatively liberal agenda. Since then, however, the paper has returned to its traditionalist roots. In the 2001 general election it supported the Labour Party, but in 2004 switched its support to the Conservative Party.

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. Expess Newspaper retains minority interest in Rupert Bear of 33.33% plus the right to publish Rupert Bear(R) stories in certain Express publications.

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. This has also been satirised by the website Mailwatch, which satirises and discusses the Express, the Daily Mail, and other newspapers.

Other nicknames for the Daily Express include Daily Excess and Daily Sexpress, due to its ownership by Richard "Dirty Des" 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.

For some, the paper has been considered homophobic, which may be due to the papers new advertising tagline is "The paper that stands for real values, traditions, progress, good manners, family fun, and gives you real value for money."

[edit]