Of the London dailies, the largest in circulation is the Daily Mirror, a tabloid whose circulation average between January and June of 1955 was 4,725,122. The Daily Express, the bellwether of the Beaverbrook newspapers, had a circulation of just over 4,000,000 during the same period, and three other London dailies, the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph, and the News Chronicle, all boasted circulations of better than 1,000,000.
For every 1,000 Britons, 611 copies of the daily newspapers are sold each day. Compare this with the United States figure of 353 per 1,000. Britain is a good newspaper country, and the London press is lusty, uninhibited, and highly competitive.
American newspapermen working in London customarily divide the press between the popular newspapers, such as the Daily Mirror and the Daily Mail, and the small-circulation papers, such as The Times and the Manchester Guardian. The circulation of The Times for January-June 1955 was 211,972 and for the Guardian 156,154. Similarly, on Sundays there is a division between the Sunday Times (606,346) and the Observer (564,307) and such mass-circulation "Sundays" as the Sunday Express, the Sunday Pictorial, and the People.
The distinction is not based primarily on circulation. The Times and the Manchester Guardian and the Daily Telegraph on weekdays and the Sunday Times and the Observer on Sundays print more news about politics, diplomacy, and world events than do the mass-circulation papers. They are responsible and they are well written. The Daily Telegraph, which has a circulation of over 2,000,000, is the only one in this group whose circulation is in the "popular" field. But it has given few hostages to fortune: its news columns contain a considerable number of solid foreign-news items as well as first-class domestic reporting.
The shortage of newsprint (the paper on which newspapers are printed) has curtailed the size of British papers since 1939. Almost all newsprint is imported, and with the balance of payments under pressure the expenditure of dollars for it has been restricted. But the situation has improved slowly and the London papers are fattening, although they remain thin by New York standards.
Considering this restriction, the responsible newspapers do a splendid job. Day in and day out the foreign news of The Times maintains remarkably high standards of accuracy and insight. The anonymous reporters—articles by Times men are signed "From Our Own Correspondent"—write lucidly and easily. The Times has never accepted the theory that involved and complicated issues can be boiled down into a couple of hundred words with the nuances discarded. News is knowledge, and no one has yet found a way to make it easy to acquire knowledge.
But The Times, often called "The Times newspaper," is a good deal more than a report on Britain and the world. It is an institution reflecting all British life. By reading its front page entirely devoted to classified advertising one can get a complete picture of upper-class and upper-middle-class Britain. In the left-hand columns are births, deaths, marriages, and memorial notices. If an American wants to understand how unstintingly the British upper classes gave their sons and brothers and fathers to the First World War, let him look at the memorial notices on the anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. If he wants to see how hard-pushed these same classes are today, let him read the painful, often pathetic admissions in the columns where jewelry, old diplomatic uniforms, and the other impedimenta of the class are offered for sale.
The editorials of The Times—the British call editorials "leaders" or "leading articles"—are, of course, one of the most important features in journalism. The Times is independent politically, but it does its best to explain and expound the policies of the government of the day. Over the years since the war it has supported individual measures laid down by Conservative and Labor governments and it has assailed the policies of both the left and right when this has been conceived of as the duty of The Times. The editorial writing in The Times often attains a peak of brilliance seldom achieved in any other newspaper. For a time, especially in the period before World War II, "The Thunderer," as it was once called, had become a whisperer. Recently The Times has spoken on national and international issues with its old resonance and sharpness.
The influence of The Times among politicians, civil servants, and diplomats is extraordinary. It is, I suppose, the one newspaper read thoroughly by all the foreign diplomats in London. As recently as the spring of 1956 an editorial in The Times discussing a reconsideration of Britain's defense needs sent the German Ambassador scurrying to the Foreign Office to inquire whether the editorial reflected government policy. It did.
This influence is the result of The Times's special position in British journalism. The editorial-writers and some of the reporters of The Times often are told things that are hidden from other reporters. Also, they are members in good standing of that important, amorphous group, the Establishment, which exists at the center of British society; they know and are known by the politicians, the key civil servants, the ministers. Occasionally The Times is used to test foreign or domestic reaction to a measure under consideration by the government. By discussing the measure in an editorial, The Times will provoke in its letter columns a wider discussion into which various sections of public opinion, left, right, and center, will be drawn.