The Press Book

Brian Braithwaite

From the author of the acclaimed study Women's Magazines: The First Three Hundred Years, who has also been a director of Conde Nast, comes the definitive history of one of the most enduring but ever-changing consumer items of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries – newspapers and magazines.

The Press Book details the triumphs and travails of the popular post-war press, with a litany of names that will evoke nostalgia – as well as some that provoked outrage on their emergence in a defining era. From Family Circle to Loaded, Picture Post to Zoo, from Eagle to Hello!, the decades since the Second World War have brought readers a carousel of titles that could be intellectually stimulating one decade, morally bankrupt in the next. Covering the years when Punch died (twice) and 'old men's magazines' were superseded by lads' mags, when the imperious press barons of yesteryear were supplanted by the likes of Al-Fayed and Murdoch, this fascinating story with its cast of riveting characters is told by a press professional who saw it all happen.

Among the topics under discussion are the decades of record circulations; the challenge of television and radio; the death of the Daily Herald and national weeklies such as Picture Post; the development of colour supplements and the overweight Sundays; and the growth of teen magazines as well as glossy fashion and lifestyle journals. The author analyses the rise of the redtops, including the Sunday Sport and Richard Desmond's publications; the rival tabloid empires of Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch; trade-union confrontation over new technology; the Battle of Wapping; the Royal Family as soap opera; the German takeover of the magazine market; Time Warner's purchase of the International Publishing Corporation; and the rise of the lads' mag as well as Hello!, OK! and similar celebrity magazines. He goes on to consider the end of Fleet Street's geographical pre-eminence; the death of Punch; The Times's reinvention as a tabloid; falling circulations; the fate of the newsagents and the growing influence of the supermarkets; perceived lack of fresh ideas in consumer magazines; the threat from the internet and other electronic and digital media; the battle of the free London papers with their superficial approach to news; and the uncertain future facing the press industry in the first decades of the new millennium.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

BRIAN BRAITHWAITE has worked in magazines for most of his long career. He was the founder publisher of Harpers and Queen and he launched Cosmopolitan, Company and County Living. He was for many years the Publishing Director of Good Housekeeping, and in 1992 he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the PPA.