Fiktiv UK - DMGT - Daily Mail

The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market newspaper published in London in a tabloid format. Founded in 1896, it is the United Kingdom's highest-circulated daily newspaper. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982, while Scottish and Irish editions of the daily paper were launched in 1947 and 2006 respectively. Content from the paper appears on the MailOnline website, although the website is managed separately and has its own editor.

The paper is owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. Jonathan Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere, a great-grandson of one of the original co-founders, is the current chairman and controlling shareholder of the Daily Mail and General Trust, while day-to-day editorial decisions for the newspaper are usually made by a team led by the editor, Geordie Greig, who succeeded Paul Dacre in September 2018.

A survey in 2014 found the average age of its readers was 58, and it had the lowest demographic for 15- to 44-year-olds among the major British dailies. Uniquely for a British daily newspaper, it has a majority female readership, with women making up 52–55% of its readers. It had an average daily circulation of 1,222,611 copies in November 2018. Between July and December 2013 it had an average daily readership of approximately 3.951 million, of whom approximately 2.503 million were in the ABC1 demographic and 1.448 million in the C2DE demographic. Its website has more than 100 million unique visitors per month.

The Daily Mail has been noted for its unreliability and widely criticised for its printing of sensationalist and inaccurate scare stories of science and medical research, and for copyright violations. The Daily Mail has won a number of awards, including receiving the National Newspaper of the Year award from the British Press Awards eight times since 1995, winning again in 2019.

The Daily Mail, devised by Alfred Harmsworth (later Viscount Northcliffe) and his brother Harold (later Viscount Rothermere), was first published on 4 May 1896. It 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. The planned issue was 100,000 copies but the print run on the first day was 397,215 and additional printing facilities had to be acquired to sustain a circulation which rose to 500,000 in 1899. Lord Salisbury, 19th-century Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, dismissed the Daily Mail as "a newspaper produced by office boys for office boys." By 1902, at the end of the Boer Wars, the circulation was over a million, making it the largest in the world.

With Harold running the business side of the operation and Alfred as editor, the Mail from the start adopted an imperialist political stance, taking a patriotic line in the Second Boer War, leading to claims that it was not reporting the issues of the day objectively. The Mail also set out to entertain its readers with human interest stories, serials, features and competitions. It was the first newspaper to recognize the potential market of the female reader with a women's interest section and hired one of the first female war correspondents Sarah Wilson who reported during the Second Boer War.

In 1900 the Daily Mail began printing simultaneously in both Manchester and London, the first national newspaper to do so (in 1899, the Daily Mail had organised special trains to bring the London-printed papers north). The same production method was adopted in 1909 by the Daily Sketch, in 1927 by the Daily Express and eventually by virtually all the other national newspapers. Printing of the Scottish Daily Mail was switched from Edinburgh to the Deansgate plant in Manchester in 1968 and, for a while, The People was also printed on the Mail presses in Deansgate. In 1987, printing at Deansgate ended and the northern editions were thereafter printed at other Associated Newspapers plants.

In 1906 the paper offered £10,000 for the first flight from London to Manchester, followed by a £1,000 prize for the first flight across the English Channel. 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. The paper continued to award prizes for aviation sporadically until 1930.

Before the outbreak of World War I, the paper was accused of warmongering when it reported that Germany was planning to crush the British Empire. When war began, Northcliffe's call for conscription was seen by some as controversial, although he was vindicated when conscription was introduced in 1916. On 21 May 1915, Northcliffe criticised Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, regarding weapons and munitions. Kitchener was considered by some to be a national hero. The paper's circulation dropped from 1,386,000 to 238,000. Fifteen hundred members of the London Stock Exchange burned unsold copies and called for a boycott of 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 was critical of Asquith's conduct of the war, and he resigned on 5 December 1916. His successor David Lloyd George asked Northcliffe to be in his cabinet, hoping it would prevent him from criticising the government. Northcliffe declined.

As Lord Northcliffe aged, his grip on the paper slackened and there were periods when he was not involved. But light-hearted stunts enlivened him, such as the 'Hat campaign' in the winter of 1920. This was a contest with a prize of £100 for a new design of hat – a subject in which Northcliffe took a particular interest. There were 40,000 entries and the winner was a cross between a top hat and a bowler christened the Daily Mail Sandringham Hat. The paper subsequently promoted the wearing of it but without much success. In 1922, when Lord Northcliffe died, Lord Rothermere took full control of the paper.

In 1919, Alcock and Brown made the first flight across the Atlantic, winning a prize of £10,000 from the Daily Mail. In 1930 the Mail made a great story of another aviation stunt, awarding another prize of £10,000 to Amy Johnson for making the first solo flight from England to Australia.

The Daily Mail had begun the Ideal Home Exhibition in 1908. At first, Northcliffe had disdained this as a publicity stunt to sell advertising and he refused to attend. But his wife exerted pressure upon him and he changed his view, becoming more supportive. By 1922 the editorial side of the paper was fully engaged in promoting the benefits of modern appliances and technology to free its female readers from the drudgery of housework. The Mail maintained the event until selling it to Media 10 in 2009.

On 25 October 1924, the Daily Mail published the forged Zinoviev letter, which indicated that British Communists were planning violent revolution. This was thought by some a significant factor in the defeat of Ramsay MacDonald's Labour Party in the 1924 general election, held four days later.

Unlike most newspapers, the Mail quickly took up an interest on the new medium of radio. In 1928, the newspaper established an early example of an offshore radio station aboard a yacht, both as a means of self-promotion and as a way to break the BBC's monopoly. However, the project failed as the equipment was not able to provide a decent signal from overboard, and the transmitter was replaced by a set of speakers. The yacht spent the summer entertaining beach-goers with gramophone records interspersed with publicity for the newspaper and its insurance fund. The Mail was also a frequent sponsor on continental commercial radio stations targeted towards Britain throughout the 1920s and 1930s and periodically voiced support for the legalisation of private radio, something that would not happen until 1973.

From 1923 Lord Rothermere and the Daily Mail formed an alliance with the other great press baron, Lord Beaverbrook. Their opponent was the Conservative Party politician and leader Stanley Baldwin. By 1929 George Ward Price was writing in the Mail that Baldwin should be deposed and Beaverbrook elected as leader. In early 1930 the two Lords launched the United Empire Party which the Daily Mail supported enthusiastically.

The rise of the new party dominated the newspaper and, even though Beaverbrook soon withdrew, Rothermere continued to campaign. Vice Admiral Ernest Augustus Taylor fought the first by-election for the United Empire Party in October, defeating the official Conservative candidate by 941 votes. Baldwin's position was now in doubt, but in 1931 Duff Cooper won the key by-election at St George's, Westminster, beating the United Empire Party candidate, Sir Ernest Petter, supported by Rothermere, and this broke the political power of the press barons.

In 1927, the celebrated picture of the year Morning by Dod Procter was bought by the Daily Mail for the Tate Gallery.

Lord Rothermere was a friend of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, and directed the Mail's editorial stance towards them in the early 1930s. Rothermere's 1933 leader "Youth Triumphant" praised the new Nazi regime's accomplishments, and was subsequently used as propaganda by them. In it, Rothermere predicted that "The minor misdeeds of individual Nazis would be submerged by the immense benefits the new regime is already bestowing upon Germany". Journalist John Simpson, in a book on journalism, suggested that Rothermere was referring to the violence against Jews and Communists rather than the detention of political prisoners.

Rothermere and the Mail were also editorially sympathetic to Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists. Rothermere wrote an article titled "Hurrah for the Blackshirts" published in the Daily Mail on 15 January 1934, praising Mosley for his "sound, commonsense, Conservative doctrine", and pointing out that: "Young men may join the British Union of Fascists by writing to the Headquarters, King's Road, Chelsea, London, S.W."

The Spectator condemned Rothermere's article commenting that, "... the Blackshirts, like the Daily Mail, appeal to people unaccustomed to thinking. The average Daily Mail reader is a potential Blackshirt ready made. When Lord Rothermere tells his clientele to go and join the Fascists some of them pretty certainly will."

The paper's support ended after violence at a BUF rally in Kensington Olympia in June 1934. Mosley and many others thought Rothermere had responded to pressure from Jewish businessmen who it was believed had threatened to stop advertising in the paper if it continued to back an anti-Semitic party. The paper editorially continued to oppose the arrival of Jewish refugees escaping Germany, describing their arrival as "a problem to which the Daily Mail has repeatedly pointed."

On 5 May 1946, the Daily Mail celebrated its Golden Jubilee. Winston Churchill was the chief guest at the banquet and toasted it with a speech. Newsprint rationing in the Second World War had forced the Daily Mail to cut its size to four pages, but the size gradually increased through the 1950s.

The Daily Mail was transformed by its editor during the 1970s and 1980s, David English. He had been editor of the Daily Sketch from 1969 to 1971, when it closed. Part of the same group from 1953, the Sketch was absorbed by its sister title, and English became editor of the Mail, a post in which he remained for more than 20 years. English transformed it from a struggling newspaper selling half as many copies as its mid-market rival, the Daily Express, to a formidable publication, whose circulation rose to surpass that of the Express by the mid-1980s. English was knighted in 1982.

The paper enjoyed a period of journalistic success in the 1980s, employing Fleet Street writers such as 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 Scottish Sunday Mail, now owned by the Mirror Group, was founded in 1919 by the first Lord Rothermere, but later sold.)

Knighted in 1982, Sir David English became editor-in-chief and chairman of Associated Newspapers in 1992 after Rupert Murdoch had attempted to hire Evening Standard editor Paul Dacre as editor of The Times. The Evening Standard was then part of the Associated Newspapers group, and Dacre was appointed to succeed English at the Daily Mail as a means of dealing with Murdoch's offer. Dacre retired as editor of the Daily Mail but remains editor-in-chief of the group.

In late 2013, the paper moved its London printing operation from the city's Docklands area to a new £50 million plant in Thurrock, Essex. There are Scottish editions of both the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, with different articles and columnists.

In September 2017, the Daily Mail partnered with Stage 29 Productions to launch DailyMailTV, an international news program produced by Stage 29 Productions in its studios based in New York City with satellite studios in London, Sydney, DC and Los Angeles. Dr. Phil McGraw (Stage 29 Productions) was named as executive producer. The program was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Entertainment News Program in 2018.

The Scottish Daily Mail was published as a separate title from Edinburgh starting in December 1946. The circulation was poor though, falling to below 100,000 and the operation was rebased to Manchester in December 1968. In 1995 the Scottish Daily Mail was relaunched, and is printed in Glasgow.

The Daily Mail 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 differed from that of UK versions by having a green rectangle with the word "IRISH", instead of the Royal Arms, but this was later changed, with "Irish Daily Mail" displayed instead. The Irish version includes stories of Irish interest alongside content from the UK version. 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 Daily Mail is the pre-eminent daily newspaper of its time. A combination of comprehensive and incisive news coverage that gets to the heart of the story, in-depth analysis of world-wide issues and daily features covering the topics important to today's lifestyle have made the Daily Mail the choice for well over four million readers every day.

Our daily special features add to the reading experience of every reader as they become a fixture in their lives. Sympathetic, informed editorial covering a broad range of subjects and demonstrating our recognition of the diversity of our readership. Our special features are truly something for everyone.

Lifestyle (Monday):
Every Monday, Lifestyle is a brilliant section for every woman (which every man will want to peek at). It’s a contemporary magazine format in a newspaper environment, with bite-sized features on fashion, beauty, style and shopping that no woman will want to miss. Since its launch in November 2004, Lifestyle has been instrumental in driving Monday circulation. Lifestyle is new, exciting and highly addictive.

Good Life (Tuesday):
The most respected health section on the market today. Good Health is written by experts who understand the latest health issues. Good Health covers all aspects of healthcare, including new treatments and health related innovations. It is the essential reference diary for doctors and patients alike who want to be kept up to date on the fast changing healthcare market.

Money Mail (Wednesday):
The longest running Personal Finance section has provided sound financial advice to readers of all ages and walks of life. Whilst maintaining its campaigning stance for consumers' rights, Money Mail continues to provide the latest advice on all aspects of Personal Finance encompassing Savings & Investments, Mortgages, Taxation, Pensions & Insurance. Our features include Fund Watch, Letters page, Stock Watch, Small Business Focus and Tony Hazell's 'Last Word' as well as incisive and up to the minute news and views. Additionally each month there are extended features addressing other diverse issues such as Investment trusts, tax planning, corporate bonds and Internet banking Money Mail is the authoritative Personal Finance section.

Travel Mail (Wednesday):
The Mid- Week travel section consists of 1-2 pages every week written by our expert travel team. The editorial is seasonally led and focuses mostly on ideas for the weekend or short breaks. Features range from European city breaks to UK getaways offering weekend holiday solutions to cater for all tastes.

Femail Magazine (Thursday)
This 16-page feature is at the cutting edge of Fashion, Style and Beauty and includes anything that concerns our Female readers. Regular features include cover story -reporting on real life dramas, BodyTalk - giving hints and ideas on how to pamper yourself and personality interviews. We have created the complete section for female readers - Women dare not miss it!

It's Friday (Friday)
It's Britain’s brightest guide to the weekend highlighting the theatre, culture, arts and all that's best in entertainment. With Baz Bamigboye and his own brand of hot gossip, Christopher Tookey on this week's new film releases, Adrian Thrills illuminating the concert, rock and pop scene with gig guides and album releases- It's Friday offers something for everyone!

Books on Friday (Friday)
This is our literary section dedicated to the book publishing world. It covers reviews of fiction and non-fiction titles, but is not just a pure book reviewing section. Books on Friday looks at a broad range of Literary issues from events and societies to the Daily Mail's own Literary lunches. With its focus on Fiction, Bookworm and What Book editorial pieces, Books on Friday is a complete and rounded look at the Literary World.

Escape (Saturday)
This excellent feature covers up to 19 pages of the most interesting, informative holiday and travel news written by our expert team. All aspects of travel are included, from cruising to cycling, long weekends at home and abroad, family holidays as well as more exotic destinations. Each feature is accompanied by invaluable 'Travel Facts' detailing flights, recommended operators and approximate costs.

Weekend (Saturday)
All this and Weekend Magazine too! The Saturday package includes regular features ranging from personality profiles, cookery, wine, gardening, and much, much more. Combined with the most comprehensive TV, Satellite, Cable and Radio listings, the whole package makes Weekend unmissable!

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The Mail on Sunday is a British conservative newspaper, published in a tabloid format. It is the biggest-selling Sunday newspaper in the UK and was launched in 1982 by Lord Rothermere. Its sister paper, the Daily Mail, was first published in 1896.

In July 2011, after the closure of the News of the World, The Mail on Sunday sold some 2.5 million copies a week—making it Britain's biggest-selling Sunday newspaper—but by September that had fallen back to just under 2 million. Like the Daily Mail it is owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), but the editorial staffs of the two papers are entirely separate. It had an average daily circulation of 1,555,977 in March 2014. In April 2020 the Society of Editors announced that the Mail on Sunday was the winner of the Sunday Newspaper of the Year for 2019.

The Mail on Sunday was launched on 2 May 1982, to complement the Daily Mail, the first time Associated Newspapers had published a national Sunday title since it closed the once hugely successful Sunday Dispatch in 1961. The first story on the front page was the Royal Air Force's bombing of Stanley airport in the Falkland Islands. The newspaper's owner, the Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), initially wanted a circulation of 1.25 million; however, by that measure the launch of The Mail on Sunday was not a success, for by the sixth week sales were peaking at just 700,000. Its sports coverage was seen to be among its weaknesses at the time of its launch. The Mail on Sunday's first back-page splash was a report from the Netherlands on the rollerhockey world championships, which led to the paper being ridiculed in the industry.

Lord Rothermere, then the proprietor, brought in the Daily Mail's editor David English (later Sir David) who, with a task force of new journalists, redesigned and re-launched The Mail on Sunday. Over a period of three-and-a-half months English managed to halt the paper's decline, and its circulation increased to 840,000. Three new sections were introduced: firstly a sponsored partwork, the initial one forming a cookery book; then a colour comic supplement (an innovation in the British Sunday newspaper market); and lastly, a magazine—You magazine.

The newspaper's reputation was built on the work of its next editor, Stewart Steven. The newspaper's circulation grew from around one million to just under two million during his time in charge. Although its sister paper the Daily Mail has invariably supported the Conservative Party, Steven backed the SDP / Liberal Alliance in the 1983 General Election. The subsequent editors were Jonathan Holborow, Peter Wright and Geordie Greig, who became editor of the Daily Mail in September 2018 and was replaced at the Sunday title by Ted Verity.

The Mail on Sunday newspaper is a publishing success story. Since its launch in 1982 the paper has established itself as a best seller: every week over 1.3 million people buy a copy because they like our lively mix of news, comment and topical features.

Review
The Review section looks at the stories behind the news headlines and offers a critical view of the week's art and entertainment with regular reviewers Matthew Bond and Jason Solomons on film; Craig Brown on books and Jaci Stephen on TV plus a host of well-known critics from the worlds of theatre, pop, classical music and the arts.

Travel Mail
Travel Mail offers a lively and well-written assortment of features, news and reader offers. The section is a mix of articles by well-known personalities and established travel writers, offering readers insight, ideas and practical advice. The combination of informed editorial and up to the minute offers from the wealth of display and classified advertisers makes Travel Mail the complete travel and holiday marketplace.

Football on Sunday
Our Football on Sunday pull-out supplement offers readers comprehensive coverage of Saturday's fixtures, previews of the coming week's games and columns and comment from our expert team of football writers. Every issue features a major interview with one of the game's leading personalities plus a weekly column written by former footballer, Andy Townsend. And to round up, a full spread of results and stats designed to keep even the most dedicated fan completely up to date.

Sportsmail
With football covered comprehensively by our Football on Sunday pull-out, Sportsmail has more room to dedicate to our other favourite sports and sportswriters. This stellar team ensures that Sportsmail offers our readers plenty of exclusive stories and a wealth of insight every week.

Property
Property launched as a monthly supplement in September 2001 and changed to weekly frequency in January 2003. Varying between 36 and 44-pages, the standalone section is polybagged with The Mail on Sunday in the London ITV region. With a mix of features written by established property experts and celebrity writers, Property on Sunday takes a practical approach that is relevant to readers' everyday lives. With regular features on DIY, home improvement and all aspects of house purchase in the UK or abroad, to let or to live in, it appeals to a wide audience. We also take a more aspirational view with regular peeks into celebrity homes and favourite locations or unusual properties that may be more accessible than people might think. Advertising is a mix of prime display positions and composite classified pages.

Financial Mail
Financial Mail was launched in 1994 with the aim of providing authoritative and accessible financial information to a wider audience. Staffed by an award winning team of journalists, the section focuses on the City and business markets and the ever changing world of personal finance. Financial Mail has established itself as a major player in the marketplace with an unrivalled reputation for topical and campaigning editorial.

You
You Magazine is the only genuine women's magazine of all the newspaper supplements, providing higher coverage of ABC1 women than any other weekly or monthly women's title. Its mix of in-depth features and health, beauty, fashion, interiors and food pages make it a regular read for over 3 million women (and 2.3 million men!) every week.

Night & Day
Night & Day is a true seven-day product, combining critically astute TV listings with topical features in a good looking, glossy magazine format. The emphasis is on original content and as a result it has developed a distinctive editorial style that has helped bring new, younger readers on board without alienating the established audience.