Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe (July 15, 1865, Dublin – August 14, 1922, London) was an influential and successful newspaper owner with his brother Harold, Lord Rothermere. He transformed several stalled periodicals into lucrative modern newspapers by introducing new sections such as articles for women, and by shortening and livening the writing style. Harmsworth was made a baron in 1905, and a viscount in 1917. He served as director of propaganda during World War I.

Harmsworth was the son of a barrister, one of several high achieving children, and chose a career as a free-lance journalist. After being educated at Stamford School, he worked as editor at various papers before deciding to found his own paper, Answers to Correspondents. The paper became a modest success, and he was joined by his brother Harold.

Harmsworth soon established several more inexpensive periodicals. In 1894 he purchased the nearly bankrupt London Evening News and made it profitable by including several new modern sections. His next venture was the creation of a series of dailies, which culminated in the establishment of the Daily Mail in 1896. This paper became phenomenally successful from its very first issue.

During this period, everything that Harmsworth touched became profitable. In 1903[1] he bought another nearly bankrupt paper, the Weekly Dispatch, and made it the best-selling Sunday newspaper in the United Kingdom. Also in 1903, he founded The Daily Mirror to take advantage of the new genre of picture papers and soon had a hit. He several more papers in the next several years, turning them all into a modern newspapers.

Anticipating a potential paper shortage, which had the potential to threaten his profits, Harmsworth established a paper mill at Grand Falls in 1905, in the then colony of Newfoundland. The community he built there would be based on the theories of Ebenezer Howard and the Garden city movement.

His sensational reporting prior to World War I may have been a result of bad feelings for Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of War, after one of Northcliffe's nephews was killed in the war. His editorials pressed for both a Ministry of Munitions and the creation of a war cabinet, and were critical of Kitchener. He joined a military mission to the United States in 1917, and in 1918, served as the government's director of propaganda against the Central Powers. Lord Northcliffe died in 1922 under suspicious circumstances, aged 57, his viscountcy and barony both dying with him.

[edit] Sources

D. George Boyce, "Harmsworth, Alfred Charles William, Viscount Northcliffe (1865–1922)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 23 Aug 2006