Changes in the 19th Century British Press

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... l event to happen that would change the nature of the press forever was the removal of stamp duties in 1855. A cheaper stamped press meant that more people could buy a paper and the unstamped press went out of business, as they could no longer compete with the higher quality of the legitimate papers. As it was now cheaper to produce newspapers, and the demand for them higher, new publications appeared such as the Daily Telegraph. This meant the people would not only get more angles on stories, but papers would be competing against each other even more making the quality improve too. The layout of papers would also change as a result of this, but these visual effects did take longer to appear but once they did papers were able to use headlines and spread out the reports to make them easier to read.

In 1961 Gladstone helped the papers further by abolishing the excise duty on paper. This made producing papers cheaper still and hence revived the rural paper works, encouraged the growth of London newspapers and the provincial press.

The popular press continued to grow in the second half of the nineteenth century due to new legislation being passed. The expansion of the electorate meant an increasingly important role for party politics to win over the voters. In turn this meant the role of the press as an opinion former had become much more important as the only effective means of doing this. The Elementary Education Act of 1870 led to an increase in literacy meaning more people of the lower classes would be able to buy and read a paper.

Other factors in the second half of the nineteenth century also helped to influence ...

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