Campaigner, Watchdog or Municipal Lackey? Reflections on the inter-war provincial press, local identity and civic welfarism

Abstract

Campaigner, watchdog or municipal lackey? Reflections on the interwar provincial press, local identity and civic welfarismWas the inter-war period a ‗golden age' for the local evening newspaper 1the manifestation of an earlier industrialisation of the press that permitted the growth of independent journalism and the expansion of a critical Fourth Estateaddressing a wider audience at a lower price? 2 Relying on regular daily sales and advertising revenues, rather than political partisanship and party subsidies, made local evening papers genuinely ‗popular': more so than their morning stablemates. 3Yet the corporate coupling of the expanding national daily and local evening presses also suggests the latter is better contextualised within the wider ‗revolution' in newspaper publishing (associated with Northcliffe, and the construction of a Fleet Street-led undifferentiated ‗mass' readership). 4As such, it was implicated in the corruption of any ‗free press' ideal, the suppression rather than promotion of pluralism, and the drift to tabloidisation. 5Here commercialisation turned local newspapers from being popular educators and public watchdogs into ‗big business': where owners' market interests were paramountnot least during the 1920s when submitting to ‗the temptations of monopoly' seemed particularly prevalent. 6t, ironically, as attention was drawn to the accelerated ‗decline' of the evening press after 1945, with its further incorporation within an essentially single, consumerdriven commercialised newspaper industry, the ‗local rag' has now been allowed an earlier, more positive role in local democratic processes. 7This article posits that the