ABSTRACT

This collection shows the importance of a comparative European framework for understanding developments in the popular press and journalism between the wars. This was, it argues, a formative and vital period in the making of the modern press. A great deal of fine scholarship on the development of modern forms of journalism and newspapers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has emerged within discrete national histories. Yet in bringing together essays on Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Poland, this book discerns points of convergence and divergence, and the importance of the European context in shaping how news was defined, produced and consumed.

Challenging the tendency of histories of the press to foreground processes of ‘Americanisation’ and the displacement of older notions of the ‘fourth estate’ by new forms of human interest journalism, the chapters draw attention to the complex ways in which the popular press continued to be politicized throughout the interwar period. Building on this analysis, the book examines the forms, processes and networks through which newspapers were produced for public consumption. In a period of massive social, political and economic upheaval and conflict, the popular press provided a forum in which Europe’s meanings and nature could be constructed and contested. The interpersonal, material and technological links between newspapers, news corporations and news agencies in different countries served to define the outlines of Europe. Europe was called into being through the circulation of news and the practices and networks of the modern mass press traced in this volume. This publication is highly relevant to scholars of the history of journalism and cultural historians of interwar Britain and Europe.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Journalism Studies.

chapter |11 pages

Introduction

The press and popular culture in interwar Europe

chapter |12 pages

“An Organ of Uplift?”

The popular press and political culture in interwar Britain

chapter |18 pages

Press Advertising and Fascist Dictates

Showcasing the female consumer in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany

chapter |17 pages

The Political Cartoon as Educationalist Journalism

David Low's portrayal of mass unemployment in interwar Britain

chapter |18 pages

Gentleman, Journalist, Gentleman-Journalist

Gossip columnists and the professionalisation of journalism in interwar Britain

chapter |14 pages

Fashion For All?

The transatlantic fashion business and the development of a popular press culture during the interwar period

chapter |13 pages

The Creation of European News

News agency cooperation in interwar Europe

chapter |16 pages

Crowds, Culture and Power

Mass politics and the press in interwar France

chapter |12 pages

“You Will Find Germany in Peace and Order”

Edward Meeman, an American journalist who praised and condemned Nazi Germany