Resource of the month from the GNM archive

Each month we will provide resource material that can be used in the classroom. This month we look at a major change to the front page of the Guardian when it moved from adverts to news on the front page in September 1952.

Hold the front page – for news

In September 1952 the Guardian put news instead of adverts on its front pages “as an adaptation to modern newspaper habit which should increase its usefulness to readers”. The move gave a boost to circulation which rose from 168,000 up from 50,000 at the start of the second world war.

Below is an extract from an article on Saturday 27 September, the last day with adverts explaining the reasons for the changes to the front page that were going to happen on the following Monday.

Guardian front pages Saturday 27 September and Monday 29 September 1952

If you wish to download and print the pages for educational use it is recommended that you use A3 paper.







Manchester Guardian changes

Saturday 27 September 1952

This is the last issue of the “Manchester Guardian” to devote its front page wholly to advertisements and the last to carry the title of the paper in black letter. These changes have some historical and sentimental interest, although they will not affect the character of the paper. News on the front page is now the rule, where it was once the exception, among English daily papers. Only one London daily, the “Times,” will keep the old style after to-day, and outside London, among morning dailies only the Liverpool “Journal of Commerce,” three papers in Scotland, and three in Ireland.

The change, for the morning papers, has been the process of half a century. Sixty years ago, in 1892, “The Morning,” a half-penny daily, started under American influence, opened with news on the front page; this was criticised as “un-English” and the paper soon reverted to the prevailing custom. In September 1900, C. Arthur Pearson, in taking over the “Morning Herald” (the successor of “The Morning”) to turn it into the “Daily Express,” revived front page news. With his success the modern fashion began to spread in England; it had long been pretty general in America.

The last war quickened the process. The “Daily Telegraph,” the “Daily Mail,” and the “Yorkshire Post” changed over in 1939, the “Liverpool Daily Post” in 1940, and the “Birmingham Post” in 1946. Of the Sunday papers the last to change were the “Sunday Times” (1940) and the “Observer” (1942). Some of the more notable evening papers (like the “Pall Mall Gazette” and the “Westminster Gazette”) had always followed the eighteenth-century form with news or leaders on the front, but most were on the pattern of the dailies and followed their course. Very few of them now start with advertisements, the “Liverpool Echo” being, perhaps, the most notable exception.



History of the Guardian

Guardian interactive timeline

Resources of the month

Resources for teachers