The emergence and need for adverting and its effects on the radical press.(3)

As industrialisation grew, so did the need for at least a basic level of literacy and education. With this came a greater thirst for knowledge. No longer did this reside with only the wealthy upper classes, it was beginning to descend into the upper working classes also.

!867 saw a turning point with the upper working class been given the right to vote. The press for the first time would see a vastly wider and more opinionated audience. More and more people were engaging with commercialisation. Even the lower classes began to find themselves with money to spend on superfluous goods.

Industrialisation for the first time gave the press the possibility to realistically reach this wider and knowledge hungry audience. With the usage of new technologies, such as rotary presses. The press had a real opportunity to meet the demands of the people at smaller costs to the reader.

In theory this worked but in practise the start up costs for this type of machinery was immense. Twenty thousand pounds was the average amount in 1855.

Commercialisation soon took hold and the press began to favour a move to the right. Through advertising revenue, after the abolishment of advertising duty in 1853 the press soon began to realise that by making advertising more attractive, more people would be willing to pay higher amounts for better adverts. Which in turn would buy them bigger and better technologies.

Using the press as a business soon became more important than using it as a political mouth piece. As the press began to respond to advertisers and their requirements it became more important for financial gain to meet their needs rather than printing what people actually wanted to read. Liberal papers that didn’t believe in the concept of “ commodity fetishism” began to shut down. It soon became evident that without advertisers backing the press could not continue to survive.

W.C 329