Distribute and Be Damned 41
factors, as well as innovation such as faster printing, and the introduction of cheap wood pulp paper (which discouraged lending of papers as
well as reducing costs), included the abolition of stamp duty, and the
rise of literacy among the lower middle and upper working classes. So
important was this trade that special newspaper trains were introduced
in 1876 and London publications became national. There was no sudden
transformation with the introduction of rail, but slowly the coaching
network that had built up during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was replaced, allowing Smith to extend his bookstores
and news outlets across the country. By 1861, a journalist writing in
the magazine Once a Week could observe that every railway except the
Great Western was in “literary possession of Mr W. H. Smith”.
14
Such
was Smith’s monopoly over the trade by the end of the century that when
W. T. Stead shocked the nation with his campaigning journalism against
child prostitution in the Pall Mall Gazette, the company’s refusal to handle the newspaper contributed to the editor’s undoing.
15
The impact of railways on print distribution has long been recognised:
as Hayes summarises it, “the development of passenger railways combined with the widespread availability of inexpensively-produced books
significantly influenced what people read, how they obtained what they
read, and, indeed, how they read.”
16
As an important part of the media
ecology of the nineteenth century, the railway network was a significant
component of the public sphere, allowing people to receive news more
quickly than before. This system was supplemented by wide road networks in the twentieth century, which, in turn, influenced the growth of
print wholesalers. As Wilson notes, by the 1970s, WH Smith had moved
from being one retailer among many to being the main distributor for
newspapers. This system of distribution for print was still going strong,
for magazines at least, at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Certainly, newspaper sales had begun to decline, but this was not the case
for most consumer magazines in 2006 and at that point, in the UK,
WH Smith continued to dominate the wholesale distributor market with
a 39 per cent market share, along with Menzies Distribution (27 per
cent, but with a monopoly in Scotland) and Dawson News (19 per cent).
These three companies were responsible for shifting large quantities of
newsprint around the UK to 185 smaller wholesalers (mostly subsidiaries of these big companies) who would then pack them into vans for
distribution to some 53,000 retail outlets.
17
The system for distributing the news had undergone a vast transformation from 1792 when Henry Walton operated a newswalk in Berkeley
Square to the massive enterprise responsible for distributing huge quantities of print across the country and internationally. The only common
element linking both ends of the spectrum was that between 1792 and
2006, most consumers who wished to read some form of journalism
relied on print. Just about every other aspect of the process had changed
factors, as well as innovation such as faster printing, and the introduction of cheap wood pulp paper (which discouraged lending of papers as
well as reducing costs), included the abolition of stamp duty, and the
rise of literacy among the lower middle and upper working classes. So
important was this trade that special newspaper trains were introduced
in 1876 and London publications became national. There was no sudden
transformation with the introduction of rail, but slowly the coaching
network that had built up during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was replaced, allowing Smith to extend his bookstores
and news outlets across the country. By 1861, a journalist writing in
the magazine Once a Week could observe that every railway except the
Great Western was in “literary possession of Mr W. H. Smith”.
14
Such
was Smith’s monopoly over the trade by the end of the century that when
W. T. Stead shocked the nation with his campaigning journalism against
child prostitution in the Pall Mall Gazette, the company’s refusal to handle the newspaper contributed to the editor’s undoing.
15
The impact of railways on print distribution has long been recognised:
as Hayes summarises it, “the development of passenger railways combined with the widespread availability of inexpensively-produced books
significantly influenced what people read, how they obtained what they
read, and, indeed, how they read.”
16
As an important part of the media
ecology of the nineteenth century, the railway network was a significant
component of the public sphere, allowing people to receive news more
quickly than before. This system was supplemented by wide road networks in the twentieth century, which, in turn, influenced the growth of
print wholesalers. As Wilson notes, by the 1970s, WH Smith had moved
from being one retailer among many to being the main distributor for
newspapers. This system of distribution for print was still going strong,
for magazines at least, at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Certainly, newspaper sales had begun to decline, but this was not the case
for most consumer magazines in 2006 and at that point, in the UK,
WH Smith continued to dominate the wholesale distributor market with
a 39 per cent market share, along with Menzies Distribution (27 per
cent, but with a monopoly in Scotland) and Dawson News (19 per cent).
These three companies were responsible for shifting large quantities of
newsprint around the UK to 185 smaller wholesalers (mostly subsidiaries of these big companies) who would then pack them into vans for
distribution to some 53,000 retail outlets.
17
The system for distributing the news had undergone a vast transformation from 1792 when Henry Walton operated a newswalk in Berkeley
Square to the massive enterprise responsible for distributing huge quantities of print across the country and internationally. The only common
element linking both ends of the spectrum was that between 1792 and
2006, most consumers who wished to read some form of journalism
relied on print. Just about every other aspect of the process had changed