News Chronicle

The Daily Chronicle was founded in 1872. Purchased by Edward Lloyd for £30,000 in 1876, it achieved a high reputation under the editorship of Henry Massingham and Robert Donald, who took charge in 1904.

Owned by the Cadbury family, with Laurence Cadbury as chairman,[2] the News Chronicle was formed by the merger of the Daily News and the Daily Chronicle on 2 June 1930,[3] with Walter Layton appointed as editorial director.[2]

With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the paper took an anti-Franco stance and sent three correspondents to Spain in 1936-37: Denis Weaver. see Front Page Europe Hodder and Stoughton 1942 who was captured and nearly shot before being released Arthur Koestler (to Málaga)[4] and, later, Geoffrey Cox[4] (to Madrid). The paper's editorial staff took an active part in campaigning for the release of Koestler, who was captured by Franco's forces at the fall of Málaga and was in imminent danger of being executed.[5]

Following Koestler's release, the paper sent him to Mandatory Palestine, then convulsed by the Arab revolt. In a series of articles in the paper, Koestler urged adoption of the Peel Commission's recommendation for partition of Palestine, as "the only practical way of ending the bloodshed". In his autobiography Koestler notes that en route to Palestine he had stopped in Athens and had clandestine meetings with Communists and Liberals opposing the then Metaxas dictatorship, but the News Chronicle refused to publish his resulting strongly worded anti-Metaxas articles.[6]

In 1956, the News Chronicle opposed the UK's military support of Israel in invading the Suez canal zone, a decision which cost it circulation. According to Geoffrey Goodman, a journalist on the newspaper at the time, it was "one of British journalism's prime casualties of the Suez crisis".[7]

On 17 October 1960, the News Chronicle "finally folded, inappropriately, into the grip"[7] of the right-wing Daily Mail despite having a circulation of over a million.[1][3] The News Chronicle's editorial position was considered at the time to be in broad support of the British Liberal Party, which was in marked contrast to that of the right-wing Daily Mail. As part of the same takeover, the London evening paper The Star was incorporated into the Evening News.

Notable contributors to the News Chronicle and its predecessors included:

• Stephen G. Barber - foreign correspondent, World War II, Greek Civil War, Korean War, Indochina, Cyprus Crisis, Sharpeville Massacre, decolonization in Africa. Also worked for The Daily Telegraph in India and Bureau Chief in Washington, D.C. 1963-1980
• Frank D. Barber - foreign correspondent, later Head of Central Current Affairs & Talks, BBC World Service, and father of Financial Times editor Lionel Barber
• Vernon Bartlett – diplomatic correspondent
• Stanley Bishop - crime reporter[8]
• Ritchie Calder - science editor, who broke the story of the discovery of DNA structure in 1953
• James Cameron – war correspondent
• G.K. Chesterton – weekly opinion column in the Daily News
• Norman Clark - war correspondent; foreign editor
• Geoffrey Cox – war correspondent in the Spanish Civil War (in Madrid); former editor and chief executive of ITN. Began his career with the News Chronicle in 1932
• E. S. Dallas – Paris correspondent
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – war correspondent for the Daily Chronicle during World War I
• William ("Willie") Forrest - war correspondent in Spain and World War II; foreign correspondent
• Philip Jordan – war correspondent, World War II
• Thomas Kettle – war correspondent for the Daily News during the early part of World War I
• Arthur Koestler – writer and war correspondent in the Spanish Civil War
• Patrick Maitland, (later MP for Lanark and Earl of Lauderdale) - war correspondent for News Chronicle, Pacific, 1941 to 1944
• Richard Moore - leader writer and father of journalist Charles Moore
• Louise Morgan - American born, Editor and Journalist, writer of News Chronicle articles: from 1933 to the late 1950s and author of Inside Yourself: A New Way to Health Based on the Alexander Technique
• Patrick Sergeant - later Daily Mail City Editor, founder and owner of Euromoney
• C.W.A. Scott - aviation editor
• H.G. Wells – contributor to the Daily News

1930: Tom Clarke[9]

1933: Aylmer Vallance

1936: Gerald Barry[4]

1948: Robin Cruikshank[10]

1954: Michael Curtis

1957: Norman Cursley

• Get Ahead: BBC TV programme broadcast from 1958 to 1962 which was sponsored by the paper.
• "Brief history of the Enterprise Class": The News Chronicle sponsored Jack Holt in 1955 to design the Enterprise (dinghy)
• The Cricket Annual: A cricket annual which for many years was published as the News Chronicle Cricket Annual.

• DMGT Associated Newspapers – www.dmgt.co.uk
• Concise History of British Newspaper in the 20th Century – www.bl.uk
• History of the Daily News – Spartacus Educational
• History of the Daily Chronicle – Spartacus Educational