Starbucks To Barbucks

After purchasing your morning coffee at your local Starbucks store, you could now also return there in the evening for a pint or a glass of your favourite wine.
A Starbucks store in Seattle is testing their new business idea of selling alcohol in the evenings, as well as their famous coffee. A move planned to see their customers through from the morning, right till the end of the day.
The idea came about after the realisation that a majority of their sales are during the morning as people come in before their day begins. The executives over at Starbucks have decided they'd also like to cash in during the evenings.
If the idea takes off in Seattle stores, the alcohol will be available after four in the afternoon, and could be hitting stores worldwide.

HCJ: Tabloid Nation

The Daily Mirror is hailed by Tabloid Nation as being the beginning of the modern day “Red Top” we see today-with the likes of The Sun being the epitome of just that in modern terms. To want to succeed in the tabloid industry, you essentially have to assume that the public are simpletons. Placate them and entice them in with pictures as opposed to text, make headlines big and eye catching so the regular member of the public doesn’t have to work hard to read it, and offer enticing prizes for questions impossible to answer. Such as “£1 a week for the rest of your life if you can accurately guess the sum of all the gold within the Bank of England”. Competitions like these were bound to send circulation through the roof, and the people behind the press (such as Alfred Harmsworth) knew just that, as at the age of 21 he created his first magazine called Answers. By offering cash prize competitions and giveaways which would attract up to 700,000 entries. When Harmsworth eventually created the Daily Mirror, it was described as being something “…of easy absorption by the most ordinary intelligence”, “something to look at on the way to work” and something to “prevent them [the people] from thinking”.

As well as Alfred Harmsworth as the so called “Chief” of the Daily Mirror, the team of journalists also included Hannen Swaffer who was responsible for the pictures which would embellish the front page of every edition. With more than an air of similarity to William Randolph Hearst and The Examiner, the front page was often adorned with photos that no other paper had. For example, Daily Mirror reporters were the first people to climb inside the mouth of Mount Vesuvius, and also the first people, despite the crew, to fly inside a Zeppelin airship. When the Titanic sunk on April 14th, by April 15th, the Mirror had obtained photos from a shop on Edgeware Road that no other paper had managed to get hold of and printed them the morning after. Amongst other ground breaking achievements, Swaffer is also responsible for setting up the relationship between the royal family and the tabloids, as on April 2 1904, he printed a groveling but profitable family photo of the royals within the paper. Circulation boomed to 71,000 and the Royals have since become detrimental to the Tabloid industry even to this day.
However, this relationship was almost threatened when the Mirror underhandedly obtained photos of the recently deceased King Edward laid on his death bed looking nothing short of skeletal, and then pasted it on their front page. Although circulation soared far past the 1 million mark, the paper waited with bated breath for retribution from the Royal family. Yet Queen Alexandra eventually spoke and stated she had in fact chosen the Mirror to print the photos because the newspaper was a personal favorite of hers. No doubt embarrassed to admit that the lowly little penny paper had so slyly got past her and her royal empire. Although a blessing to the normal eye, within the Tabloid world, this must have come has something of a disappointment, as a trip to the tower would have done wonders for circulation. Showing how little has changed with the old mantra of “any publicity is good publicity”.

When it comes to photographs for newspapers, both William Randolph Hearst, The Daily Mirror and even papers today understand that the more cute, pretty or eye catching the photo. The more readers will, sympathize, read or be interested in what you have to say. For example Hearst’s campaign to stop the Spaniards sending innocent people into concentration camps, was focused on Evangelina Cisneros, the so called “most beautiful woman in Spain”. She was the perfect candidate for a sympathetic story and a good front page.
In the same league, the Daily Mirror, albeit years later started a campaign of its own. Since no one in 20th century London cared or could do much about the plight of children and poverty stricken slums. The Mirror set up a campaign to save a poor little pit pony, which looked better in photos and as a bonus, the Lord Mayoress of London offered to buy the pony off their hands and look after it. Paving the way for future tabloids was the idea that most pictures contained either accidents, disasters, crime, royalty or sports.


Although Hearst was the first to start Investigative Journalism with his reporter Nellie Bly who would often do things like pretend to be insane and then report on the inside of an asylum-The Mirror would send their reporters to report on such things as the conditions of immigration travel between Liverpool and New York City. Continuing the trend of first-hand experience articles.

Even though nowadays female readers are seen as no different to male readers-(with the Daily Mail nowadays catering solely to a female audience with their woman section) in Harmsworth’s time, female readers were not so profitable since they didn’t have the vote, therefore trying to use the paper as a propaganda tool wasn’t so effective. In terms of political interest, Baldwin, the prime minister during World War I, complained about just that when he stated that the paper was no longer just a paper but “engines of propaganda”. This was brought about due to the fact that Harmsworth had sold off the Daily Mirror to his younger brother, Lord Rothermere. Rothermere was a fascist and had attempted to set up the Right Wing United Empire Party with his partner Oswald Mosley, who in turn was the leader of a right wing party called the “New Party”. At one point during 1931 they even tried to suppress Gandhi and his efforts for peace, stating
“Put Petter (their candidate) in and you put Gandhi out!”
Allied together they would promote their fascist beliefs in both the Mirror and in turn the Daily Mail. After falling out over a business agreement, the promotion for Mosley stopped and his supporters fell from 40,000, to just 5,000. Further emphasizing the power of the press.

Just after the First World War, the papers created a war themselves, albeit on a smaller scale. The Free Gift war. In 1922 The Herald started giving massive free prize giveaways to anyone who would buy their paper. By employing ex serviceman they also had a veritable army of people to promote the paper on the streets. Rival papers began to match or better every offer made by the Herald, including tea sets, mangles, books, kettles, coats, shoes and cameras. Lord Beaverbrook, owner of the Daily Express stated, in something reminiscent of the famous Churchill speech “I shall fight them to the bitter end”. War of any kind is a blessing to anyone within the tabloid or indeed newspaper in general, industry. As William Randolph Hearst so infamously but apparently said “You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war”. When war broke out after the USS Maine sunk, Hearst celebrated and asked readers to send in ideas for war strategies for the chance to win $1000. The Journal beat the 1million circulation mark the day of the sinking.

Peoples dependencies upon the Tabloids and newspapers was summed up during World War I, when The Mirror was arranged to be distributed amongst trenches as well as to the regular public. The public of course enjoyed reading about what their soldiers were going through out on the firing line, and the soldiers in turn enjoyed reading about what was going on in the regular world at home.

In terms of groundbreaking achievement during the time of Hearst, Northcliffe and Rothermere, Hearst created the template for every Tabloid with big headlines and pictures over riding text, with catchy headlines and hooks to suck readers in. A front page technique still being used today. Years later, another definitive moment came in the form of Harry Guy Bartholomew. Whilst working at The Mirror, he invented the Bartlane system. A machine that enabled pictures to be sent in a matter of minutes or hours as opposed to the days it took before, Soon enough the Daily Mirror and the New York Daily News were trading pictures daily.
These accomplishments in the world of press are the framework of the tabloid industry we see today.

Cara's Life Lessons, And The Case Of The Missing Cheese Grater.

With a lack of newspapers, fashion exhausted, and HCJ finally done, I'm willing to blog about myself for lack of a better subject.

After just over a month of living in Orchard House, I have learnt a number of things which I am happy to share in case anyone else is blissfully oblivious to these complications in life:
-The large noisy fan above the oven is in fact called an extractor fan, not an exfoliator fan.
-No matter how much I tidy, the place seems to collect toast crumbs, sock fluff and make up stains within a day.
-Fish don't like it when you play loud music right next to their tank.
-My laundry doesn't do itself and fold itself neatly across my bed like it used to.
-Plus it needs ironing.
-I'm not allowed to leave my clothes, belts or shoes around the kitchen because Karen trips over them.
-Some microwaves have a button which needs to be pushed to get it to open, and no amount of pulling will change that.
-Microwave cheeseburgers definitely need to be microwaved, don't even attempt to put them in the oven
-Life without Sky+ HD isn't fun. Where on earth is E!News!?
And Justina tends to sleep talk when you sneak into her room late at night to get the nail varnish.

Yet I still haven't learnt how to cook, and I've lost my cheese grater. Which I never thought I would do considering it's bright pink. But there you have it.

This first week back at University has in itself taught me a fair few things, including how to use Joomla. The system responsible for our Winchester News Online Site. The revision sessions on camera and the editing equipment were much needed and appreciated it has to be said. Plus helping my friends Keegan and Justina on their feature filming every so often is handy. But none of it has of yet helped to find my cheese grater. Priorities, priorities.

HCJ-William Randolph Hearst

With the Gold rush of the 1840s and 1850’s, where immigration saw thousands flood into the US with the promise of a new life, America conquered land that was before unexplored. Western America was cleared of its original owners, the Native Indians, and was incorporated into the United States. With this rush of discovery, America as a nation believed, and still does, that they have the right to explore any frontier they desire. The term `frontier` was applied to the experience of crossing a border and being changed by the encounter. According to scholars at the time, this change made the pioneers involved more American than the people back home.

In terms of pioneers, George Hearst was amongst those who travelled to California in 1850 lured by gold-and with hard work and deliberation became extremely wealthy. Interested in a political career he brought the San Francisco Examiner, which was then passed down to his infamous son William Randolph Hearst.
Upon taking over the Examiner, Hearst began to change it completely. Eradicating the heavy textual front pages, he replaced it with pictures and illustrations. In the context of the times, with immigration levels high, and a need for a big audience, he decided the one thing everybody would be able to understand would be pictures. As well as different languages, he also took into account the fact pictures made things easier to understand for the illiterate. He reduced stories, enlarged headlines and eliminated adverts. Obsessed with the front page he created `hooks` to drag people in to wanting to read more; such as “Butchered as they ran”. He knew what would sell and what the people needed as well as wanted.

In New York City, Pulitzer was the newspaper genius. Hearst was aware that one of Pulitzers most appealing and pulling features was his cartoon of the “Yellow Kid”. So in 1896 Hearst stole the strip by paying the cartoonist a higher wage, and placed it in his magazine. Not to be out done, Pulitzer simply hired someone else to copy the comic and at one point there were two papers containing the same cartoon. This Yellow Kid war is responsible for the term “Yellow Press”. A term used to describe the act of inventing sensational stories, faking interviews, running phony pictures and distorting real events. Or what we in England call, “The Red Tops”.

Hearst pioneered in tabloid journalism with features such as investigative journalism. Nellie Bly was the first of her kind to endure such things as pretending to be insane and then reporting from inside a mental institution. This was later continued by reporters for the Daily Mirror almost 100 years later with reporters going undercover on boats taking immigrants from Liverpool to New York.

During the Spanish War of 1897, innocent people were being sent to concentration camps and so, for an angle, Hearst discovered that Evangelina Cisneros, the so called most beautiful woman in Spain, had also been imprisoned. With a hefty pay off, he rescued her, became a hero and got a good front cover.
Hearst's newest paper The Journal eventually broke the 1 million circulation mark upon the beginning of the Spanish war when one of America’s ships, the USS Maine sunk while in Spanish territory.

In regards to crime, both The Journal and its rival The World, competed to become the best. When a mutilated body was discovered on a local beach, The Journal offered $1000 for information on the crime-through thorough investigations led by the paper, an arrest was eventually made and the headline smugly read "Murder Mystery Solved By The Journal".

This act of self promotion and in turn, picture domination, are techniques that were pioneered by Hearst, but could still be seen years later in people like Lord Rothermere for the Daily Mirror, and more currently, The Sun.
He set up the template for all tabloid journalism and in his own way, discovered a new frontier.

Vandalism? How chic.

This month in honor of Elle Magazines 25th birthday-London is going to be covered head to toe in fashion graffiti. Not the most conventional birthday celebration ever but one that will no doubt turn heads. John Galliano will be running around the city on an unannounced date and under the cover of darkness to bring our capital city a splash of chic vandalism. 30 different secret locations have so far been targeted and the people who find them first will win prizes.
The graffiti is temporary however since it will fade during rain or until the London grime returns to cover it back up.
So happy birthday Elle! And happy hunting to those interested.