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]
Politics
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, 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]
Folding
On 17 October 1960, the News Chronicle "finally folded, inappropriately, into the grip"[7] of the
right-wingDaily 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, in marked contrast to that of the Daily Mail. As part of the same takeover, the London evening paper The Star was incorporated into the Evening News.
Notable contributors
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
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
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
John Segrue – foreign correspondent; twice expelled by the Nazis, he was eventually captured and interned in a German prisoner-of-war camp, where he died in 1942.