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This
page considers the DC Thomson newspaper group, unrelated
to global giant Thomson profiled
elsewhere on this site.
It covers -
introduction
Dundee-based and family-controlled DC Thomson has gained
attention for its political and editorial conservativism
(the Dundee Courier placed news, rather than advertisements,
on its front page as late as 1992) and publication of
comics.
the founder
Thomson was founded by David Couper Thomson (1861-1954),
son of a Dundee shipowning family.
After education at Dundee high school and apprenticeship
to a marine engineer in Glasgow he went into partnership
by his father in 1884. Two years later Thomson left the
shipping business to manage W. & D.C. Thomson, established
up by his father William to hold the Dundee Courier,
Argus and Weekly News acquired by the
family. He was joined by younger brother Frederick in
1888, buying the My Weekly newspaper, lucratively
converted into a weekly magazine for the local proletariat
and launching the Dundee Evening Post in 1900.
In 1905 the trio established D. C. Thomson & Co. Ltd,
taking a stake in competitor John Leng & Co.
During 1913 that company opened a printing operation in
Manchester, followed by one in Glasgow two years later.
At that time it launched the Glasgow Sunday Post.
The deaths of William and Frederick in 1917 saw full control
of the papers pass to David.
Thomson appears to have decided that the high road to
success lay downmarket. In 1920, building on My Weekly,
he launched The Adventure as a regional (later
national) boys' paper. Six years later he acquired the
rest of John Leng & Co and bought The Scots Magazine
(founded 1739) in 1927. As one of the hard-faced men who
had done well out of the war, Thomson's pieties about
free enterprise froze into a caricatural conservativism.
Dundee MP Winston Churchill, not yet Prime Minister, complained
that Thomson was "narrow, bitter, unreasonable, eaten
up with his own conceit, consumed with his own petty arrogance",
guilty of "ceaseless detraction, spiteful, malicious
detraction". Churchill lost his seat; Thomson increasingly
subsided into a crusty seclusion that would have delighted
schlerotic US counterparts such as Copley
and Hoiles.
Nephew Harold Thomson took day by day responsibility during
the mid-1930s, launching the Hotspur for boys
in 1933, followed by Rover, Wizard,
Vanguard and Skipper. Thomson released
the popular children's comics The Dandy in 1937
and Beano in 1938 (now remembered largely in
a wry appreciation by George Orwell). Women's magazines
included Secrets (launched in 1932). The Sunday
Post, as a Scottish version of the Mirror,
became one of the largest Scottish newspapers (at its
peak reportedly being read by 4 out of 5 Scots), albeit
one that would have horrified John Knox and David Hume.
By the early 1950s the group published over twenty downmarket
newspapers, women's magazines, and children's comics.
It was known for tight family control (often described
as "secretive"), parochial views and a vehement
opposition to unionism. Employees were required to sign
a commitment that they were not members of a union and
would not join one, a requirement somewhat undermined
by recurrent industrial disputes and an official inquiry
in 1952. By that stage it had quietly abandoned the founder's
refusal to employ Roman Catholics.
Leng
Sir John Leng (1828-1906) was the younger brother of Sir
William Christopher Leng (1825-1902). At Hull grammar
school Leng showed what one biographer described as "a
precocious interest in journalism" (co-editing a
magazine with fellow pupil Charles Cooper, later editor
of The Scotsman) although many schoolboy authors
do not go on to build a newspaper group.
Leng abandoned his job as assistant master at a private
school when the editor of the Hull Advertiser,
responding to letters for publication, urged him to learn
shorthand and then appointed him as a reporter and sub-editor's
assistant. Leng replaced the sub-editor ("lazy and
too fond of drink") within a short time of his appointment
in 1847, becoming chief reporter, sub-editor, music critic
and drama critic. In 1851 he became editor of the ailing
Dundee Advertiser, whose resuscitation was rewarded
with partnership of that title's owners in 1852. By the
mid-1850s the newspaper was published by John Leng &
Co, which invested heavily in new technology such as the
telegraph ( a London office was opened in 1870) and zincography
for illustration.
During the late 1850s Leng expanded and diversified, with
the weekly People's Journal, gaining a circulation
of 250,000 (in ten local editions) and illustrated magazine
the People's Friend being launched in 1869. The
unsucessful halfpenny Daily Advertiser was replaced
by daily publication of the Dundee Advertiser
from 1861. An evening newspaper, the Dundee Evening
Telegraph (later the Evening Telegraph &
Post) was launched in 1877 and Leng expanded into
newsprint production through a stake in Donside Paper
Mills. He was elected as a Liberal for Dundee in 1889,
retiring in 1905.
Leng & Co was absorbed by DC Thomson in 1926
studies
There have been no major studies of DC Thomson.
landmarks
1884 David Couper Thomson and father William form partnership
1886 David Thomson leaves family shipping business, heads
new company of W. & D.C. Thomson
1888 buys My Weekly
1900 launches Dundee Evening Post
1905 D. C. Thomson & Co. Ltd established as private
limited company
1913 opens office in Manchester
1915 opens office in Glasgow
1915 launches Glasgow Sunday Post
1920 launches The Adventure
1926 absorbs Dundee-based John Leng & Co
1932 launches Secrets
1933 launches The Hotspur
1937 launches The Dandy
1938 launches The Beano
2005 pays £85m for Puzzler Media, publisher of puzzle
magazines including Puzzler Sudoku
2006 buys Aberdeen Journals (inc The Aberdeen Press
& Journal) of DMGT for
£132m
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