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This page considers 'yellow journalism' exponents John
and Ezra Norton.
It covers -
 John
Norton and Truth
John Norton (1858-1916) was born in England, later claiming
that he fled from mistreatment by a brutal stepfather
and "half-mad" mother. (That abuse was echoed
in his mistreatment of his own son). Norton's claims regarding
his early career are problematical but it appears that
he worked on the Levant Herald in Istanbul in
1880 before migrating to Australia in 1884.
Within a year he was chief reporter on the Sydney Evening
News and gained attention for writing in support
of the labour movement, federation and a reublic. That
was recognised through NSW Trades & Labor Council
accreditation as an official delegate to trades union
congresses in Paris and London during 1886. He later edited
and published an Australian edition of The History
of Capital and Labour in all Lands and Ages (Sydney:
Oceanic Publishing 1888).
Norton became editor of the Newcastle Morning Herald
in 1889 but was sacked over recurrent drunkenness. He
then worked on the new weekly Sydney Truth, launched
by radical politicians William Crick (1862-1908), Adolphus
Taylor (1857-1900) and William Willis (1858-1922). Norton
became editor in 1893, replacing Taylor. Willis sought
to protect himself from litigation by selling a stake
in Truth to Norton but the relationship between
the partners deteriorated, marked by a public brawl in
King Street and litigation over ownership of a publication
that now had a circulation of over 45,000 copies. (Violence
was a feature of Norton's life; he fired a revolver at
R. D. Meagher in Pitt Street in 1898 after a horsewhipping.)
Norton acquired Truth in 1896, with some historians
suggesting that Willis sold his stake because of blackmail.
That speculation reflects claims in several court cases
that Norton was a blackmailer and used litigation to avoid
responsibility for libellous statements.
Contrary to criticism by the NSW quality press Truth
arguably thrived because it was a xenophobic, scurrilous
and anti-establishment "gutter rag" - an Australian
counterpart of scandal sheets published by Scripps,
Pulitzer and Generoso Pope.
Norton for example gained criticism - and sales - through
editorials dismissing Queen Victoria as "flabby,
fat and flatulent" or a "senile old woman",
the future Edward VII as "a turf swindling, card
sharping, wife debauching rascal" and other royals
as "podgy faced lecherous bastards, bigamists and
wife beating boozers".
As its circulation climbed Norton launched local editions
of Truth in Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania
and Queensland (1902) and in Western Australia (1903),
becoming the only national newspaper with separate state
editors.
A New Zealand version was launched in 1905, with sales
of 100,000 copies per week by 1928. In the mid-1950s,
at its peak, one in two New Zealand households bought
the Truth - characterised by Redmer Yska as "the
voice of the ordinary New Zealander". In 1965 Truth
(NZ) Ltd acquired the dominant interest in the Auckland
Sunday News.
Norton served on the Sydney Municipal Council in 1898-1901
and 1904-06, holding a seat in the NSW Legislative Assembly
in 1898, 1899-1904-06, 1907-10. He was an unsuccessful
candidate for the Senate in 1901 and 1906. Like Northcliffe,
Norton was obsessed by Napoleon and fancied that he was
destined to be a political leader.
In 1896 Norton began living with Ada McGrath, with Ezra
being born three weeks before their marriage. The marriage
was stormy, with physical assaults by both husband and
wife, recurrent separations and alcoholism. A judicial
separation was granted in 1915. Norton disinherited his
son and estranged wife, leaving his estate (valued at
over £140,331) to his daughter Joan. The will was
successfully and and very publicly challenged by Ada and
Ezra in 1920, with Ezra gaining sole ownership after Joan's
death in 1940. Mrs Norton died in 1960.
Michael Cannon commented that Norton's
attacks
on royalty and British governors emphasized Australian
nationalistic feeling; his exposés of capitalist
abuses hastened social reforms; his xenophobia strengthened
the White Australia policy; his own sincerely held religious
beliefs impelled exposure of spiritualist and other
charlatanry; and his articles on prostitution, slums
and disease alerted people to significant social evils.
At the same time he suffered from the frequent sin of
muckraking journalists: of alleging evils where none
existed and sometimes printing unfair attacks on innocent
people. His frequent alcoholic excesses crippled a mind
of undoubted brilliance, prevented him from attaining
any substantial political achievement, caused great
suffering to his family, and finally killed him at the
peak of fame and fortune.
Ezra
Norton and the Mirror
John Norton's son Ezra (1897-1967) was legitimized in
1907. His schooling at Scots College Bellevue Hill and
Christian Brothers' College Waverley was stormy but presumably
more pleasant than life at home.
At the time of his father's death in 1916 Ezra was working
in the family business - Truth & Sportsman Ltd - and
in 1920 became managing director. The imprints were the
weekly Truth, published on Sunday in State editions,
and the weekly Sydney Sportsman.
Norton married Lillian Willoughby in 1922, adopting her
son. For much of the following two decades his attention
centred on racing (Norton's Straight Draw won
the 1957 Melbourne Cup) and entertainment, reflected in
his establishment of the Trocadero nightclub in 1936.
In 1941 he established the Sydney Daily Mirror
in opposition to Packer's Sunday
Telegraph (established in 1939) and Associated
Newspapers' Sun. By 1947 the Mirror
had a higher circulation than the Sun.
Ciculation of Truth and the Mirror declined
in the mid-1950s, with Norton launching the Sunday
Mirror in October 1958 as a replacement for the Sydney
Truth. (The Melbourne edition of Truth
survived until 1995.) Norton discussed selling his newspaper
interests to the UK Daily Mirror
group (subsequently acquired by Robert Maxwell) and to
the Herald & Weekly Times group.
In 1958, however, he sold to Fairfax
subsidiary O'Connell Pty Ltd. Fairfax later sold a controlling
interest to Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd, with the Mirror
providing the cash flow that fuelled Murdoch's international
expansion. A revival of Truth under Murdoch saw
its circulation exceed 400,000. News sold the title to
Mark Day and Owen Thomson in 1980, with the paper expiring
in 1995. Fairfax retained the New Zealand Truth,
which it unloaded in 2007.
Norton retained substantial property and printing interests
but was increasingly the victim of anxieties, self-pity
and paranoia. His estate was valued at $3.84 million,
left to his second wife, adopted son and daughter.
studies
For Exra Norton see Sandra Hall's Tabloid Man: The
Life and Times of Ezra Norton (Sydney: 4th Estate
2008).
His father appears in Cyril Pearl's Wild Men of Sydney
(London: WH Allen 1959), Bede Nairn's Civilising Capitalism
(Canberra: ANU Press 1973), Mark McKenna's The Captive
Republic: A History of Republicanism in Australia
(Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1996), Michael Cannon's
That Damned Democrat: John Norton, an Australian Populist,
1856–1916 (Carlton: Melbourne Uni Press 1981)
and R. B. Walker's The Newspaper Press in New South
Wales, 1803-1920 (Sydney: Sydney Uni Press 1976).
Cannon contributed an astute biography to volume 11 of
the Australian Dictionary of Biography (1988),
41-42.
For the New Zealand Truth see in particular Richard
Joblin's 1990 MA dissertation The Breath of Scandal:
New Zealand Truth and Inter-War Society 1918-39 (Uni
of Canterbury) (PDF),
Rebecca Lancashire's 1986 BA Hons dissertation Prudery
& Prurience: Images of Women In The New Zealand Truth
1935 (Massey Uni) and 'Popular culture and modernity:
dancing in New Zealand society 1920-1945' by John Griffiths
in 41 Journal of Social History (2008).
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