What unexpected topics ALWAYS repeat in the newspaper headlines?
A look at the newspaper front pages over the decades and which topics seems to repeat, and repeat, and repeat
As regular FET readers would know, my Dad, Keith Murray, died in May this year. I wrote about him here.
Cleaning out his house I found a compilation of newspaper front pages from 1933 to 1988 for The Courier Mail in Queensland. There were some fascinating repeating themes and thought you might enjoy a glimpse into the topics that seem to repeat on the newspaper front pages.
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1933 - Classified ads
The first edition of Queensland Courier Mail newspaper was merely a classified ad pamphlet. No news at all. This reminds me of the economic tensions in today’s media landscape — revenue from advertisers usually funds the news business. History suggests that news (gossip?) has always worked well with advertising—find out the gossip and the products you can buy.
1938 - Potholes and property rates
Big issues that made it to the front pages that year were potholes and property rates. I think of these as mundane, not newsworthy. There is nothing new about them! But it seems that potholes have been front-page news for nearly a century and continue to attract our eyeballs.1
It makes a lot of sense that property rates (taxes on property ownership) always attract attention as the choice of these rates directly affects the economic outcomes of the elites. At this time, property ownership was low—only about 45% of households in Australian cities were owner-occupiers. Most rented.
1939 - Hot, cold, windy? Weather matters
Our obsession with hot, cold and windy weather extremes is also on display in this historical front pages. Here’s a 1939 headline, for example, of a record Melbourne heatwave.
Another interesting point is how the Golden Casket lottery result is reported. Gambling seems to be a repeating theme too (and I will be writing more about gambling policy in Australia in an upcoming FET article).
1945 - Moderate claims prior to evidence
I found this headline about the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima quite amusing as a person from the future looking back. It was nice to see some reserved headlines when the details were unknown. Does this still happen? It doesn’t feel like it in our internet-based world where click-bait titles seem to be a necessity.
1951 - Migrant diets
This front page has a few recurring themes—rainy weather extremes, royal family activities, property rates and transport fares. But one that stands out is the 1951 equivalent of Haitians eating pets, which was “Migrants probably eating horsemeat”!
1961 - Fighting over resources and economic rents
Despite the first human returning from space, this 1961 front page still found space to report that “Miners ‘really bitter’” covering various protests about mining and the state’s closure of a mine and likely privatisation of it.
Mr. Miller said Collinsville miners now interpreted the Government’s action as an “excuse to give Mt. Isa Mines a chance to buy the State mine.”
In a resource-rich place like Queensland, the constant political and economic fights over resource rents are a recurring theme up until this day.
1963 - Real estate and voting criteria
President Kennedy was shot that day but there was space on the front page to talk about voting ages. It seems that the minimum age for owning real estate was being considered to be lowered to 18, where it remains.
In recognising that an 18-year-old is a sufficiently responsible person to enjoy this privilege, there is also a recognition that the 18-year-old can “enjoy” the privilege of becoming a taxpayer and ratepayer in his own right as a citizen. The 18-year-old can be called up for military training.
All this may well lead to demands that 18-year-olds should be given the right to vote, and other privileges of citizenship at present held over for young people until they reach 21.
1970 - Amazing feats
Amazing human feats are another theme that makes the front pages. I like this one, as you might expect when you read the story about my Dad above.
This time, a group sailed a handmade raft from Ecuador to Australia to prove that the ancients could sail the oceans.
1972 - Queensland’s niche: Beach conditions
Beach conditions are a special Queensland variation of extreme weather reporting. Here’s a front page showing Gold Coast beaches losing their sand. Something that routinely happens still.
An interesting tidbit here is the land sales advertised on the front page. $1,890 for 64 perches (1600sqm) in Sunnybank. What a bargain!
1979 - How much is my mortgage?
The last repeating theme is speculation about the interest rate. These days it is a huge repeating story of whether interest rates (the price of money) will rise or fall. Back in the 1970s it made front-page news too, which makes sense given the inflation challenges of that decade.
I love taking a zoomed-out longer-term perspective on economic and social phenomena. Reading a decade’s worth of newspaper front pages in one go definitely provides that perspective!
Did you notice anything interesting on those front pages? Or if you have other topics you think would have been historically popular, I will take a look for you.
According to Google Ngram, it looks like we forgot about potholes during the war, but then they attracted our attention again afterwards to become about 10x more popular to write about then they were in the 1930s.
