page_title: Daily Mail
section_title: Post-war history
hierarchical_section_title: Daily Mail / History / Post-war history
caption_attribution_description: English: The Makings of a Modern Newspaper- the Production of 'the Daily Mail' in Wartime, London, UK, 1944 A busy scene in the sub-editor's room at the offices of the Daily Mail newspaper. In the centre background can be seen Mr Taylor, the Copytaster, who reads through stories (or copy) given to him and decides on whether they are suitable stories, and hands them on to the chief sub-editor, suggesting a particular treatment of the topic. The time is twenty to eight in the evening, as indicated by the clock on the wall in the background.
context_page_description: The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market newspaper published in London in a tabloid format. Founded in 1896, in 2020 it overtook The Sun to become the United Kingdom's highest-circulation daily newspaper. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982, while Scottish and Irish editions of the daily paper were launched in 1947 and 2006 respectively. Content from the paper appears on the MailOnline website, although the website is managed separately and has its own editor.
  The paper is owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. Jonathan Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere, a great-grandson of one of the original co-founders, is the current chairman and controlling shareholder of the Daily Mail and General Trust, while day-to-day editorial decisions for the newspaper are usually made by a team led by the editor, Geordie Greig, who succeeded Paul Dacre in September 2018.
  A survey in 2014 found the average age of its readers was 58, and it had the lowest demographic for 15- to 44-year-olds among the major British dailies. Uniquely for a British daily newspaper, it has a majority female readership, with women making up 52–55% of its readers.
context_section_description: On 5 May 1946, the Daily Mail celebrated its Golden Jubilee. Winston Churchill was the chief guest at the banquet and toasted it with a speech. Newsprint rationing in the Second World War had forced the Daily Mail to cut its size to four pages, but the size gradually increased through the 1950s.
  The Daily Mail was transformed by its editor during the 1970s and 1980s, David English. He had been editor of the Daily Sketch from 1969 to 1971, when it closed. Part of the same group from 1953, the Sketch was absorbed by its sister title, and English became editor of the Mail, a post in which he remained for more than 20 years. English transformed it from a struggling newspaper selling half as many copies as its mid-market rival, the Daily Express, to a formidable publication, whose circulation rose to surpass that of the Express by the mid-1980s. English was knighted in 1982.
  The paper enjoyed a period of journalistic success in the 1980s, employing Fleet Street writers such as gossip columnist Nigel Dempster, Lynda Lee-Potter and sportswriter Ian Wooldridge (who unlike some of his colleagues—the paper generally did not support sporting boycotts of white-minority-ruled South Africa—strongly opposed apartheid). In 1982 a Sunday title, the Mail on Sunday, was launched (the Scottish Sunday Mail, now owned by the Mirror Group, was founded in 1919 by the first Lord Rothermere, but later sold.)
  Knighted in 1982, Sir David English became editor-in-chief and chairman of Associated Newspapers in 1992 after Rupert Murdoch had attempted to hire Evening Standard editor Paul Dacre as editor of The Times. The Evening Standard was then part of the Associated Newspapers group, and Dacre was appointed to succeed English at the Daily Mail as a means of dealing with Murdoch's offer. Dacre retired as editor of the Daily Mail but remains editor-in-chief of the group.
  In late 2013, the paper moved its London printing operation from the city's Docklands area to a new £50 million plant in Thurrock, Essex. There are Scottish editions of both the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, with different articles and columnists.
  In August 2016, the Daily Mail began a partnership with The People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party. This partnership included publishing articles in the MailOnline produced by The People's Daily. The agreement appeared to observers to give the paper an edge in publishing news stories sourced out of China, but it also led to questions of censorship regarding politically sensitive topics. In November 2016, Lego ended a series of promotions in the paper which had run for years, following a campaign from the group 'Stop Funding Hate', who were unhappy with the Mail's coverage of migrant issues and the EU referendum.
  In September 2017, the Daily Mail partnered with Stage 29 Productions to launch DailyMailTV, an international news program produced by Stage 29 Productions in its studios based in New York City with satellite studios in London, Sydney, DC and Los Angeles. Dr. Phil McGraw (Stage 29 Productions) was named as executive producer. The program was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Entertainment News Program in 2018.
  In May 2020 the Daily Mail ended The Sun's 42-year reign as the United Kingdom's highest-circulation newspaper. The Daily Mail recorded average daily sales of 980,000 copies, with the Mail on Sunday recording weekly sales of 878,000.
caption: Sub-editor's room at the offices of the Daily Mail newspaper in 1944
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