Every morning in Britain, more than50% of the adults buy a national newspaper which has been printed in London. Over 15 million copies of these national newspapers are sold every day, with a large number of local newspapers from outside London as well.
The morning newspaper is a part of the British way of life. For many people, it is brought to their house every morning by a young boy or girl, who works for the local newsagent before going to school. A lot of people travel to work on public buses, trains and the underground, so they have time to read it before they start work in the morning.
There are nine of these national news- papers, which each sells between 200 000 and4 200 000 copies every day. Even on Sundays there are a lot of newspapers--eight national Sunday newspapers sell about 17 million copies. Most of these are delivered to people's houses, so they can be read over a late Sun- day breakfast.
As well .as the national newspapers, there are over 110 local morning and evening papers. There are weekly newspapers.
All these newspapers have a common history, which goes back to the 1600s. At that time groups of writers collected news and stories about famous people from the coffee houses in the city of London, and sent the news to towns and villages in the form of letters.
The first real newspaper was started in1702, seven years after the Parliament had decided to allow newspapers. But the modern newspaper, and the idea of the press, started in 1785 when the world’s most famous newspaper.the Time, appeared for the first time.
The Times was joined by the Daily Telegraph in 1855.which became the second national newspaper."It was written，"said the editor at that time，"not for the highest classes，but for the million." But both these newspapers were serious，and only wrote about serious subjects. The idea of a newspaper changed in 1896，when the first popular newspaper was produced.The Daily Mail was written for a different group of people.It described news in a less serious way.It gave its readers not only news and information，but also entertainment and gossip.It was soon very successful，and sold many more copies than the Times and the Daiyl Telegraph seemed that many people wanted this sort of newspaper.and soon there were more-the Daily Express started in 1900， and the Daily Mirror started in 1903.There was now a clear difference between the quality newspapers which were serious，and the popular newspapers，which were written for simple people，and offered entertainment with the news.
