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For the 30 years between 1837 and 1867, the Gateshead Observer provided coverage of local and national business, financial and political news that rivalled and frequently surpassed that of the various Newcastle papers and was vastly superior to that of other north-eastern publications. This article examines how this came about. It also considers how a newspaper avowedly political in its foundation emerged, as a result of the particular circumstances of Gateshead's enfranchisement and industrial development and the individuals involved, essentially as a paper for the business community. This case study also reveals how the provincial press can shed light on an otherwise very much under-documented period of local business history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Edwardian era saw the final flowering of the partisan provincial press. In the decade before 1914, most of the major newspapers published outside London still displayed a clear party allegiance and collectively they outsold their London rivals. Some of the most important figures in the provincial press on the Liberal side were the cocoa manufacturer and philanthropist, Joseph Rowntree, and the associated trio, often known as the “Starmer group”, of Arnold Rowntree (Joseph's nephew), John Bowes Morrell (his business partner) and the newspaperman, Charles Starmer. Between them they rescued several important Liberal newspapers like the Northern Echo and Sheffield Independent for the party cause. But one of the group's lesser-known acquisitions, and its last before the First World War, was the Lincolnshire Chronicle in June 1914. This article argues that the Lincolnshire Chronicle 's purchase can best be seen as a purely commercial investment by the “Starmer group” and that this may indicate that the group was starting to become more interested in the press as a business, rather than as a political project. The article also examines how the layout and content of the Lincolnshire Chronicle were changed under its new owners in order to increase its profitability, often using methods pioneered elsewhere in the “Starmer group”, and resulting in a more standardised, “modern” format. In doing so, the article draws attention to the complexities of the interaction between power and profit in the Edwardian press and suggests the Lincolnshire Chronicle can be seen as a harbinger of the commercial, rather than political, future that lay before provincial newspaper groups in the post-First World War era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]