Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe (15 July 1865 – 14 August 1922), was a British newspaper and publishing magnate.

"[2] About the beginning of the 20th century there were increasing attempts to develop popular journalism intended for the working class and tending to emphasize sensational topics.

[1] Harmsworth had an intuitive sense for what the reading public wanted to buy, and began a series of cheap but successful periodicals, such as Comic Cuts (tagline: "Amusing without being Vulgar") and the journal Forget-Me-Not for women.

He bought several failing newspapers and made them into an enormously profitable news group, primarily by appealing to the general public.

That same year he funded an expedition to Franz Joseph Land in the Arctic with the intention of making attempts to travel to the North Pole.

[10] During 1899 Harmsworth was responsible for the unprecedented success of a charitable appeal for the dependents of soldiers fighting in the South African War by inviting Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Sullivan to write the song "The Absent-Minded Beggar".

"[1] In 1918, Harmsworth was created Viscount Northcliffe, of St Peter's in the County of Kent, for his service as the director of the British war mission in the United States.

The first, Alfred Benjamin Smith, was born when Harmsworth was seventeen years old; the mother was a sixteen-year-old maidservant in his parents' home.

[22] Northcliffe's ownership of The Times, the Daily Mail and other newspapers meant that his editorials influenced both "the classes and the masses".

[23] That meant that in an era before radio, television or internet, Northcliffe dominated the British press "as it never has been before or since by one man".

[25] His newspapers, especially The Times, reported the Shell Crisis of 1915 with such zeal that it helped to end the Liberal government of Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, which forced Asquith to form a coalition government (the other causal event was the resignation of Admiral Fisher as First Sea Lord).

[26] Such was Northcliffe's influence on anti-German propaganda during the World War I that a German warship was sent to shell his house, Elmwood, in Broadstairs,[27] in an attempt to assassinate him.

On 6 April 1919, Lloyd George made an excoriating attack on Harmsworth, terming his arrogance "diseased vanity".

Northcliffe's enemies accused him of power without responsibility, but his papers were a factor in settling the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, and his mission to the United States, from June through to October 1917, has been judged successful by historians.

Perhaps his greatest accomplishment, underlying the relentless acquisition of newspapers and perfection of their "copy," was the simple incorporation of millions of readers into his press empire.[35]A.

Northcliffe lived for a time at 31 Pandora Road, West Hampstead; this site is now marked with an English Heritage blue plaque.

Whelpdale publishes a magazine called Chit-Chat (similar to Northcliffe's Answers), which is aimed at "the quarter-educated; that is to say the great new generation that is being turned out by the Board Schools, the young men and women who can just read, but are incapable of sustained attention".

[39] Arnold Bennett's 1909 West End play What the Public Wants centers on Sir Charles Worgan, a profit-hungry media baron based on Northcliffe.

B. Fagan's 1910 play The Earth features a satirical version of Northcliffe, Sir Felix Janion, who uses sexual blackmail to prevent the passing of a bill which would provide a minimum wage for his employees.