House Journals (1960)

From the July 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Newspapers and magazines, like every other commodity under capitalism, are produced primarily for profit. But there is one type of publication which capitalists are quite content to run at a loss. That is the house journal—a company’s own organ, specially designed for its workers and sometimes also for its trade customers. According to the current issue of the Newspaper Press Directory, there are today in Britain no fewer than 642, of which more than 250 were launched last year. And by the end of 1960, despite mounting production costs, the number is expected to top 800.

House journals demand heavy, continuous subsidies. That is why only the bigger capitalist organisations are prepared to publish them. For unlike the national and provincial press, they reap no large advertising revenues. Even those which. carry advertisements, at purely nominal rates, far from cover themselves. Unlike their big brothers in Fleet Street, their circulations can be counted in thousands. A few publish weekly, but the vast majority appear monthly or quarterly. Given away or sold for a penny or two, they are either distributed in the factory or mailed direct to the worker’s home so that Mum and the kids can read them as well.

Until recent years, most house journals were the work of enthusiastic amateurs—personnel officers, social and sports club secretaries, or sales promotion managers with a bent for journalism. Their pages were packed with a stream of sentimental slush about the boss and “puffs” about his products. Issue after issue, with nauseating regularity, carried pictures of a beaming chairman addressing the annual staff dinner (“We must all pull together, chaps”), or of a director’s wife, distributing Sports Day trophies to the “lower orders” or of Bill Bloggs receiving his reward for half a century of “loyal and faithful” service to capitalism—an oak-cased clock.

Now many firms have begun to realise that the house journal can be forged into a more effective propaganda weapon. To a nation fed on the slick, streamlined mass-circulation daily newspapers and television, the old, sycophantic “God Bless the Boss” approach is as out-dated as a belief in the divine right of kings. So the professional publicist, the Public Relations officer, with an “understanding” of the masses, is being brought in to give the house journal a new, dynamic personality. Imitating the giant national daily newspapers, he dispenses the propaganda in potent, but subtle, doses—through brightly-written news stories, eye-catching pictures, arresting headlines and attractive make-up.

Why does Big Business, notorious for its opposition to wage increases, lavish so much money on its own publications, sometimes to the tune of £20,000 a year or more? Socialists know full well that capitalists do not play Santa Claus; that there is a sound commercial reason for any philanthropic front. House journals are no exception.

Their rapid rise is due to two major factors:

First, a growing acceptance by business chiefs of the theory that a happy worker makes a more productive worker.

Second, a growing interest by workers in the activities of the organisation which employs them.

For years, industrial psychologists have, in the name of greater efficiency, called for better staff relations. “Give the workers a sense of belonging,” “Make the men feel the boss really cares” and other similar pleas have been dinned into the ears of top management. The house journal can help to create “a happy family atmosphere” in the factory, with its prospects of greater surplus value. This is particularly important where frequent labour disputes cause havoc with production, and where employers find it difficult to attract or retain workers.

Similarly, more and more firms are concerned to “sell” themselves to their workers and customers. Company affairs are coming under a stronger spotlight from the mass-communication media. The beam rarely reveals the nature of 'capitalist exploitation, but it is bright enough to illuminate many interesting aspects of management. As a result of this development, capitalists are being forced to pay increasing attention to public criticism. The house journal makes a useful platform for justifying attitudes and actions. For example, many of these journals carry from time to time charts and diagrams, seeking to prove that the shareholders, not the workers who produce all wealth, are the poor relations of industry. To study some of them, one would think that if dividends dropped any lower, the capitalists would be signing on at the Labour Exchanges.

But large or small, well or badly produced, free or sold cheaply, all house journals are alike in one essential respect—they are the voice of the boss. As one of Britain’s leading P.R.O.’s reminded the 1958 Conference of House Journal Editors: “Few house journals are ‘steeped in liberty.’ Yours, let us face it, is not a free press, but a controlled one, subject to the dictates of top management.” Workers should never forget that the basic purpose of the house journal is to strengthen support for an individual capitalist concern. And as such, it helps to project the capitalist rat-race as the best possible, indeed the only workable, social system.

P. R. O.