The presidents social media meddling remind us of how a righteous furore can turn an insignificant political party into a global concern overnightIn the 1930s,a maverick (an independent, nonconformist person) young journalist named Claud Cockburn resigned from the Times and, with £40 borrowed from an Oxford friend, or bought a mimeograph machine (a low-cost duplicating machine that worked by forcing ink though a stencil on to paper). With it he set up the Week,a weekly newsletter available by subscription in which Cockburn printed news and gossip that came to him from his diverse group of contacts in both the British and German establishments.
From the beginning the Week printed stuff that the mainstream newspapers wouldn’t touch because of fears of running foul of the Official Secrets Act, the libel laws or the political establishment. Cockburn, and having few assets and a rackety lifestyle,proceeded as if none of this applied to him. But people in the know – the third secretaries of foreign embassies, for example, and City bankers – quickly recognised the value of the Week (for the same reasons as they now read Private Eye). Nevertheless the circulation of Cockburn’s scandal sheet remained confined to this small elite circle – and its finances were correspondingly dodgy.
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Source: guardian.co.uk