‘All sorts and conditions of men’: Beckett’s Budget, masculinity and sensational working-class journalism in inter-war Australia

Abstract

This thesis closely analyses John Sleeman’s sensational newspaper Beckett’s Budget, a notorious commercial and political publication in Sydney’s inter-war press market. It considers the paper’s role in working-class, pro-Labor, political discourse, particularly its strategy of combining hard-line class debates with highly salacious reports of domestic crime and divorce. It argues that gender and class, particularly anxieties about masculinity, were central to Sleeman’s commercial and political strategies. Drawing on media theory debates about sensationalism, the thesis explores the nature and function of this form of commercial, campaigning journalism and the impact it had on political communication.