Account For The Similarities And Differences Between Two Newspapers

The first thing that strikes me is the layout of both articles. They are presented very differently. The layout of the Guardian is easy to read, unlike The Telegraph, which has smaller print. It contains a large map showing the area in which the crime was committed, so the audience can relate to the area. There is also a large heading at the top of the page – “Shooting of schoolboy paralyses suburbs with fear as sniper strikes for ninth time”

The Guardian has a rather formal style, which is signified by the use of language. It uses longer sentences than we would expect today and often uses people’s initials when stating names. For example:”A.J.Balcombe, radio set manufacturers, of Tabernacle-street, Shoreditch, sought to recover 4pounds 5s from George James Hunter, of lymington-avenue, Leigh-on-sea, under a hire-purchase agreement.”

The information in The Guardian is set out in a much easier format. It contains a large map of the crime scene with pictures and annotations of what happened at specific times. It also has a large headline “Shooting of schoolboy paralyses suburbs with fear as sniper strikes for ninth time” which summarises the whole article for the audience. This much more manageable “at a glance” layout makes it much easier to digest the story, and is indicative that society generally lives life at a faster pace than in 1936 as it is assumed that people have less time ...

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The adverts in each paper can give us a suggestion of what society was like at the time. In the modern newspaper there is a credit card advert. This is significant because at the moment Britain has the highest credit card debt in Europe. In The Telegraph the adverts are all trying to sell luxury items such as Moussec wine, a car, a fire place and a “Pathescope Ace projector”. This indicates that the paper is aimed towards the upper and middle classes as lower class people wouldn’t be able to afford such luxuries.

Ethnic minorities are represented in The Guardian through the pictures next to the map. Black people such as Virginia Lovett and her mother are pictured as well as the police chief Charles Moose – a black man in power. It would have been more unlikely to see a black man in such a powerful position in the 1930s because society has changed since then. It has become more ethnically diverse and multicultural. A representation of a woman is present in The Telegraph in the fire place advert. It is a stereotype of a woman sitting by the fire place knitting which reinforces the dominant ideology of the time – which was that a woman would stay at home cooking and doing other domestic chores while the man would be busy at work providing for his family.

The two newspapers I am analysing are The Guardian from 2002 and The Daily Telegraph from 1936.

The first thing that is apparent are the stories covered in the papers. The Guardian’s main story on page three is about the recent sniper shootings in America while on page three of The Telegraph there are smaller stories on divorce and an X-ray tube. This suggests that today more importance is placed on overseas news than in 1936. This change in news coverage could be because of a variety of reasons. Perhaps the newspaper readers of today demand overseas news and have become more interested in it, another reason for the change are the advances in technology that have been made since 1936. It is now possible to gain information from somewhere in the world and then send it thousands of miles away within a matter of minutes, thanks to technology like the internet, fax machines and mobile phones. In 1936 it would have taken days to get information from far away counties. Further advances in technology can be seen by comparing the pictures of modern cars in The Guardian to the advert for the “Adelphi” car. The article on divorce in The Telegraph highlights the change in society that has occurred. The article talks about the possibility of changing the marriage bill. It would seem unusual to have an article about divorce in today’s society as it has become a very common and widespread thing in modern society compared to in 1936.