The tabloid and broadsheet I am comparing are The Daily Mirror and The Times.
Analysing the broadsheet article:
Layout-
The piece is about the British athlete, Kelly Holmes bringing the gold medal back home.
In the picture accompanying this article it shows Kelly Holmes and the three runners by her side reading the finish line. The photographer catches the moment of when Kelly Holmes looks relieved whereas the other three runners beside her looked tense and desperate, this shows she looked more dominant over the three runners. Kelly Homes was running along side great athletes such as the defending champion, Maria Mutola from Mozambique.
In the headline of this broadsheet article it says ‘Holmes joins golden elite’ this shows that this has been a great achievement for her, it makes it seem like she has joined an exclusive club.
The word ‘elite’ is an unusual word; it means the best of the best. So by using this headline it must mean Holmes has achieved such greatness and worked for it by stating that she joins the ‘golden elite’.
Content-
The race itself is described as a tough and close race by stating that ‘Holmes won the women’s 800 metres gold medal by just five hundredths of a second’.
It is shown that Holmes did not only use speed and pace but also used tactics because is states that she won it in a marked contrast to the ‘front-running tactics adopted by Paula Radcliffe’, who is a great long distance runner for Great Britain.
The article in the broadsheet is not only about the race Kelly Holmes ran but about facts relating to athletics, facts like ‘Regina Jacobs, who later tested positive for THG, a designer steroid and was banned,’ It also lest you know that one of the competitors in the race, Maria Mutola was the defending champion.
They include theses information to let you know about the athletics sport’s background.
In the first paragraph it lets you know how difficult the race in Athens would be, it quotes ‘Athens was a city she one preferred not to think about’ this is referring to Kelly Homes, it lets us realise that only the fittest and best athletes get chosen to compete in Athens.
Language-
The languages used in this article are metaphors; it uses such words as ‘midriff’ instead of waist or ‘Authencity’ instead of real.
The language I this broadsheet article seem to be more for the educated readers who understand certain vocabularies and have a higher vocabulary than others.
Analysing the tabloid article.
Layout-
The tabloid headline is dramatic and bold, with white lettering the black back ground, this makes the headline stand out and appeals more to people.
The difference in the picture of the tabloid from the picture of the broadsheet is that the competitors in the tabloid are out of focus and only Kelly Holmes can be seen properly but in the broadsheet they were all in focus. This shows that the broadsheet is interested in the whole race and the athletes that competed in it whereas the tabloid is mostly interested in Kelly Holmes and her gold medal.
The picture in the tabloid emphasises the glory and achievement of Kelly Holmes whereas the picture in the broadsheet emphasises how good the race was.
Content-
This article mostly reflects on how Kelly Holmes felt after the race. It also has comments on how she ran, Brendan Foster commented on this, he is described as a British athletics legend.
He said ‘Kelly ran the perfect race’. This shows that the tabloid really mostly talks about Kelly Holmes and not the other athletes at all.
The article really describes Kelly Holmes as running a perfect race because it used such words as ‘spot on’ and ‘perfect’.
The whole article only talks about Holmes, it then only talks about the race in the last column of the article, but in the broadsheet it talks about the race the whole way through the article after the introduction.
In the bottom part of the article it also has a box that shows the history of the medals won by British athletes from the year 1970 to 2004.
This provides a little bit more information for the reader.
Language-
In the tabloid article it does not use complicated words as that of the broadsheet. The tabloid article uses some casual language, such as ‘in striking gold, Holmes deposed friend and training partner Maria Mutola, who finished out of the medals and stormed away with out a word, a smile or a wave’.
The language of the tabloid is more welcoming rather than serious, it uses an easier vocabulary than the broadsheet.
Conclusion.
The tabloid readers would be expected to have an easier vocabulary than the broadsheet readers.
The tabloid would be a more effective newspaper than the broadsheet because it could be read and understood by most newspaper readers whereas the broadsheet would only be aimed at some readers because of the language and layout.
The tabloid would also attract more readers because it has a lot of colour in all its pages where as broadsheets have no colour at all, they are black and white.
So In conclusion I would have expected most readers to have brought the tabloid rather than the broadsheet to read the Kelly Holmes article.