There are two main selections of newspaper, tabloids, like ‘The News Of The World’, and broadsheets, like ‘The Guardian’. Tabloids are the most popular type of newspapers and seem to outsell broadsheets. They are smaller in size, use lots of pictures, are more colourful, and they often rely on “page three girls”, and other such shock tactics, to attract readers. Broadsheets are twice the size of tabloids, more serious, less colourful, and are more detailed and descriptive. I have chosen to compare ‘The News Of The World’ and ‘The Guardian’ simply because one is a tabloid and the other a broadsheet. I shall use these newspapers to represent their respective categories, tabloid and broadsheet.
The reason for these newspapers being so large is that they have such a large content. They cover just about every issue someone may want to read about. This is very cleaver because by doing this it’s giving itself a larger audience potential and it gives the paper something that can attract everyone to buy it and read the section(s) of their preference. However, this is also where tabloids capitalise, one particular tabloid newspaper may specialise in sport, so a sports fan may choose this over a broadsheet to save themselves wasting time and money over something they aren’t going or don’t want to read.
The first thing a reader sees when going to buy a newspaper is its front page. This means that the front page is in many ways the most important part of the newspaper. All of the day’s biggest headlines and pictures fill the front page of every newspaper. There is an obvious reason for this; if the customer likes what they see they are more likely to buy it, the front page is a huge influence on a customer. The front pages of tabloid newspapers nearly always consist of: one very large headline, a large photograph and the beginning of the article, which is continued inside. The headline is often short and snappy and tries to allure the customer into reading the whole article. The tabloids frequently use puns and quotes in their headlines. In comparison broadsheets tend to print four or five headlines on their front page also with a photograph, but not taking up nearly as much room.
The headlines of broadsheets are always printed in proper English unlike tabloids who sometimes use capitol letters for full headlines. Broadsheet headlines and writing are much more sensible and use a lot less emotive writing. Here is an example:
- A headline from ‘The News Of The World’ reads: - “NAOMI: I’M A COCAINE SMUGGLER”.
- A headline from ‘The Guardian’ reads: - “Mirror lawyer brands Campbell a liar”.
‘The News Of The World’ headline was splashed across the front page in huge letters. Obviously considered a very important story to the editor. On the other hand it didn’t even make the front page of ‘The Guardian’. It is news, a famous celebrity figure who may be a role model to some people and should be setting an example, but I see it as gossip. Not really important news, certainly not important enough to reach the front page. These are tactics that are employed by all tabloids, they pry into celebrities private lives hoping to embarrass, or get a juicy story, on them. Some people hate the tabloid papers because they think that these papers encourage our lowest instincts: greed, hate, spite and so on. Every so often the tabloids are accused of having no morals at all, and being too willing to destroy celebrities’ lives by publishing scandalous things about them. Certainly the tabloids seem to be obsessed with sex. People who hate the tabloids often refer to them as the “gutter press”. You don’t get this with broadsheets. They don’t try to humiliate people, they are more morally and politically correct, they use facts and figures and they tell it like it is.
The tabloid press frequently use emotive language to stir up our emotions. For example if you call something a ‘riot’ rather than a ‘disturbance’ you are more likely to excite the reader, but this is also over exaggerating. Tabloids do this a lot, they twist the facts and bend the truth to make a quite minor situation seem like it’s an extreme one. This may well draw the reader into the story more but it is also goes against the point of newspapers, which is to report news. This is what broadsheets do very well, they deliver the events of the day, weigh up both sides of an argument, use facts and figures and seem to want to bring you the news instead of make a tidy profit.
Broadsheets will appeal to a restricted audience, simply because of their much more complex vocabulary and sentence structure. By performing a simple experiment using the ‘Fry Readability Graph’ I discovered that the approximate reading grade for ‘The News Of The World’ is level 6. I then discovered the grade for ‘The Guardian’ is level 12, twice that of the tabloid. This is what all newspapers should be like to improve the standard of English of the public and lead also to a more intelligent nation. This is also the reason I believe that tabloids are more popular than broadsheets; people find tabloids to be an “easy” read. They can just scan through easily and quickly catch an outline of world events. Whereas broadsheets go into much more detail and discussions about each topic. You have to have good vocabulary and understanding of English to read broadsheets, and they are big and bulky and take a long time to read; this is what puts most people off.
All in all, I believe broadsheets are a more complete newspaper. They talk about issues that affect you and your welfare instead of trying to lure you to spend your money on a horde of unimportant tales and gossip. Obviously broadsheets like anything else are not perfect: they may put their views across in a way that is biased to them but at least they consider points from more than one angle instead of forcing their opinions and beliefs onto you.