Newspaper companies often run the beginning of the story on the front page and continue it on a later page. The importance of the story is usually included in the information given on the front page.
The story about the human time bomb hit the front pages of the Sun and The Times. The two companies displayed the story in extremely different ways.
The Sun used most of the space on the front page for this article. The size of a tabloid newspaper is suitable to fit into small places, and it does not create the problem of folding over when being read, like a broadsheet does.
The only other information featured on the page was an advertisement for the Sam Frocks Collection and another for the £50,000 Bingo prize for that day’s winner. The journalists managed to fill it with a big, bold ‘WANTED’ sign stretching from one side of the page to the other as well as a quarter page black and white picture of the Arab, and a twenty-one worded headline placed just above the tiny amount of text that was squashed into the bottom corner. To make the headline eyecatching the W.O.B technique was used. W.O.B is an abbreviation for White On Black. This is effective because it darkens the space around the writing enabling the words to make a dramatic appearance. This technique was used in three different places throughout the front page. It is used in the paper’s name appearance, the advert featured and the headline of the Arab story. In comparison, The Times displayed many of their articles on the front page. The Times is able to provide more detailed stories, as it is longer and wider than The Sun. Broadsheets are often carried under the arm, as they are too big to store in a handbag or suitcase. The Arab rat article was placed at the top of the page in a tiny space. The other information included on the page is an advertisement for Swindon Enterprise, a cartoon caption and articles such as ‘England Down And Out, Pledge On Terror Even At Cost Of Life, Thousands Seek To Flee Tripoli’.
Within the space provided for this story the editor inserted a small picture of the Arab, with a caption just beneath it, a headline, a sub headline, and the text. The picture in The Times used for the article was the same picture as the editor of the Sun had used. The only difference between the two photographs is the size.
There are obvious similarities on the front page of the Sun and The Times as there is vital information that has to be included not only for the benefit of the readers, but also for the benefit of the companies.
Both types of newspapers used black and white ink only, they both noted the date and price and most importantly they both displayed the name in which they are referred to as a company.
Journalists have to provide a good comprehensible language for the articles they write, as this is the part of the paper holding the information in which the readers are interested. Tabloid journalists like to play around with their use of language because it puts power and sensationalism into their articles. In contrast, the broadsheet newspapers deliver detailed informative news and cover a wide variety of interests including the arts, theatre and global economics.
By looking at the journalist’s vocabulary in the Sun, I have noticed that the writer has emphasised parts of the event to make the article sound more exciting. An example of this that sensationalised the article was ‘to blast his pregnant girlfriend and four hundred passengers out of the sky’. I had this horrifying picture in my head of what the incident must have been like. When I read this, I had imagined a huge outburst of colours in the sky, being watched by crowds of distraught people below and hundreds of bodies falling in bits and pieces from the plane that was plummeting to the ground. Another example extract from the Sun is, ‘a massive international hunt was launched’. I liked this sentence as it is effective on getting the readers to realise how serious a situation is, and it also helps to draw them into the story. If a story sounds serious, people are going to read it because it will be “talk” and that’s why I think that this sentence is important for many stories.
This newspaper article in The Times left no area for me to use my imagination. The article was factual and direct.
Throughout the text the writer has described the people involved in the incident in a sly way that captures the minds of the viewers to create a picture of what the person was like.
They made the innocent sound great and made you feel for them and the writer made the guilty sound evil and made you feel hatred towards them. The innocent being was the pregnant girlfriend, and how the writer makes you feel for her was by placing sentences of innocence and inserting little words throughout the article about her. I like the way he put ‘The girl- unaware of the danger’ as it shows innoscence. I also like how ‘her lover kissed her goodbye - then fled’ because again this shows that the girl was innocent and unaware. I think that line was very powerful as it describes the rat he was in their relationship too. according to the text ‘the man had been prepared to send her and their baby to certain death’. The girl must have felt betrayed,unlovedand scaredafter the trauma she had to tackle.
The guilty being was the terrorist, which was the 35-year Nezar Hindawi. The writer made him sound evil, by including phrases and describing words like ‘WANTED’ (the headline), which gives the impression of a master criminal. ‘ Arab rat aimed to send his pregnant girlfriend and 400 passengers to their deaths’ explains within itself that he was selfish and evil minded. Throughout the text he is described as an ‘Arab terrorist’ and ‘Arab Rat’ as they are words of filth that describe him perfectly.
Through producing this essay I have noticed that tabloid newspapers and broadsheet newspapers may display the same stories but the construction of them are quite different. I have discovered that the Sun is more of a quick read newspaper, which uses easy vocabulary and appears to use the space liberally, while The Times happens to be a very detailed, factual newspaper.
The paper I prefer to read is the type of paper that comes in a tabloid form. The reason why I prefer the Tabloid rather than the Broadsheet is because of the simple grammar they use.
