Compare the online versions of The Sun and The Times. How effective are they in fulfilling their purposes and addressing their target audiences?

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Dehenna Davison – 11Y

Compare the online versions of The Sun and The Times. How effective are they in fulfilling their purposes and addressing their target audiences?

   Traditionally, if you wished to find out the latest news, you would have to pay a visit to your local shop to buy a newspaper, or in some cases wait for delivery during the morning or evening paper round. When newspapers were first in production, electricity was a marvel yet to be discovered, but by the 1990’s technology had advanced so much that the internet was becoming increasingly accessible for families and businesses alike. Many newspaper companies quickly became aware of the internet’s increasing popularity, and so numerous websites were launched, dedicated to providing the news for the general public in a free and readily available way. The two websites I will be analysing are “The Sun” and “The Times”.

   “The Sun” is a tabloid newspaper. It is known to sell an average of 3,121,000 copies per day, with 7,900,000 daily readers, of which 56 percent are male and the other 44 percent are female. The target audience of this newspaper is mainly the lower- and middle-class members of society. It contains many stories related to celebrities, scandals, gossip and local news from within the UK. Although it does cover the more important global news stories, it tends to concentrate more on the UK itself.  

   “The Times” was a broadsheet newspaper, yet switched to “compact size” in 2004 in an attempt to appeal to a wider audience. It is known to sell an average of 692,580 copies per day, yet has a much larger number of daily readers. The target audience of The Times is mainly the middle- and upper-class members of society. Though it also contains many stories related to the UK, it also contains a large quantity of global news.

   I feel that it is important to make some reference to the differences between the physical newspapers and the online versions. Firstly, the actual newspapers do not tend to be as colourful as the web pages, mainly in the case of “The Times”. This may be due to the fact that printing in colour can be rather expensive, so keeping this to a minimum will help to cut costs for the newspaper companies, and to keep the prices as low as possible for the general public. Also, it is traditional for newspapers to be in mainly black and white, with just a small number of pictures.

   Also, using the internet means that user interaction is much easier. Leaving feedback for stories is a very simple task, as generally you can leave comments instantly. If you only read the physical newspaper, it makes this a much more time consuming task, as you would have to write a letter, then post it to the newspaper, and wait for several days, or even weeks, before a decision was made on whether or not it should be published. This means that the internet is much more useful for audiences with less free time, as it only requires a short amount of time to log on to your computer and post a comment. Interaction between newspapers and readers is more tedious and much more time consuming.

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   With the websites, if there is a particular story you are interested in, you can click on a link to read the whole story, which is very quick and simple, whereas with a newspaper you may have to leaf through many pages of stories which do not interest you to find the one you were looking for. This makes it a far less tedious task using the websites rather than the newspapers, however this does depend on factors such as age, as the younger generation tend to be much more web savvy so can navigate around internet sites much ...

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