Newspaper Comparisons - Space Devoted to Items, Size and Number of Pages, and Readability (Word Count)
Newspaper Comparisons.
Aim- To compare three different newspapers by looking at:
* The amounts of space devoted to different items
* The sizes, number of pages and cost of the different newspapers
* The readability in terms of language levels evidenced in different newspapers.
I will also find the Average newspaper, in terms of cost, size and content.
I have chosen three very different newspapers to compare:
* The Herts and Essex Observer, which is a Local newspaper containing news from around Hertfordshire and Essex. It is mostly read by local residents who as well as wishing to read about local happenings also may wish to read the advertisements for housing, recruitment and classified advertisements. There are 120 pages in this newspaper.
* The Daily Mail, which is a Tabloid newspaper, containing national news, but mostly from the south east of England. This is the most popular tabloid newspaper on the market and contains news and comment on a variety of current events with a focus on features and leisure. It is considered a popular paper for a thinking person. There are 96 pages in this newspaper.
* The Times, which is a Broad sheet newspaper with news from all over the world. It is renowned for its well-written articles and opinions and its readership tends to be members of the professional and business classes. There are 100 pages in this newspaper.
Hypotheses:
For the first part of my investigation, I predict that:
. The Observer will have a higher percentage of Advertisements and Property information than the other newspapers, as it is a local newspaper and there is less news to comment on in the local areas
2. The Daily Mail will be the newspaper that has percentages closest to the average, in terms of space devoted to different items, as it is a middle classed newspaper.
3. The Times will have a higher percentage of News and Business, as it is readership is mostly the professional and business classes.
4. I predict that when I analyse the readability of the newspapers that:
5. The observer will have the lowest language level evidenced in the newspaper, and will have the smallest measure of spread in word length.
6. The Daily Mail will have a language level set between the Observer and the Times.
7. The Times will have the highest language level in terms of word length.
8. I predict that The Times will have the best value in terms of size, cost and number of pages.
First I shall investigate the amounts of space devoted to the different items, the sizes, number of pages and cost of the different newspapers, so that I can see what type of news/information is each newspapers priority.
So that I can compare the amount of space devoted to the different items I have split up the newspapers into eight sections:
* News
* Reviews
* Entertainment
* Advertisements
* Sport
* Business
* Weather
* And Property
I will start by counting the pages in the different sections of the newspapers, and then work out what percentage of the newspaper they take up. I have noticed that most of the pages have more than one type of news, for example, half news and half advertisements, so I have decided to split the pages into halves, for accuracy. I will then divide the number of half pages by two, to work out the total number of pages dedicated to each section.
The Herts and Essex Observer.
Section
Frequency
Total (pgs)
News
24
24?????
Reviews
1
1??????
Entertainment
21
21???????
Advertisements
98
98?????
Sport
1
1??????
Business
5
5??????
Weather
??????
Property
70
70?????
Totals
240
20 pages
Daily Mail.
Section
Frequency
Total(pgs)
News
56
56?????
Reviews
0
0
Entertainment
4
4????
Advertisements
95
95???????
Sport
27
27???????
Business
9
9??????
Weather
??????
Property
0
0
Totals
92
96 pages
The Times.
...
This is a preview of the whole essay
98
98?????
Sport
1
1??????
Business
5
5??????
Weather
??????
Property
70
70?????
Totals
240
20 pages
Daily Mail.
Section
Frequency
Total(pgs)
News
56
56?????
Reviews
0
0
Entertainment
4
4????
Advertisements
95
95???????
Sport
27
27???????
Business
9
9??????
Weather
??????
Property
0
0
Totals
92
96 pages
The Times.
Section
Frequency
Total(pgs)
News
56
56?????
Advertisements
72
72?????
Entertainment
6
6????
Reviews
6
6????
Sport
22
22?????
Business
22
22?????
Weather
2
2????
Property
4
4????
Totals
200
00 pages
The Percentages of the different sections in the News papers, including the mean newspaper:
Section
The Observer
The Daily Mail
The Times
The Mean Newspaper
News
0%
29.2%
28%
22.4%
Reviews
4.6%
0
8%
4.2%
Entertainment
8.8%
2.1%
3%
4.6%
Advertisements
40.8%
49.5%
36%
42.1%
Sport
4.6%
4.1%
1%
9.9%
Business
2.1%
4.7%
1%
5.9%
Weather
0.4%
0.5%
%
0.6%
Property
29.7%
0
2%
0.6%
I have chosen to use a line graph to present this data as it allows me to see clearly the data I have collected, so that I can compare the information in this part of the investigation easily.
A Line Graph displaying the percentages of different sections in the newspapers, including the "Mean newspaper."
Observations:
The Data from each of the newspapers seem to form the same shape on the line graph.
The percentage of Advertisements in each of the newspapers is higher than in any of the other sections, with news following closely behind.
The percentage of Weather information is very low in all of the newspapers, this is probably because there is a not a lot to write about the temperature and climate of England.
The Observer has the highest percentage of Property information and the lowest percentage of news.
The Daily Mail has the highest percentage of Advertisements, news and sport, and the lowest percentage of reviews and property.
The Times has the highest percentage of Reviews and Business information, and the lowest percentage of advertisements.
The Daily Mail appears to be the most valuable newspaper in terms of News content, although the Times comes very shortly after.
Now I shall compare the newspapers, in terms of size, number of pages and cost of the different newspapers. From the data I collect I shall work out the mean newspaper. I have chosen to work out the mean newspaper because the mean uses all of the data and gives a more accurate average with this type of data.
To do this I shall collect the following data from the newspapers:
* the cost
* the sheet size
* the number of pages
* the cost per page
* the cost per cm²
Cost
Sheet size
Number of pages
Cost per page
Cost per cm²
The Observer
45p
380cm²
20
0.4p
0.031p
The Daily Mail
60p
200cm²
96
0.6p
0.05p
The Times
70p
2280cm²
00
0.7p
0.03p
The Mean Newspaper
58p
620cm²
05
58?105= 0.55p
58???????????p
Observations:
The best-valued newspaper in terms of cost per cm² is the Times, the Observer is next in line, and then the Daily Mail, but if you consider the number of pages and cost per page then the Observer is the best-valued newspaper.
The Daily Mail's cost and cost per page is closest to the Mean,
The Observer's size and cost per cm² is closest to the mean,
The Times page number is closest to the mean.
For the last part of my investigation am going to analyse the readability, in terms of language levels, evidenced in the different newspapers.
I shall do this by looking at word length and sentence length in one article from each of the newspapers, which is about the same topic, so I can observe how the different newspapers tackle that topic.
As England is one of the few remaining countries with a monarchy, and as the Queen's Jubilee is approaching, I have decided to analyse articles on that topic.
The first sets of data I shall collect are the length of the words in the articles, I will use all of the words in the articles.
The Observer: Queen's Jubilee article.
Letters per word
Frequency
Cumulative Frequency
4
4
2
57
71
3
85
56
4
57
213
5
40
253
6
27
280
7
23
303
8
22
325
9
3
338
0
4
352
1
2
354
2
355
Total
355 words in the article
The Daily Mail: Queen's Jubilee article.
Letters per word
Frequency
Cumulative Frequency
5
5
2
44
49
3
36
85
4
32
17
5
30
47
6
7
64
7
2
76
8
20
96
9
2
208
0
4
212
1
6
218
2
219
3
2
221
Total
221 words in the article
The Times
Letters per word
Frequency
Cumulative Frequency
5
5
2
19
34
3
44
278
4
97
375
5
98
473
6
60
533
7
50
583
8
38
621
9
25
646
0
31
677
1
7
684
2
3
687
3
3
690
Total
690 words in article
I am going to use Cumulative frequency curves and box plots to display this data, as they show you clearly the median, lower quartile, upper quartile and interquartile range of the data.
See next page for diagrams.
I am also going to work out the standard deviation of the data I have collected, as it is a good way of measuring the spread, as it takes into consideration all of the data.
A large measure of spread will show a higher language level, because every sentence needs small words such as "a", "it", "and", "the" and "I" to make sense, and a large measure of spread would show that there are words with a lot of letters as well. A small measure of spread would show that the word length is not varied that much, but it may mean that either the words were all mostly short, mostly long, or somewhere in-between. So I will have to look at the frequency of word length shown in the tables I did earlier to back up my conclusions.
The formula for working out standard deviation is:
But I am going to use a table to work out my answers, as it will take less time, but it is still has the same principle.
The Observer:
Letters (L)
Frequency (F)
L²
F?L
F?L²
4
4
4
2
57
4
14
228
3
85
9
255
765
4
57
6
228
912
5
40
25
200
000
6
27
36
62
972
7
23
49
61
127
8
22
64
76
408
9
3
81
17
053
0
4
00
40
400
1
2
21
22
242
2
44
2
44
Totals
355
601
9265
The Daily Mail:
L
F
L²
F?L
F?L²
5
5
5
2
44
4
88
76
3
36
9
08
324
4
32
6
28
512
5
30
25
50
750
6
7
36
02
612
7
2
49
84
58
8
20
64
60
280
9
2
81
08
972
0
4
00
40
400
1
6
21
66
726
2
44
2
44
3
2
69
26
338
Totals
221
077
7367
The Times:
L
F
L²
F?L
F?L²
5
5
5
2
19
4
238
476
3
44
9
432
296
4
97
6
388
552
5
98
25
490
2450
6
60
36
360
2160
7
50
49
350
2450
8
38
64
304
2432
9
25
81
225
2025
0
31
00
310
3100
1
7
21
77
847
2
3
44
36
432
3
3
69
39
507
Totals
690
3264
9742
Now I shall look at the words per sentence, this will help me analyse the readability, I am assuming that the longer the sentence, the higher the language level that is required to read it.
The Observer:
Words per Sentence
Frequency
Cumulative Frequency
Total words
9
9
20
2
20
21
2
4
42
23
5
23
24
2
7
48
29
8
29
31
2
0
62
33
1
33
36
2
36
43
3
43
The Daily Mail:
Words per Sentence
Frequency
Cumulative Frequency
Total words
4
4
6
2
3
2
8
4
8
0
5
0
1
6
1
3
2
8
26
6
2
0
32
7
1
7
22
2
3
44
23
4
23
34
5
34
The Times:
Words per Sentence
Frequency
Cumulative Frequency
Total words
7
7
8
2
8
0
2
4
20
1
2
6
22
2
2
8
24
4
9
4
5
0
5
6
1
6
8
2
8
21
3
21
22
4
22
27
5
27
31
6
31
32
7
32
33
2
9
66
38
20
38
41
21
41
42
2
23
84
53
24
53
61
25
61
70
26
70
I have also chosen to use Cumulative frequency curves to show this data as well, as it displays the quartiles clearly.
See next pages for Cumulative frequency curves.
Observations:
All of the Box plot diagrams for each newspaper are positively skewed.
The Observer has the smallest interquartile range for letters per word.
The Daily Mail has the highest interquartile range and upper quartile for letters per word.
The Times has the highest median and lower quartile for letters per word.
The Observer has the smallest measure of spread and the lowest mean for letters per word.
The Daily Mail has the highest mean and the largest measure of spread for letters per word.
The Times has values for letters per word between The Observer and The Daily Mail.
The Observer has the highest median and lower quartile for words per sentence.
The Daily Mail has the lowest median, lower quartile, upper quartile and interquartile range out of all of the newspapers, for words per sentence.
The Times has the highest upper quartile and interquartile range for words per sentence.
The Average Newspaper:
Cost
Sheet size
Number of pages
Cost per page
Cost per cm²
58p
620cm²
05
0.55p
0.036p
Section
Percentage %
News
22.4%
Reviews
4.2%
Entertainment
4.6%
Advertisements
42.1%
Sport
9.9%
Business
5.9%
Weather
0.6%
Property
0.6%
Summary and Final Conclusion:
I think I used the right the strategies to investigate the newspapers.
By working out the percentages of each section in the newspapers it was easy for me to compare which sort of information is priority to the different type of newspaper. By doing this I was able to find out the following information:
* All of the newspapers contained mostly advertisements, and as newspapers can charge quite a lot to publish an advert, they are probably the newspapers main source of income, and this is what keeps their prices low.
Other than advertisements, the newspapers had the following priorities:
* The Observer's main priority would seem to be Property, as there is a higher percentage of pages in that section.
* The Daily Mail's main priority is News and Sport, according to the percentage of pages shown in each of the sections.
* The Times priorities would seem to lie with News, sport and business.
My first hypothesis for this part of the investigation was almost correct; The Observer did have the highest percentage of Property information out of all of the newspapers, but not the highest percentage of advertisements. My second hypothesis was mostly wrong, apart from having weather and business percentages closest to the mean. I have learnt that just because the Daily Mail is in-between the Observer and the Times in terms of Class, it does not necessarily mean that it is closest to being the Average newspaper. This lesson also applies to the next hypothesis I made, which was saying that the Times will have a higher percentage of News because it is aimed at the Business and Professional classes, however it did have the highest percentage of Business news, which is as I predicted.
For the Second part of my investigation, I used the only method I could think of to compare the newspapers in terms of size, number of pages and cost of the newspapers. By simply drawing a table containing this information, i was able to compare them easily and work out what properties the Mean newspaper would have. I also managed to work out the best-valued newspaper out of all three, which was The Times, this matches the hypothesis i made, however it is not entirely accurate as the newspapers have different types of information on each page, so it does not tell me which is the best valued newspaper in terms of the actual News/Information.
For the Last part of the investigation, I think I chose the best way of analysing the data that I could. To analyse the readability and language levels in the articles I chose, I looked at word length and sentence length. The only problem with doing this is that the difficulty of understanding a word can not be judged by the length of word, as there are plenty of long words which are easy to understand, for example "because, television, newspapers, information, arrangements", but of course there are many long words which are harder to understand. So the method I chose was not entirely accurate. The only way I think I could have analysed the articles more accurately is if I had taken a sample of words form the articles, and conducted a survey to see whether people found the words easy or difficult to understand. There is the same problem with analysing words per sentence, but I don't know of any other way I could have tackled this part of the investigation.
Using standard deviation to measure the spread of the word length, I think was the best way of tackling that part of the investigation, as it took into consideration all of the data I had collected, and it made it easier for me to analyse the language levels. I had worked out that a large measure of spread would show a higher language level, and that a small measure of spread would show that the word length is not varied that much, but it may mean that either the words were all mostly short, mostly long, or somewhere in-between. By working out the standard deviation I was able to work out the following information:
* The Observer had the smallest measure of spread and the lowest mean for letters per word, which shows us that it has the lowest language level out of all of the newspapers, this corresponds with the hypothesis I made about measure of spread for the Observer.
* The Daily Mail has the highest mean and the largest measure of spread for letters per word, showing that it has the highest language level out of all the newspapers which proves the hypothesis I made, about the Times having the highest language level in terms of word length, wrong.
* The Times' standard deviation values are in-between those of the Observer and The Daily Mail. which proves the hypothesis i made wrong.
The hypotheses i made for this part of the investigation were on the right track, only my hypotheses for the Daily Mail and The Times turned out to be the opposite way round to how i had expected.
