The first newspaper in British North America, Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick (1690), was immediately suppressed by the governor of Massachusetts. Official news was spread by means of proclamations and pamphlets or by newsletters and newspapers from London. The first regular newspaper in the colonies did not appear until 1704, and it was published by authority of the government. It was the weekly Boston News-Letter, published by John Campbell, the postmaster. Another paper replaced it in 1719: the Boston Gazette, published by postmaster James Franklin, an older brother of Benjamin Franklin. Two years later James Franklin started his own New-England Courant. This was the beginning of independent journalism in the United States.
The right to criticize government was established by the Zenger trial in 1735, and by the time of the American Revolution there were daily newspapers in most cities and weeklies in smaller towns. Each of them was unafraid to engage in intelligent and often vehement debate on public issues.
After the Constitution of 1787 was in place and political parties were in the process of formation, American newspapers became highly partisan. They adopted the positions of either John Adams's Federalists or the Jeffersonian Republicans. Because the press espoused government policies, the government was very willing to use the press as a propaganda tool. At one time President Andrew Jackson had 60 full-time journalists on the White House payroll.
Today each government center is headquarters to a large pool of journalists. The White House press corps with its daily briefings is well known. Similar gatherings take place in other world capitals. In China and other Communist countries, where the press is owned and operated by the government, all news is managed except for what foreign reporters are able to learn and relay to their home offices.
The move toward a press free of partisan sentiment started in France with the founding of La Presse in 1836 by Emile de Girardin. He introduced new features, such as serial stories, to raise circulation and bring down the purchasing price of the paper. In the United States James Gordon Bennett, disgusted with newspaper partisanship, founded the New York Herald in 1835. With this newspaper modern American journalism began. Bennett led the way in rapid news gathering and efficient production methods. Horace Greeley founded the New York Tribune in 1841, and several other great American newspapers were founded in the decades before and after the Civil War. By 1850 there were about 400 dailies and far more weeklies. In 1880 there were about 850 dailies and in 1900, more than 1,950. Because of mergers and failures there are now fewer dailies--about 1,780. Throughout the world there are about 9,180 daily newspapers.
In the United States newspapers were the means by which millions of immigrants learned about the American way of life. Aware of this huge mass audience, newspapers added new features and used sensationalism to attract readers. Joseph Pulitzer turned the St. Louis Post-Dispatch into a crusading journal. William Randolph Hearst, owner of the San Francisco Chronicle, bought the Morning Journal in New York City. Pulitzer had bought the New York World, and soon the two competed in a furious rivalry. They used scare headlines, many illustrations, Sunday supplements, and comic strips to attract readers. Their tactics gained the name yellow journalism, from a comic strip named "The Yellow Kid," which played a part in the rivalry.
The techniques of yellow journalism spread throughout the newspaper industry. To combat it, Adolph S. Ochs took over the New York Times in 1896 and reestablished it as a serious newspaper with its well-known slogan: "All the news that's fit to print." This marked the comeback of the type of journalism inaugurated by William Gordon Bennett 60 years earlier.
And this is how and why newspapers were first invented. Nowadays in Britain, newspapers are divided into two sections- tabloid and broadsheet. Tabloid newspapers can be described as ‘yellow journalism’ as they use gossip to attract readers. Broadsheet newspapers however, are there to inform readers on current affairs.
Aim
The aim of this investigation is to compare different types of newspapers, using analytical methods. I will be comparing a broadsheet newspaper with a tabloid newspaper, evaluating the usage of text layouts and pictorial designs against each other. I will approach this investigation in an analytical manner in order to make a full comparison between the two types of newspapers.
One of my first aims will be to find out which newspapers I should use to base my investigation on. Once finding which newspapers I will use, I will compare them against each other in a variety of fields. Here is a list of all the fields that I will be analysing.
- Number of headings in each article
- Number of words in each article
- Number of characters in every word from an article in each newspaper
- Surface area of the newspaper
- Percentage of area taken up by pictures and adverts
- Spread of words used in each newspaper
I will obtain results from all these fields in many ways. Here are some of the ways I will present my data that I have collected:
- Mathematical Calculations
These methods of presentation are essential in data handling and explanations on how I will be using some of these methods are explained on the next few pages.
From collecting and presenting my data in this way I hope to establish which type of newspapers have more detailed articles, the largest pictures and adverts, the most costly newspaper and which newspaper is the most value for money.
I have decided to analyse only segments of the newspaper, as it would be far too tedious to carry out an analysis on the entire newspaper. With all the variables that I will be analysing, it would be unreasonable and time consuming to investigate every page of the newspaper. Therefore a section of the newspaper will provide a very good reflection on all the areas I will be investigating.
By the conclusion of this investigation, I will have discovered both the similarities and differences between a tabloid newspaper and a broadsheet newspaper.
Cumulative frequency
In data handling the frequency tells you how often a particular result was obtained. Cumulative frequency indicates how often a result was obtained which was less than (<) or less than or equal to (<) a stated value in the collection of data. The cumulative frequency is found by adding together the frequencies to give a running total.
In order to draw a cumulative frequency diagram for a set of grouped data you must plot the upper boundary against the cumulative frequency. The cumulative frequency always goes on the vertical axis. A cumulative frequency curve gives continuous line so you can use it to estimate the number of results above or below any given value:
We can graph this information, using the amount row as the x-axis and the cumulative frequency row as the y-axis. From the graph we are able to read off the median value as it is halfway up the y-axis. We can also find the quartiles and percentiles from the graph. As its name suggests, the quartiles are the quarter and three-quarter values along the y-axis.
Apart from the extra axis, the graph will be exactly the same as that drawn in the previous example:
Variance
The variance is a measure of how spread out a distribution is. It is computed as the average squared deviation of each number from its mean. For example, for the numbers 1,2 and 3, the mean is 2 and the variance is:
(1-2) + (2-2) + (3-2) = 0.667
3
The formula (in summation notation) for the variance in a population is:
Where m is the mean and N is the number of scores.
When the variance is computed in a sample, the statistic:
(where M is the mean of the sample) can be used. S2 is a biased estimate of s2, however. By far most common formula for computing variance in a sample is
Standard Deviation
The standard deviation is the square root of the variance. It is most commonly used measure of spread. An important attribute of the standard deviation as a measure of spread is that if the mean and standard deviation of a normal distribution are known, it is possible to compute the percentile rank associated with any given score.
Research on Opinions
The first part of my investigation was to find out which newspapers I should base my whole investigation on. I decided to use the most popular in each field and so I will conduct a small survey to see which tabloid newspaper and which broadsheet newspaper is the most popular. I managed to ask 40 people about what they thought, all from a variety of backgrounds and age groups, so I could see which is, generally, the most favourable newspaper, across a wide range of different people.
From my results, I established that a majority of 66% found that the best tabloid newspaper was ‘The Sun’. I have also established that the majority of 37% found that the best broadsheet was ‘The Evening Standard’. Therefore I will be using these two newspapers for my coursework.
Using the two most popular newspapers, in their particular fields, to base my investigation on was essential. It was an essential part of my investigation as it is important to analyse the most profited newspapers in order to understand why customers choose to buy them.
Standard Deviation
Here is the formula for standard deviation:
E x
n x