Anthony Joseph Francis ‘Tony’ O’ Reilly (owner of The Independent) is an Irish magnate born in Dublin, Ireland. He is the former chief executive of HJ Heinz, which is a prosperous European food establishment. Nevertheless, he was affectionate of Britain and his interests grew when he brought The Independent in the late 90’s. O’Reilly altered the paper and the people of Britain were delighted about it (e.g. changing the way information is written into sophisticated language for the upper class group).
I am going to explain the conventions and the things that are unique to a newspaper.
Firstly, The Sun has a masthead which makes it easier to pick out inside a shop. A masthead is the name or title of the newspaper. This is eye-catching to the reader because it is an attractive colour to look at; whereas mastheads in The Independent are plain and tedious. Instead they picture of an eagle which represents and symbolizes Independence. This relates to the masthead.
Secondly, the headlines are different within The Sun and The Independent. A headline is the title of an article or story that usually written as a phrase. The Sun doesn’t realise the seriousness of a headline so they intend to make it occasionally comical by using jokes, which is known as a Pun. The Sun are often in large capitals and take up most of the space so there isn’t that much information needed to fill up the page. For example, ‘‘Roo been framed’’ which sounds like ‘You been framed,’ (You is a British show in which viewers send in humorous videos often with someone suffering pain like running into a tree). Furthermore, the article ‘‘Roo been framed’’ suggests that Manchester United and England star striker Wayne Rooney has been caught on CCTV with a 20 year old brunette in a nightclub kitchen for a mystery rendezvous.
The Independent has headlines written approximately and gets to the point of the situation for the reader to understand because they want them to know about the facts and not gossip or opinions, e.g. ‘A deadly legacy.’ In detail, the article suggests that bombs lie unexploded in Iraq and are capable of killing innocent civilians which this time after two years, Britain is finally being held in account.
Thirdly, the pug (price) of The Sun is placed on the exact location of the masthead. This shows that the reader is aware of the pug whereas in The Independent is situated at the top right of the paper which causes difficulties for the reader to identify it. Moreover, the difference in price suggests the quality and size of the paper. The working class can’t just buy a newspaper at high price so The Sun makes it cheaper and the size of the paper is small which will draw more people’s attention whilst The Independent increases the price because they know that the business class are wealthy and don’t mind if they buy the newspapers for a high price and the size of the newspapers are immense which the readers think that its worth buying.
The uses of language in the two papers are exceptionally different. For the working class, The Sun has to use text that straightforward to read and understand. Tabloids use bold text like Arial and keep the whole front page short and proceed to the point. They normally have a large picture on them with one or two small stories on them. This shows that the working class are not capable of reading for quite a long time and usually understand the event by looking at the pictures, so they will be pleased to buy a newspaper that is suitable for their low type of proficiency.
For the people with a high level of expertise (business class), The Independent has to put in lots of facts and statistics that are complicated and formal. Broadsheets use small texts like times new roman and keep their pages long and detailed. They normally have more than one picture and three of four detailed stories on the front. Both companies do this because they want to be successful to receive profit from that individual group they are aiming at and want to make sure that their market target, otherwise they will never reach their goal. (They also may be bankrupt because of the loss of customers so they have to include the exact generic codes and conventions).
Did you know that Men are mostly the ones that buy and read newspapers?
That is why both The Sun and The Independent include variety of sports to keep the men in touch with the latest events and news. The Sun contains Britain’s most favourite sport, football. For example, in The Sun there is an article saying that Chelsea has again had an easy and victorious win after beating Newcastle United 3-0 at Stamford Bridge. It all started when Joe Cole (right midfielder) scored a goal in the 47th minute. Just after 4 minutes, Hernan Crespo (striker) curled his shot and ended up inside Shay Given’s left hand post. Then Damien Duff (left midfielder) had a shot which ended up as a goal by deflection at the last minute of the match. The Sun uses Football as their chosen sport inside the games section because the working class admires this sport the most. Furthermore this is a type of stereotyping (e.g. working class men usually drink alcohol during a match)
The Independent includes a sport which is not popular, such as cricket. For example, in The Independent there is an article suggesting that the England cricket team has lost by the unbeatable Pakistan team and this was a depressing and heart-breaking for England. One of these moments is when Geraint Jones, the England wicketkeeper, watched Pakistan’s Shahid Afridi dispatch another boundary during his unbeaten 67 off 62 balls half way the match. The Independent chose Cricket as their chosen sport inside the games section because it’s an upper class sport and the majority of the readers are
Furthermore, the sport pages in The Sun and The Independent are different because The Sun uses many large coloured pictures few details about the sport whereas The Independent uses a medium sized black and white picture and huge quantities of information which sometimes end at the following page.
Therefore, tabloids and broadsheets have different targets audiences and are different because of the way they written and the techniques they use; including the language used and issues written and how they are how they are presented.
In conclusion, I have suggested what features a newspaper has to have to be recognised as either a tabloid or broadsheet. For that reason, I have analysed the generic codes and conventions of the two papers.
