- Entertainment
- Features
- Sport
In the United Kingdom, I have found out that there are 14 national daily newspapers, which are selling 13+ million copies a day. Fifty five percent of the English population read at least 1 national paper every day. Each Sunday, there are 11 national papers selling over 15 million copies a week. Sixty percent of the adult population read one of these a day.
There are also 18 regional morning newspapers, 72 regional evening papers, 7 regional Sunday papers and 477 local weekly papers.
These papers each supply readers with different views on the everyday news items which they contain. This makes them more readable to different people, and in turn attracts a larger audience.
The sources of news which papers rely on to get stories to publish are places such as:
- Reporters
- Emergency Services
- General Public
These sources are needed by newspapers in order to fill the newspapers with interesting, and not-so-interesting news articles. Sometimes newspapers buy “ready-made” news articles from newsgroups that have teams based around the world in every major country \ city. These can be used by newspapers easily and quickly which can be very useful.
In the particular paper I studied, there was only 10% total news inside the paper, and over 20% advertising. The large amount of advertising used is because ( I have learned ) that this pays for the newspaper. The profits from just selling the paper aren’t enough for the companies to pay what they need to pay, so advertisements are a very effective way of gaining profit.
Another part of English newspapers which take up quite a lot of space is Headlines. They are used very effectively here in England and always seemed to get my attention. The phrases used must be well thought-out, as they are simple, yet grab the reader’s attention ( hence making them a potential customer ). The headlines are brief overviews of the stories they tower over and give the reader a first-impression on the paper.
Pictures are also used effectively in English newspapers, always with captions directly beneath the image. This gives the reader an image of what, who or where they are reading about. Pictures in these newspapers come in various shapes and sizes.
The names of parts given to a newspaper vary a lot. For example;
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Headline: a large caption above a story
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Image: a picture of something to do with the story ( usually a person or place )
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Copy: the actual text of a story
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Advert: advertisements from companies or people
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Strapline: a phrase or text which runs across the whole of a page
These are in every single newspaper published and are all very important to newspapers. They all help the process of getting papers sold for the company and therefore, are very important in making profit.
In conclusion to my report, I suggest that you take the following course of action;
- Increase the amount of features for younger readers e.g. add more cartoons and games etc…
- Add some features which more males would be interested in than females e.g. cars, computer games etc...
- Add some features which more of the female audience would enjoy reading e.g. health, cooking, fitness etc…
- Add some features which elderly readers would like to read e.g. gardening, knitting etc…
- Add some games for people, like crosswords. This would make the paper more interesting and interactive.
