Broadsheet or Tabloid - How Can You Tell?

Broadsheet or Tabloid – How Can You Tell?

There are two types of newspaper printed – broadsheets and tabloids. Broadsheets are, as the name suggests, the larger paper, and offer a sophisticated and detailed account of the news. The tabloids are the smaller of the two, and although they often report on the same stories as the broadsheets, require a much lower reading age of about eight or nine, and consist of more pictures than actual stories. Broadsheets are considered to be the quality paper, and focus on the facts of the stories they are reporting on in a more unbiased way, although it is still possible to detect bias, whereas tabloids mainly consist of more opinion than fact and its stories are mainly gossip about celebrities rather than information about politics or worldwide issues.

Broadsheets, despite being the larger newspaper, have much smaller headlines and pictures on their pages. The front page usually has about three stories; one main story which the picture usually relates to, and two smaller stories, all of which continue further into the newspaper for people wishing to read more. Tabloids have a much larger headline, usually taking up more than half a page, and usually have a large colour picture filling in most of the remaining space. They usually then have a paragraph on the story, which, if you normally continues inside the paper but most of the time that paragraph is the story.

Broadsheets often use a drop cap at the beginning of their stories to draw the eye to the start of the intro. They then have the first few paragraphs going across the top of the columns to draw the reader’s eye into the story. Once the reader has read the drop cap and the first few paragraphs, the story will then be set out into columns across the page, and if they are interested, the reader can continue. Tabloids, on the other hand, have the large headline set out across almost the entire page, complete with oversized picture, then a sub heading above the actual story. This is in a large, bold font to attract the reader’s attention, but is rather irrelevant as it is usually the only story on the page, and the large heading anyway will undoubtedly catch the reader’s attention. Tabloids do have columns, but tend to be a lot wider and there are usually less of them than in the broadsheets.

Both types of newspaper have adverts, but in the broadsheets they are normally a lot smaller and out of the way at the bottom of the page. They are usually clearly separated from the story by being ruled off by fine lines and usually advertise things such as mortgages or holiday deals. Tabloids have much bigger adverts, which are usually at the top of the page to catch your attention and they are bigger and brighter than broadsheet adverts. They often advertise a way that you could win thousands of pounds or a new car and require you to buy ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

Tabloids have a much more informal style, and their headlines are short and catchy, or something that will grab you attention and make you wonder about it to make you read on. Broadsheets have a more sophisticated approach to the news and a more intellectual style. When the ‘Guardian’ and ‘The Daily Mirror’ reported on the sales of the book revealing Princess Diana’s ‘love affair’, they both had completely different approaches to it. The headline on the front of ‘The Daily Mirror’ was ‘I want to marry you and have your baby’, a supposed quote from Princess Diana. Instead of focusing on the actual seriousness of the fact that the royal family were being disgraced, it issues a story on the alleged love affairs of Diana. The headline on the front of ‘The Guardian’, reporting on the same story, is ‘Royals ‘made laughing stock’’. It doesn’t agree or disagree with what is being said in the story; it just makes a brief statement using an opinion from a privy councillor, encouraging the reader to continue on to the story to find out more details if the headline appeals to them.

Broadsheets have a much more formal approach to the news than tabloids do. ‘The Guardian’ refers to Princess Diana as the Princess of Wales, whereas ‘The Daily Mirror’ is less formal and calls her such names as ‘Di’ or Diana, suggesting that they are on first name or nickname terms, when they clearly aren’t. Broadsheets use a much wider range of vocabulary than tabloids, and are usually require a reading age of twelve or above. Tabloids, due to their informal style, require a lower reading age of about eight years old. They also use noun phrases a lot in articles, such as ‘kiss-and-tell cavalryman’ in ‘The Daily Mail’, or ‘disgraced ex-cavalry officer’ in ‘The Sun’. Tabloids tend to use metaphors a lot as well, for example ‘Hewitt’s claims about Princess Diana are about as credible as a schoolboy’s boasts behind the bike shed’ in ‘The Daily Star’. These have a much more informal manner then broadsheets and are more chatty. The length of sentences in broadsheets is far longer then the length of sentences in tabloids. In a broadsheet there are approximately twenty-five words in a normal sentence, whereas in tabloids there are, on average, ten words per sentence. This is due to the broadsheets wide range of vocabulary and punctuation, enabling them to fit much more into a sentence than a tabloid would in a paragraph.

Tabloids tend to make up their own terms for things to get their message across quickly in a way that people will remember, like the title of ‘The Sun’, ‘Love rat will not crush me’. Love rat is not a phrase used normally, but people have adopted it after reading it in tabloids.

Articles in broadsheets are more fact based than tabloids. In the first paragraph they contain the five necessary ‘w’s: who, what, when, where and why. The story then reports on the five ‘w’s in detail, with a ‘how’ added as well. Reporters are told to ‘keep it short and simple’ (KISS) in their articles, but to still include all the necessary facts. Tabloids cover a few of the ‘w’s, but not all five like most broadsheets manage to do. Tabloids are also more opinionated than broadsheet. They do include facts, but tend to only give one side of the story and are biased. In one paragraph, ‘The Guardian’ contains 5 facts, whereas ‘The Daily Mirror’ contains none, and probably contains five in the whole article.

Broadsheets contain both sides of the story and have very few, if not any opinions in the articles. Tabloids only give one side of the story and have lots of opinions to try and influence the reader into agreeing with them. They have fewer facts, but try and make their opinions seem like facts, as in ‘The Star’: ‘The Star says don’t buy the book’. Broadsheets allow the reader to decide for themselves what they think of the article, and if necessary to agree or disagree with the story.

The newspapers that I have studied are all reporting on the same story at the same time, when a book was published claiming that princess Diana had had an affair with Major James Hewitt. The headline on the front of ‘The Daily Mirror’ reads ‘I want to marry you and have your baby’, a supposed quote from Diana, although there is no evidence that she said it. The article focuses on the details of the book, and has little opinion from the writer, but that is because the article is basically a summary of the story in the book being published on Diana's so called affair. The first paragraph says ‘according to the book, Princess in Love, James Hewitt met Princess Diana at a Mayfair party in 1986. The story goes:’ After this first paragraph, the entire article is just an account of what is in the book, so is more like it is telling a story than reviewing the book and the situation for Princess Diana.

The ‘Daily Star’ has no facts in it at all, and proves this by separating it’s article into sections, each of them titled ‘they say’, ‘you say’ and ‘Daily Star says’. The ‘Daily Star’ doesn’t give any details about the content of the book, and focuses on getting the opinions of respectable people like ‘Tory MP Michael Fabricant’, ‘Di’s lawyer, Lord Mishcon’ and ‘Buckingham Palace’ to put down the book and make the reader agree that it should not be allowed. The picture on the front of ‘Daily Star’ is meant to look like a book, and it has a picture of Major James Hewitt and is titled ‘A load of old b*!!*<#s’ ‘By Major James Spewitt’. Despite the ‘censoring’ on the title of the book, it is plain to see what it says, and is typical of a tabloid.

Emma Chrystal