The whole font page of The Sun is about the PM and his wife, with no other story. The headline takes up nearly half the front page, with a photo that takes up a quarter of the space, showing the proud new parents. The Daily Mail has also nearly filled the front page with the Blair story, but has an extra story on the right to do with cancer, which could also be intended to interlink with the Cherie Blair story, because of her age. This also has quite a big photo of Tony and Cherie Blair, which shows them with a worried smile. The Guardian has three stories on it’s front page, but gives most priority to the Hamilton story as it takes up half the page and has a huge photo of Hamilton and his wife, which is intended to shame them. The Blair story is below in one of the two columns, with a small picture of Cherie Blair. In The Times, there is no picture to do with Tony Blair and his wife. The story is also one of two columns on the bottom of the page.
Both The Times and The Guardian are highly regarded newspapers and are highly informative. They are aimed at people who are interested in all the details about current affairs. That’s why they focus more on the quality and detail of the text and use smaller text, rather than wasting space with big headlines. Broadsheets use a lot of fact-based information, such as dates and numbers and also information backed up by quotes. But the tabloids are a lot more opinion based. The tabloid newspapers appeal to people who may just want to scan the news quickly, without giving up much time to read long articles. This is why the tabloids use a bigger font to make it look like a short story, which the reader will want to read. A large amount of small print can put readers off, so details may be saved for later pages. Once they have got the readers attention and he/she is reading it, at the bottom of the page in small font it will say, ‘continued on page 3’
The layout of the tabloids is much more effective than broadsheets at attracting the readers attention on a specific story, which in this case is about the PM and his wife. The Sun and Daily have big bold headlines in capital letters, especially The Sun with it’s punchy and straight to the point headline ‘CHERIE IS PREGNANT.’ In The Times and The Guardian, the letters are much smaller and not in capitals. The headlines also tend to be longer, therefore the message is not instant, ‘Neil Hamilton and the ‘£10,000 demand that shocked an oil firm.’ Yet this headline is straight to the point and gets readers interested, because it states ‘£10,000.’
The Sun and the Daily Express both use sub-headings, which they include the vital information about Cherie Blair’s age. The Guardian and The Times don’t have sub-headings, but The Guardian still uses Cherie Blair’s age in the title.
The language used in the tabloids and broadsheets is very different. The Guardian and The Times use a very high standard of English throughout. The language used by the Guardian, especially, is sometimes difficult to understand and may not be user-friendly to some people. The language used by the Daily Mail is formal and is easy to understand by anybody. The Sun uses a lot of slang such as the word, ‘pal.’ This difference of language used is because each newspaper wants to make their language more accessible to their readers depending on their social status. The Sun treats Cherie Blair as a friend, by informally calling her ‘Cherie,’ instead of Mrs Blair or the PM’s wife.
If a reader wants the full story that contains facts and which is not biased, than they would want to choose a broadsheet. But if a reader would like to read a shorter story that is easier to understand and like a bit of amusement than they will go for a tabloid
