Industrial Revolution
Soon, it was adapted to print on both sides of a page at once. This innovation made newspapers cheaper and thus available to a larger part of the population. In 1830, the first penny press newspaper came to the market: Lynde M. Walter's Boston Transcript. Penny press papers cost about one sixth the price of other newspapers and appealed to a wider audience. In France, Émile de Girardin started "La Presse" in 1836, introducing cheap, advertising-supported dailies to France. In 1848, August Zang, an Austrian who knew Girardin in Paris, returned to Vienna to introduce the same methods with "Die Presse" (which was named for and frankly copied Girardin's publication).
Impact of television and Internet
By the late 1990s the availability of news via 24-hour television channels and then the Internet posed an ongoing challenge to the business model of most newspapers in developed countries. Paid circulation has declined, while advertising revenue — which makes up the bulk of most newspapers’ income — has been shifting from print to the new media, resulting in a general decline in profits. Many newspapers around the world launched online editions in an attempt to follow or stay ahead of their audience.
However, in the rest of the world, cheaper printing and distribution, increased literacy, the growing middle class and other factors have more than compensated for the emergence of electronic media and newspapers continue to grow.
On April 10, 1995, The American Reporter became the first daily newspaper, with its own paid reporters around the world and all-original content, to start on the Internet. The Editor-in-Chief and founder is Joe Shea. The site is owned by 400 journalists.
Newspaper typically generates 70–80% of its revenue from advertising, and the remainder from sales and subscriptions. The portion of the newspaper that is not advertising is called editorial content, editorial matter, or simply editorial, although the last term is also used to refer specifically to those articles in which the newspaper and its guest writers express their opinions. (This distinction, however, developed over time – early publishers like Girardin (France) and Zang (Austria) did not always distinguish paid items from editorial content.)
Newspapers have been hurt by the decline of many traditional advertisers. Department stores and supermarkets could be relied upon in the past to buy pages of newspaper advertisements, but due to industry consolidation are much less likely to do so now. Additionally, newspapers are seeing traditional advertisers shift to new media platforms. The classified category is shifting to sites including craigslist, employment websites, and auto sites. National advertisers are shifting to many types of digital content including websites, rich media platforms, and mobile.
In recent years, the advertorial emerged. Advertorials are most commonly recognized as an opposite-editorial which third-parties pay a fee to have included in the paper. Advertorials commonly advertise new products or techniques, such as a new design for golf equipment, a new form of laser surgery, or weight-loss drugs, the tone are usually closer to that of a press release than of an objective news story.
In all, only 39 percent of the stories were related to dangerousness, smaller than the 50 to 75 percent of stories reported in earlier research but consistent with the approximately 30 percent of stories found by Wahl and colleagues. However, more stories fell into the dangerousness category than any other category. Hence, the public is still being influenced with messages about mental illness and dangerousness. Findings suggest the complexity of these results. A majority of stories are about violent crime against others or legal defences related to mental illness. However, stories in this group also included themes of suicidal or self-injurious behaviours and non-violent crimes. Stories related to dangerousness often ended up in the front sections of newspaper, making them more visible to readers.
The target audience depends on the section of the paper. The funnies would be children. The sports would (most likely) be men. The economical section would be adults in general; usually newspapers and magazines targeted audience is the General Public. In the case of newspapers, it it's own local people. In some magazines, their target audience is business owners and well to do rich folk. Some have specific audiences like "music lovers", "car lovers", or nature lovers. In most newspapers and magazines there's something in there to read for everyone.
What is a target audience?
A target audience consists of individuals, groups or communities who influence
the intended 'target' of a media. Newspapers attempt to appeal to certain
target audiences by fulfilling the specific needs and interests of a target
audience within its news stories, political bias etc.
Who are the target audience of Newspapers?
The target audience of a newspaper varies based on a number of different
factors. The best way to identify the target audience of a newspaper is to use
the technique 'RIVALING' which stands
for Representation, Institution, Values, Audience, Language, Ideology, Narrative e and Genre.
Representation - is the denotation of people, places and events to convey hidden connotations in newspapers. It is how the audience is represented to themselves within a newspaper by expressing their interests, needs and points of view.
Institution - A media institution is a large group of people who work for the same company to produce various platforms of media. Newspaper institutions
are usually responsible for the production, publishing and distribution of a
newspaper. Examples of famous media institutions include Apple, Sony, Nike,
Disney etc.
Values - The values of a newspaper are constructed by the interests of its target audience. The quality, structure and content of a newspaper are adapted to the needs of the target audience.
Audience - An audience is the most vital aspect that ultimately decides the successfulness and survival of a newspaper. There is a powerful bond between a newspaper and its readers and without that target audience; a newspaper would have no market to appea l to.
Language - The language of a newspaper is designed upon the demographics of its target audience. Semiotics is also a convention that describes how a newspaper is constructed through the careful use of signs, codes and symbols.
Ideology - is a set of aims, beliefs or morals a newspaper and audience share. Modern-day newspaper ideologies focus particularly on political influences
because in recent years, politics has become more and more popular amongst
a much wider audience demographic.
Narrative - is how a newspaper can be read as a text in a particular format. Has the newspaper purposefully reported its news in a way that supports the
interests of the target audience? Does the newspaper begin with 'hard' news
or soft news?
Genre - describes the classification of a newspaper/story. For example, my newspaper can be classified as a local tabloid newspaper and my lead story can be classified as a story regarding teenage health.
Who are the target audience for newspapers?
As part of my research into target audience analysis and how newspapers have changed with time, I decided to take front and inside page samples from some of Britain's most popular local newspapers. The newspapers I studied were The
Metro, Bromley Times, London Lite & the News Shopper.
London Lite
The target audience of the London Lite was primarily aimed at women under
the age of 35. The reasons to support my judgment included the frequent use
of bright colours and images of female icons along with news topics which
covered fashion, beauty, health, fitness and celebrity gossip.
The Metro
The target audience of The Metro was directed at people commuting to and
from London. It seems the majority of readers are male and their news
interests span from current affairs, travel, weather, sport and politics
originating from the local communities of London.
Bromley Times
The target audience of the Bromley Times is very similar to the target audience
of the News Shopper. The newspaper is designed to represent news from
within the local community of Bromley, however unlike the News Shopper,
the Bromley Times incorporates news report on stories outside ofthe Bromley community. The interests of the target audience mainly consist of national sport news and local 'hard' news.
News Shopper
The target audience of the News Shopper is directed at older aged men and women from within the local community. The newspaper rarely reports on news outside of the local community, but instead decides to focus on school fetes, councils and charity events.
There are many different types of presentational devices in a newspaper: these include:
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Headlines: The main heading of the article. It gives you some idea of what the writing is about. It could also get your attention by using clever wording or alliteration.
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Subheadings: These are found within the writing and tell us what different sections are about. They help break up the text to make it easier to read.
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Pictures: Pictures can also break up the writing or can give us a clue about what the writing is about.
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Bold: Bold can be used to make important information stand out.
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Italics: Italics can also be used to make important information stand out.
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Fonts: Fonts (different styles of print) might be used tomake ideas stand out or to suggest a theme. Something about horror could be done in a wavy font for example.
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font size :Font size might also be important as larger fonts make things stand out more.
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Bullets: Bullet points help with lists so that information is easier to find and read. Check for the shape of the bullet used as they might have a message. These ticks, for instance, give a positive image.
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Colour: Colours attract attention. There are many reasons why a colour has been used; Red could stand for passion or danger. Blue could suggest coldness or masculinity.
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Logos: Logos are designs that stand for a company. They are also used to make you trust the product or writing.
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Captions: A caption is the little bits of writing placed underneath pictures to tell you what the picture is about. It may be a quote from the text.
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Maps and graphs: Maps might be used to help you understand where a place is. Graphs of all types could be used to help you understand numerical
information.
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Information boxes: These are boxes put on the page so that extra information can be added.
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Columns: These are mainly used in newspapers and magazines where the text is put in blocks down the page. Some leaflets also use this idea.