Table showing average amount of space devoted to headline over 4 days
Analysis:
From the results it is evident that each newspaper consistently uses roughly the same amount of headline space for each edition. The Sun newspaper devotes the highest proportion of space to its headline, with an average of 410.3 cm² of the front page taken up by the headline. That is 36.9 % on average.
The Metro devotes the second highest proportion of space to its headline, with an average of 236.4cm² of the front page taken up by the headline. That is 21% on average.
The Times proved to take up less space than the other two papers, with an average of only 133.6 cm² taken up by their headline. That is 12.04% on average.
The paper taking up the least amount of room with just 86.9 cm² as an average was the Daily Telegraph. That is just 3.92% of the whole page on average.
The range from the highest proportion of space taken up by the headline to the lowest proportion was 323.3cm². This difference is 33%.
What can we gather from this?
From this evidence we can now see which newspaper devotes most space to its headline. We may draw from this research that newspapers with more space taken up by headlines are likely to contain less information as the amount of space to write information is significantly lower. This can tell us that papers such as the tabloids may draw the readers’ attention more through headlines with a large visual impact. It is likely that the tabloid newspapers may also contain significantly less detailed information as less space is dedicated to the text. Newspapers such as the Times and the Daily Telegraph (known as Broadsheets) use less headline space, enabling more space on the page for text. Such a lay out may be more attractive to an accomplished reader.
Price/Value
The next factor I am going to review is the price of the each paper compared with the number of pages it has, so an estimate at the value, and price per page. I will calculate the price per page by the following sum:
Price per Paper
X 100 = Price per page
Number of pages
Table showing the average stats, calculated over a four day period
I will represent the data in the form bar graph.
Analysis:
From these results, it is evident that the Times clearly has the most amount of pages with an average 82 pages a day. This is followed by the Metro and the Sun with an average of 57 and 56.5 pages respectively. The Daily Telegraph produced an average of 38 pages per day. This could be regarded as a lot less, however the page size of the Daily Telegraph is twice the size of all the other pages, so in fact, the number of pages should have been effectively doubled. This would have produced an average amount of 76 pages, which is much more respectable.
From this graph, it is evident that Metro is by far the cheapest paper as it is free!
However disregarding the Metro the newspapers can be ranked in the following order of price per page (as a calculated average):
- Daily Telegraph – 1.84 p (per page)
- The Times – 0.771 p (per page)
- The Sun – 0.628 p (per page)
- The Metro – 0p (per page)
What can we gather from this?
Both the Tabloid and Broadsheet newspapers have approximately the same number of pages. This factor links with the other information I have gathered from my research showing that the reading involved in the tabloid newspaper is much less daunting and would possibly be more attractive to a less accomplished reader. Having a higher number of pages will spread out the information more over a larger area. Whereas the Broadsheet style papers will be in more detail, and densely distributed, for the more accomplished reader.
Length of words
The next factor I am going to compare is the length of words in particular articles of the four different newspapers. I aim to analyse the variety in length of words from 2 articles in each paper; 250 words from a sports article, and 250 words from a particular news article. I have chosen to look at 250 words from each article in each paper, because keeping the variable of number of words the same is essential in applying a fair test. Also, 250 will provide a suitable length of text and give an example of the words used.
I will count the words from newspapers printed on the 14/07/07.
Firstly I will create, a table like the following, so I can accurately record the number of different length words in one article. I will do this in a tally form in rough on some paper before word processing it. Once I have recorded the frequency, I can then work out the Cumulative frequency, which I can then use to plot a graph. In order to create a wide knowledge of data interpretation, I will also plot box and whisker plots for each papers average.
Numbers in red in the following frequency tables represent the mode. This is the number which appears the most. In this case the length of words which appears the most in the articles.
Frequency table representing number of different length words in a sports article and a news article in the Sun.
News Article Sports Article
Combined Average of News and Sports Article
Frequency table representing number of different length words in a sports article and a news article of the Metro.
News Article Sports Article
Combined Average of News and Sports Article
Frequency table representing number of different length words in a sports article and news article of the Times.
News Article Sports Article
Combined Average of News and Sports Article
Frequency table representing number of different length words in a sports article and news article of the
Daily Telegraph.
News Article Sports Article
Combined Average of News and Sports Article
.
Analysis:
From this information gathered, we can obtain that the results produced show significant differences. I have produced a median and mode, for each newspaper, which allows me to expand on the results provided.
The first paper I compared was The Sun. I selected a news and sports article, and counted 250 words for each article. I was then did a tally of the frequency of each word length. It was evident that in the Sun, the numbers of 2/3/4 length words were significantly higher than the other papers. The mode number (the length of word which came up the most) was 3, appearing 114 times over the 500 words observed. That calculates to be 22.8% of all the words counted in the paper.
The median (the middle value of the data) was 3, which can be viewed on the graph, with the lower and upper quartiles of 2 and 5 respectively. The median of 3 represents that a half of the words were three letters or less. The inter-quartile range is the range from the lower quartile to the upper quartile, and represents half of the data. In this case the lower - 2 and upper -5 quartiles are used. Evidently, this means half of the words are of length between 2 and 5. This can also be observed on the box and whisker plots representing the average distribution of data over the 4 days.
The Metro produced similar results; however it had a higher proportion of longer words, with a mode word length of 4, appearing 90 times overall out of 500. The longest word length to appear was 12however all the other papers contained at least one word of a higher number of letters.
The median was 4 and this can be viewed on the graph also, with the lower and upper quartiles of 2 and 6 respectively. Therefore the inter-quartile range is between 2 and 6; half of the words are of length 2-6. We are aware the median was 4, which proves that half of the words were four letters or less. This can also be observed on the box and whisker plots representing the average distribution of data over the 4 days.
The Times, being a broadsheet, as expected produced some what different results to those of The Sun and The Metro. Although its mode number was 3, it proved to have a greater number of longer length words than the other two newspapers. The number of words with a length of 5 letters or over was 229, which is 45.8% of the total. Surprisingly, this is exactly the same as the Metro; however the Sun had only 192 words of length 5 letters or over. That is just 38.4%. The Times however had words up to a length of 16 letters.
From its Cumulative Frequency graph it is evident that the median was 4, which proves that half of the words were of four letters or less. The upper quartile being 6 and the lower quartile being 2. Therefore the inter-quartile range is between 2 and 6; half of the words are of length 2-6. This can also be observed on the box and whisker plots representing the average distribution of data over the 4 days.
The Daily Telegraph (also a broadsheet) produced similar results to the Times, in that the words were generally, and more consistently longer. The mode word was 4, appearing 89 times, that’s 17.8% of the 500 words selected. The number of words of length 5 letters or more proved to be 251 that is 50% of the total, being the greatest proportion of the other three papers.
From its Cumulative Frequency graph we can obtain that the lower quartile is 3; the median is 4, and the upper quartile appearing as 7. Therefore the inter-quartile range is between 3 and 7; meaning half of the words are of length 3-7. This can also be observed on the box and whisker plots representing the average distribution of data over the 4 days.
What does this information tell us about the newspapers?
From this data, we can obtain that the articles in The Sun have a noticeably lower reading age, as the majority of words are of a shorter length. The Metro had a slightly higher proportion of longer words, but still less than the Times and the Daily Telegraph.
Out of the 4 newspapers the Daily Telegraph has the highest proportion of longer length words. From this we could conclude that to read the daily Telegraph the reader would have to have a higher reading age in order to gain full understanding and enjoyment. This finding also fits with the research on headline space. The newspaper with the biggest headline had supporting text where the majority of words were of a shorter length.
What could I have improved?
- Sample size - by increasing the sample size I would be able to gather a more comprehensive set of results.
- Disregard names of people and places- In the Sun and Metro sports and news sections, the majority of the longer words tended to be names or teams. This could be regarded as an unfair test. Next time, I would recommend sampling sections, cutting out names and places. I believe this would give me a greater indication to the real readability of these articles.
In conclusion
- The cheapest newspaper per page is the Metro.
- The Daily Telegraph has the greatest amount of longest length words.
- The Sun has the greatest amount of the shortest length of words
- The Daily Telegraph the least amount of space devoted to the headline.
- The Sun has the greatest amount of space devoted to the headline.
- The Sun would appear to be the easiest newspaper to read.
