British Newspapers
All newspapers in Britain can broadly be divided into the quality press
(“broadsheet”) and the popular press (“tabloid”).
The quality newspapers/ broadsheets are also known as “heavies” and they
usually deal with home and overseas news, with detailed and extensive coverage of
sports and cultural events. Besides they also carry financial reports, travel news
and book and film reviews.
Broadsheet is a size and format for newspapers and a descriptive term
applied to papers which use that format rather than the smaller tabloid format.
Historically, broadsheets were developed when in 1712 a tax was placed on British
newspapers based on the number of their pages. Broadsheet newspapers tend to be
more intellectual in content than their tabloid counterparts, examining stories in
more depth and carrying sensationalist celebrity stories less often. However, while
this distinction is widely used, some tabloid papers – particularly The Daily Mail
and The Daily Express – point out that the term «tabloid» strictly refers only to the
paper size, and often use phrases such as «broadsheet quality in a tabloid format».
The Times, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The
Independent, are known as quality papers or broadsheets. So, quality papers aim at
presenting the reader with a full and serious coverage of important home and
foreign events. They examine the subject more deeply and give more information
than the popular papers. All the quality papers use the large, full-scale broadsheet
format, their style is clear-cut and the language is straightforward, free from slang
and sensation.
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Apart from a classification of style and ways of presentation there is also the
division between political attitudes. Although newspapers are not directly linked to
political parties, there are strong connections. The majority of papers– even those
which carry little serious news – are conservative in outlook. Of the six quality
dailies The Daily Telegraph (founded in 1855) is strongly conservative. It is a
broadsheet published on 28 pages with 5 per cent of the whole space given over to
the pictures.
The Guardian (The Manchester Guardian until 1956) is a broadsheet with left
of center political standpoint. It is liberal in outlook though it doesn’t represent the
official view of the Liberal Party. Note that Manchester Guardian was launched in
1821. The Guardian enjoys particular popularity among those readers who are
connected with the arts. The paper’s motto is “Facts are sacred, comment is free”.
This paper because of its very honest comment of news is very influential.
The Financial Times saw its appearance in 1888. At present it is no more
simply the commercial specialist paper it used to be and has become a major
quality paper.
The Times (1785) is the oldest of the existing papers. It has always been the
paper of the “Establishment” and has a good reputation for reliable and serious
comment on foreign and home affairs.
The popular daily papers are also called tabloids. A tabloid is both a paper
size and a term for the style of the newspapers that tend to use that format. Tabloid
is the smaller of the two standard newspaper sizes; the larger newspapers are called
broadsheets. The name seems to derive from a pharmaceutical trademark meaning
compressed tablet, and has been applied to other small things. There are two
distinct uses of the term today. The more recent usage, actually deriving from the
original usage, is to refer to weekly or semi-weekly alternative papers in tabloid
format. Many of these are essentially straightforward newspapers, publishing in
tabloid format.
What principally distinguishes these from the dailies, in addition to their
less-frequent publication, is the fact that they are usually free to the user, relying
on ad revenue, as well as the fact that they tend to concentrate more on local
entertainment scenes and issues. In its traditional sense, tabloids tend to emphasize
sensational stories and are reportedly prone to create their news. Such national
tabloids as The Sun, The Daily Mirror, The Daily Mail, The Daily Express, The
Daily Star, Today and others do not pay a great deal of attention to important
world events and when they do, the facts are often distorted in an effort to make
the news exciting and entertaining. Much space is devoted to crime, scandal, while
generally a small amount of information is on different topics. Sometimes opinions
take more space than “hard news”. Their front page news is presented in a
sensational manner, with banner headlines. Popular papers use more pictures and
cartoons. They deliberately employ slang and up to date expressions to give their
reports more vitality. The vocabulary is forceful, abounding in words and phrases
appealing to the readers’ emotions.
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The Daily Mail devotes its space to commercial advertisements (ads), sports
reports, features, home news, human interest stories, competitions and puzzles,
notices, financial news, reviews, gossip, letters from the public, comic strips,
opinion and comment, horoscopes, topical cartoons, parliamentary reports and
weather forecasts.
The Daily Mirror, tabloid, is the only large national paper which supports
the Labour Party. It can boast of the third mass circulation. It is one of the first
papers to use strip cartoons.
Most daily newspapers have no Sunday editions, but there are Sunday papers.
The latter are sometimes closely linked with national dailies either because they
are owned by the same proprietor or because “they are printed on the same
machine”.
The Sunday press for a long time has been notorious for its extremes of good
and bad quality, and for enormous circulation of some of the more scandalous
papers. Much space in the Sundays is given to features, comment and leisure
interests.
The national quality Sundays are The Observer, The Sunday Times, The
Sunday Telegraph. They have smaller circulations than the popular Sunday papers.
Sunday papers devote much space to literature and the arts.
The popular Sunday papers (The News of the World, The Sunday Mirror,
The Sunday Express, The Mail on Sunday) are the newspapers with huge
circulation bringing reports of violence, crime and scandal. With the Sunday
quality and popular papers the differences between them are even more marked.
The classification of British newspapers:
Daily Broadsheet: The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The
Independent, The Financial Times.
Daily Tabloid: Daily Mail, Daily Express, The Sun, The Mirror, The Star.
Sunday Broadsheet: Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph, The Observer.
Sunday Tabloid: Mail on Sunday, Sunday Express, News of The World,
Sunday Mirror, Sunday People.
Mass Media 