as for tabloids/broadsheets, the main distinctions might be found in the design/format...tabloids are designed for shorter articles that must capture the reader who is considered to have a shorter attention span and a lower intellectual threshold given their class status and the fact they're actually more interested in the football results, who's through to the next round of Pop Idol and what wossname's new squeeze wore at the premiere of the latest Hollywood pap last night, all of which is a horrendous generalisation (i read and quite enjoyed The Sun for a few years myself!) but WAS certainly the basis of the red tabloids's target audience...perhaps this is less so now but the tabloids still DEPEND on sensationalising the news whereas the broadsheets are perhaps more strait-laced and subtle - this is kinda obvious tho just by comparing headlines on the same story in The Sun and the Daily Telegraph, tho they may be saying the same thing politically the Daily Telegraph's tone may be perceived as being more 'eloquent'
its because the tabloids will always rather devote more space on a front page to Posh & Becks rather than the Middle East that people feel they represent a 'lower end' catering for those who'd rather think about vacuous stuff like that...tho in their defence, people WANT good news dont they? however useful it may/may not be?
sorry if you feel you're well aware of all this already...writing it out actually helps me understand more myself
― blueski, Wednesday, 9 October 2002 14:56 (twenty-one years ago) link
i don't think that thie practice is in any way right. but i think that if you bring it up to editors and/or publishing magnates, you'll be told that they are just 'giving the people what they want' -- market populism serving as a thin disguise for elitism.
ronan in your class was there talk about any correlations between political viewpoints and class-marketing? it seems that in the states most of the tabloids i've seen have a 'straight talk' attitude in their editorials, one that frequently uses quasi-religious heartstrings to prove its points. never mind that, to me, the points at the heart of the rhetoric seem much more in tune with the whims of the moneyed paper-bankrollers and overpaid pundits than the people it so fiercely positions itself towards.
also look at papers like the sun (in the US) and the globe -- i didn't realize how much of the content was totally over-the-top in its religious implication until i looked at an issue at the duane reade recently.
― maura (maura), Wednesday, 9 October 2002 15:12 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 9 October 2002 15:24 (twenty-one years ago) link
― blueski, Wednesday, 9 October 2002 15:35 (twenty-one years ago) link
― maura (maura), Wednesday, 9 October 2002 15:37 (twenty-one years ago) link
Ha ha - you've obv. never seen our Times (the err.. London Times, I believe you call it). I remember when they first launched their 'upmarket' bingo in the 80s. It was called 'Portfolio'. And the middle classes went mad for it.
― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 9 October 2002 15:58 (twenty-one years ago) link
― maura (maura), Wednesday, 9 October 2002 16:05 (twenty-one years ago) link
― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 9 October 2002 16:13 (twenty-one years ago) link
― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 9 October 2002 16:15 (twenty-one years ago) link
― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 9 October 2002 16:20 (twenty-one years ago) link
Bah, we were through this already and I said the reason I hate it is because McDonalds is bad for you, proven by science, fact.
― Ronan (Ronan), Wednesday, 9 October 2002 17:06 (twenty-one years ago) link
― geeta (geeta), Wednesday, 9 October 2002 17:11 (twenty-one years ago) link
ok, but i'm gonna read up on that properly now to see how it compares with other food in general (e.g. is it worse for you than a full fried English breakfast and if so how so?) and what these bad effects are
the more you know...
― blueski, Wednesday, 9 October 2002 17:13 (twenty-one years ago) link
― donna (donna), Wednesday, 9 October 2002 17:14 (twenty-one years ago) link
― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 9 October 2002 17:14 (twenty-one years ago) link
― geeta (geeta), Wednesday, 9 October 2002 17:23 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ronan (Ronan), Wednesday, 9 October 2002 17:25 (twenty-one years ago) link
i still like the daily news, and i think newsday in its prime was a really solid tabloid (although recently it's been ripping more and more stories from its times-mirror bretheren, which is a bummer). and yes, i do think that the reporting on some local stories is better-handled by the tabloids. but i'm curious -- which articles did you see that had more than one reporter working on them? it seems to me like so many of the ones that do merit more than one reporter have a name attached to them and are more scandal than, say, reports on the economy and how it's affecting locals.
btw, i hope it doesn't come off like i'm defending the times as the paragon of journalism here -- i hardly think it's a perfect paper, and to be frank, its constant middlebrow positioning (esp. in its arts coverage) makes me want to throw it across the room at times. (amanda hesser must be stopped!)
― maura (maura), Wednesday, 9 October 2002 17:30 (twenty-one years ago) link
so its an old argument and i guess we shouldnt get into it
― blueski, Wednesday, 9 October 2002 17:41 (twenty-one years ago) link
And yeah, some of the arts coverage in the Times is kinda sketchy. (Hey Maura, did you read the big food piece today? 'I went to a -gasp- mainstream supermarket today and oh my god shock horror, they only had romaine lettuce! Where was the radicchio?' or whatevah)
― geeta (geeta), Wednesday, 9 October 2002 17:43 (twenty-one years ago) link
i think i'm going to check out some issues of the post and the daily news just to see this imbalance. i do see your point about the times positioning itself as more of a national newspaper (much like the washington post, which i think benefits from having the government be its front and center local story, although they're getting crazy hawkish on the op-ed page), and i wish that they'd devote more space to covering all of the city instead of, i don't know, that dumb escapes section or their weekly piece on the strokes and the yeah yeah yeahs. but i think when they apply local-style reporting to issues in other parts of the country, they really shine.
― maura (maura), Wednesday, 9 October 2002 17:52 (twenty-one years ago) link
― maura (maura), Wednesday, 9 October 2002 17:55 (twenty-one years ago) link
― geeta (geeta), Wednesday, 9 October 2002 18:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
It isn't shocking at all. 'You've obviously' was just a figure of speech. Sorry if I gave any other impression. Yes, I believe they do have similar things today, though in a less-sustained way. 'Pay off your mortgage' , 'Win a holiday home in France' kind of stuff. Maybe I'm wrong and it's just the Daily Mail and Evening Standard (midmarket) that run these things these days. I can't remember now.
― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 9 October 2002 19:05 (twenty-one years ago) link
(jess in being snot shocker.)
it seems to me - and maybe i'm wrong - that a lot of local-style broadsheets in the us have been adopting a more tabloid-y approach, although sufficiently whitewashed for their market.
― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 9 October 2002 19:15 (twenty-one years ago) link
(also does anyone read a newspaper for the editorials? in fact does anyone read the broadsheet editorials at all? i tend not to bother).
on tabloid vs broadsheet: tabloids tend to piss me off by not writing enough about anything, while broadsheets waste thousands of words on saying very little (it's an easy criticism to make, but sitting down and reading a weekend broadsheet cover to cover takes an entire day and imparts very little info for that investment). i can't really remember the days before 30 page second sections every day, but i can't help feeling that there must have been less filler articles back then. anyone who reads the G2 or equivalent every day and looks down on tabloid readers for reading about irrelevant pap is a fool.
also on the ny times' reliance on reuters etc: this is one of the things that always puts me off reading it (plus the layout - it looks like something out of the distant past! what is it with us newspapers looking so univiting compared to uk ones?). are uk newspapers any better? from memory i'd say "yes", but it could easily be that i haven't noticed/they're less good at crediting their sources. anyone?
― toby (tsg20), Wednesday, 9 October 2002 19:43 (twenty-one years ago) link
oh, drat, marginalized again!
― maura (maura), Wednesday, 9 October 2002 20:13 (twenty-one years ago) link
― blueski, Wednesday, 9 October 2002 21:20 (twenty-one years ago) link
This is a sad story and a well articulated take on what happens when all you have left is social media.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/10/gannett-local-newspaper-hawk-eye-iowa/619847/
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 13 October 2021 14:41 (two years ago) link