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PRINT MEDIA GENRES

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INTRODUCTION• Media defined as technology for the mass

distribution of messages to large audiences are a recent phenomenon in human history.

• For a long time, the printing technology invented in the 15th century was the only means capable of such achievements.

• Various press genres have been created to fulfill different functions (instruction, specialized information, education, entertainment, advisement, advertisement).

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BOOKS

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SMALL PRINTS• BROCHURES • NEWSLETTERS

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• HANDBILLS • FLYERS

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PAMPHLETS

• Pamphlets characteristically comprise more than one page

• They were not only used for mere information purposes but also for influencing opinions and convictions

• They even served as means of propaganda.

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INTELLIGENCERS

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NEWSPAPERS

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MAGAZINES

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NEWSPAPERS• BROADSHEETS • TABLOIDS

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Broadsheets vs. Tabloids: Definitions (1)

• Broadsheet is the largest of the various newspaper formats and is characterized by long vertical pages (typically 22 inches or more). The term derives from types of popular prints usually just of a single sheet, sold on the streets and containing various types of matter, from ballads to political satire.

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Broadsheets vs. Tabloids: Definitions (2)

• ‘A tabloid is a newspaper format particularly in the United Kingdom. The name seems to derive from Burroughs - Wellcome’s 1884 trademark for their process of making ‘tablet-like’ compressed pharmaceuticals. The connotation of compressed tablet was soon applied to other small things and to the ‘compressed’ journalism that condensed stories into a simplified, easily-absorbed format’ (www.wikipedia.org).

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• It is considered to be very difficult to give a clear definition of what a tabloid might actually be, but what is sure is that the term ‘tabloid’ refers to ‘a particular size and shape of a newspaper’.

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• The tabloid is a form which is marked by two major features: – first of all ‘it devotes relatively little

attention to politics, economics and society and relatively much to diversions like sports, scandal, and popular entertainment’ and

– secondly ‘it devotes relatively much attention to the personal and private lives of people, both celebrities and ordinary people, and relatively little to political processes, economic developments, and social changes’ (Sparks 2000: 6).

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Three types of tabloidsThe serious-popular press

the popular newspaperswith ‘a strong stressupon visual design andcontaining a large doseof scandal, sports andentertainment, but thatare still demonstratingall of the same inventoryof news values as theirmore serious cousins’.

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The newsstand tabloid • sold alongside the serious press • In spite of their stress on scandal, sports and

entertainment, they ‘have some elements of the news values of the serious press: they actively campaign on political issues and in elections.

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The supermarket tabloid• Dominated by scandal,

sports and entertainment, often with a strong element of the fantastic built into it.

• These newspapers are considered to be ‘popular’, because their main concern has nothing to do with ‘the official world and its serious press’. This category is present mostly in America.

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DOUBLE DIFFERENTIATION OF TABLOIDS

• On the one hand they must distinguish themselves from the broadsheets, showing for example an utter disregard for serious news.

• But the most crucial differentiation is from rival tabloids.• Among the most important values of tabloid journalism:

– exclusiveness – the discrediting of the rival stories– tarnishing the image of the celebrity who has been featured

prominently in another newspaper – to boast with a more comprehensive, investigative, and

uncompromising form of journalism

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BROADSHEETS vs. TABLOIDS• Broadsheet newspapers are commonly perceived

to be more intellectual than their tabloid counterpart, using their greater size to examine stories in more depth, while carrying less sensationalist and celebrity material.

• Some tabloid-format papers use phrases such as “broadsheet quality in a tabloid format” in an attempt to distinguish themselves from their “tabloid” reputation.

• In addition, broadsheets often publish supplements, such as sports reviews and less-oriented content, in tabloid format.

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BROADSHEETS vs. TABLOIDSThe distinction is most obvious on the front page, whereas tabloids tend to have a single story dominated by a headline, broadsheets allow two or more stories to be displayed, the most important at the top of the page – “above the fold”.

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• The moral and practical bases of the American journalism are believed to be ‘slipping away’, as everybody believes there is ‘a crisis’, which is best described as ‘the rise of the tabloid’.

• According to Bunce, journalism is reduced to ‘a dreary cacophony of crime, mayhem and sundry disaster stories mingled with pointless celebrity worship and undisguised hawking of products ranging from sneakers to congressional candidates. Journalism is being tabloidized by media trusts, because tabloid product draws a more profitable audience…’ (Bunce 1997: 3).

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COLLAPSE IN THE STANDARDS OF THE SERIOUS PRESS

REASONS:• the new technologies that increase competition. This

competition is ‘slowly driving the serious presstoward the tabloid, and the tabloid press itself isbecoming more tabloid’ (Sparks 2000: 23).

• The declining circulation - the newspapers are ‘desperate to try to extend their readership’, that’swhy even the most serious press has at least somenews about sports and entertainment, being no clearborder between different kinds of newspapers.

• It is no wonder that the doings of a celebrity makethe front page of both the tabloids and the serious-popular press. 22

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The Audience of Broadsheets vs. the Audience of Tabloids

• In order to have success in the press, the journalists have to mould according to the audience’s taste and ‘to give the public what it wants’.

• The audience for a newspaper is in fact its readers, who are often identified in relation to the newspaper they read.

• The newspaper reader:– has no clear profile– the ideal reader or implied reader for whom the

newspaper appears to be writing23

AUDIENCES ARE MAPPED ONTO SOCIAL STRATIFICATION

• The audience for serious press tends to be well-educated and of high social status

• The last decade has witnessed the beginning of changes concerning audience.

• The audience for tabloids papers tends to be poorly educated and of low social status.

• Tabloid newspapers aimed at the male manual working class

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AUDIENCES• SERIOUS PRESS• Commercial or

political find a large audience only in periods of intense social crisis, like revolutions and the world war.

• TABLOIDS• In conditions of social

peace and widespread disillusion with the political process, the number of people who are interested in tabloids grows enormously

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CHANGE OF AUDIENCES• Changes in the family

structure and the labour market, with an increased female participation in education and in employment.

• As the dominant material in the serious press (politics and economics) are essentially male-oriented, the female audience of the tabloid is becoming bigger and bigger.

• The number of graduates is rising, the number of graduate jobs may not be keeping up, and the social status of traditionally graduate professions is under pressure.

• The positions of economic and social responsibility and leadership that were characteristic of the elite readership of the serious press are now shared by many of the new, educated employees

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The USA Newspapers

• In 1990, the U.S. press celebrated its 300th anniversary as an institution and guardian of democracy.

• The first U.S. newspaper, Publick Occurrences: Both Foreign and Domestick, lasted only one day -- September 25, 1690 -- before it was suppressed by British colonial authorities.

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• Other newspapers quickly sprang up in theAmerican colonies, and by 1730, the colonial presshad gained sufficient stature to seriously challengeBritish governors

• In that year, the governor of New York brought a seditious libel suit against Peter Zenger, publisher of the New York Weekly Journal. The verdict in this trial, the acquittal of Zenger, significantly shaped the course of press development in America, bolstering the principle of press freedom without censorship. 28

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BILL OF RIGHTS• After the Revolutionary War (1775-1783), this

concept found a home in the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

• The First Amendment states: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech or of the press . . . ."

• These 14 words made it possible for a free press to develop over the next two centuries as one of America's strongest watchdogs over government actions and protectors of individual rights. 29

• By the 1820s:• about 25 dailies • more than 400 weeklies

• Horace Greeley founded the New York Tribune in 1841, and it quickly became the most influential newspaper in America.

• Other important dailies, such as The New York Times, Baltimore Sun, and Chicago Tribune were founded in the 1850s.

• Two media giants, Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, began building their newspaper empires after the Civil War (1861-1865).

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YELLOW JOURNALISM

• Their fierce competition produced sensational and often inaccurate reporting aimed at attracting readers.

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CHAIN NEWSPAPERS • Under the same ownership - became a dominant

feature in the early 20th century• Hearst, Scripps-Howard and Cowles chains

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Top 5 – US newspapers – end of 20th century

• Gannett Company • Knight-Ridder, • Newhouse Newspapers• Times Mirror Company • The New York Times Company. • In mid-1993, the New York Times Company added

another major newspaper, The Boston Globe,

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USA Broadsheets• In the USA, the top five daily newspapers by

circulation are: • The Wall Street Journal (1,823,207), • USA Today (1,570,624), • The New York Times (1,170,869), • Los Angeles Times (1,053,498), • The Washington Post (840,232). • In all, there are 41 newspapers with more than

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• Space Age technology made USA Today possible and is helping U.S. newspapers to expand their national and international audiences. USA Today, for instance, is completely edited and composed in Arlington, Virginia, then transmitted via satellite to 32 printing plants serving major market clusters around the country and to two printing plants serving Europe and Asia.

• The Wall Street Journal began transmitting its daily edition by satellite as early as 1975, and currently transmits four U.S. regional editions, and European and Asian editions.

• The New York Times transmits a national daily edition, and The Washington Post transmits a national weekly edition.

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• The International Herald Tribune, owned by The New York Times and The Washington Post, is truly a global newspaper, printed via satellite in 11 cities around the world and distributed in 164 countries.

• Aided by satellite technology, The New York Times began publishing in April 1992 a biweekly Russian edition in Moscow with an initial circulation of 100,000.

• We, a U.S.-Russian joint venture newspaper with 50 percent ownership by Russia's Izvestia Publishing Group and 50 percent by the Hearst media organization, began in February 1992 with a print run of 350,000 in Russian and 100,000 in English. Wecarries both hard news and feature articles and has attracted such international advertisers as Estee Lauder and McDonald's.

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• New offset technology has led many newspapers to increase the use of color in their editions.

• Even The New York Times, one of the most traditional black-and-white newspapers, began for the first time printing colored ads in 1993.

• Also in 1993, a group of 17 companies announced the formation of a consortium, "News of the Future," to conduct research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on new ways to use computers and telecommunications to transmit news. Members of the consortium, which estimated its investment at $1.5 to 2 billion a year over a period of five years, include Gannett, Knight Ridder, Times Mirror, Tribune Company, Hearst, IBM, Capital Cities/ABC, and Bell South.

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• The first multi-media news service in the U.S., "News in Motion," made its debut in the summer of 1993 with a weekly edition specializing in international coverage, with color photos, graphics and sound.

• In 1994, the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service began distributing news to its newspaper customers via computer before their morning editions arrived, and The Washington Post has created a "Digital Ink" subsidiary, providing an electronic newspaper research service for clients, who can buy custom-made reports on subjects of their choice.

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MAIN DISTINCTIONS

• Serious / Quality newspaper (broadsheet) versus Tabloid

• A feature checklist

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LAYOUTBROADSHEETS

• long headline• often long paragraphs• not many pictures• pictures are relatively

objective, don’t aim at evoking an opinion

• few pictures

TABLOIDS• eye-catching• big letters to catch

attention• a lot of pictures• large pictures• banner headline and

subheading• different types of print

sub- divisions/photo40

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COMPOSITIONBROADSHEETS

• structured• long sentences• lots of information

per paragraph

TABLOIDS• short sense units

or paragraphs are made regardless of sense units

• paragraphs are often only one or two sentences

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LANGUAGE STYLE & SYNTAXBROADSHEETS• serious and formal

language• fairly complex

sentence structure, subclauses

• can contain interview by experts or involved people with original jargon

TABLOIDS• less subclauses• more simple

sentences, also because of number of quotations

• simple structure• sometimes slang• low standard

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CHOICE OF WORDSBROADSHEETS• large number of difficult

words• mainly standard English,

technical terms, difficult words

• neutral/formal language• usually no informal

language, factual & neutral style

TABLOIDS• words that attract

the readers interests• signal words (e.g.

gay, fat)• standard and

colloquial English, few difficult words

• emotive style, large number of qualifiers

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HEADLINEBROADSHEETS• fairly long• informative, neutral apart

from occasional colloquialism (e.g. "yobs")

• already answers a few of the 5 W- questions (what, who, when, where, how)

• formal, no grammatical omissions

• not too big print

TABLOIDS• grammatical omissions• many eye-catching

elements: alliteration, emotive verbs/adjectives, capital letters, subheadings

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TARGET GROUP & APPEALBROADSHEETS• attracts reader through

topicality• written for a demanding

reader• so-called “middle/upper

class” reader (sophisticated, informative articles)

• appeal depends in part on the topic, often includes home and international news, financial reports, book reviews etc.

TABLOIDS• written for less demanding

reader, who is not interested in in detailed news reports

• so-called “human interest” reader who wants to know about personal aspects of people

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ORIENTATIONBROADSHEETS• largely objective

or various points of view

• problem-oriented

TABLOIDS• one-sided• opinion and

person-oriented

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Sources

• Colin Sparks, John Tulloch (Ed),2000, Tabloid Tales: Global Debates over Media Standards, Tanham, Ma: Rowman and Littlefield

• Danuta Reah, 2002, The Language of Newspapers, London: Routledge

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_American_newspapers

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