Tabloid PPT.pptx

Tabloids

1. Newspaper Conventions: Tabloids Research into the generic conventions of Tabloid Covers

2. Register The register on tabloids is more informal and they often contain play on words. Tabloids will rarely use direct address with things like "we" or "let's". Normally the person on the front cover will be looking at the reader which does give a sense of direct address. However, this is normally all the direct address given by tabloids as they mainly tell stories of celebrities.

3. Mastheads For most newspapers, the masthead shows the title and the top story of the newspaper. For most tabloids, the logo is in big bold letters. However, the Daily Mail breaks this convention by typing their logos in a more medieval looking font. Often The Sun and the Daily Star are more complicated.  The Daily Express uses a Knight image in-between the words. All other tabloids only use words except for the Daily Mail that has a crest in-between the two words. The image makes the headline standout from the other tabloids. Even though the Daily Express uses a basic font the inclusion of the medieval looking soldier helps link it with the Daily Mail which uses the medieval font.

4. News Agenda The news agenda on tabloids is much softer than the hard news agenda on the broadsheet newspapers. Tabloids mainly focus on celebrity news and gossip. Tabloids tend to stay off of the more heavy, political related news. The news agenda is always centred around current events however they normally talk about current British events.  The normal British topic is to do with the Royal family.  This links into the myths about England's population being obsessed with the Royal family. This links into Barthe's theory of myths and ideologies and shows that tabloids abide by the myths.

5. Layout The layout of most tabloid papers is that there is a large image that dominates the page, and the headline will overlap the image. However, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express sometimes have several smaller images and lots of information spread out around them. We can see however that this Daily Mail front page example has one large image that dominates the whole page. The reason this image breaks the normal conventions of the Daily Mail, is because the story focuses on hard news matters, and since tabloids normally don't focus on hard news matters, then this convention is also being broken alongside the conventions of the smaller images.  However, one thing that they all share is that their masthead is located at the top of the page. Another thing that all tabloids share, is the fact that for most of them they often have a promotional reference for something in the paper near the top or the bottom of the page. The Sun, the Daily Mirror and the Daily Star are all known as being Red Top newspapers because of their mastheads.

6. Headlines Tabloids tend to use puns such as ' BeLEAVE in Britain' which was a headline on Brexit. Most headlines are banner headlines which span the page.  However, often tabloids can have more serious topics. They may still focus on celebrities, but the news will be more serious and often sad as seen in the image. The headlines normally take up a large amount of space on the page. Sometimes there will be a couple of headlines on a page. One headline is a big title but there will also frequently be a smaller headline that tells a story.

7. Audience Often the audience of tabloid newspapers will be the more lower-class/working class people. The tabloids rarely focus on political matters and focus on the more celebrity and sport news stories. Thusly, tabloids tend to exhibit news that would effect the lower classes to relate to their audience. More upper-class people might prefer to hear about the more political news stories or stories that focus on the more hard news topics rather than the softer news topics that tabloids feature.

8. Bias The Mirror is the most left-wing newspaper. Left-wing newspapers are often progressive. The Daily Mail is the most right-wing newspaper. Right-wing newspapers are often conservative. Right-wing newspapers are often in greater demand however there are still many popular left-wing newspapers. The Daily Mail is the only newspaper with a higher female reader percentage with around 55% of readers being female.

9. Purpose The purpose of tabloids is to be entertaining. The news in tabloids is presented as entertainment. Normally the titles of tabloids contain puns, and this shows that the newspapers are for entertainment. Also, the news topics are very gossip related to do with celebrities.  Tabloids are often very emotive and will sensationalise stories to help draw the readers in.

10. Breaking Conventions: The Midmarket The Daily Mail  The Daily Mail is described as a mid-market newspaper as they exhibit qualities of both broadsheets and tabloids, however they are more like tabloids and classified as such.  Thusly, The Daily Mail features more copy and columns of text to more appeal to the upper-class audiences that tend to read Broadsheets to encourage a wider and more populated reader base. As tabloids are generally read by lower-class audiences, the Daily Mail incorporates a more broadsheet-esque news agenda and layout to better attract the upper classes whilst being recognisable enough as a tabloid to also draw in lower-class readers, to maximise readership from all classes: a midmarket newspaper.

11. Inspiration: Conventions/ Breaks These Daily Star and Morning Star layouts will be the basis for my tabloid. As will the 'The' prefix to the name, for my broadsheet is called 'The Nova' The clean and san -serif font used by theses newspapers will inspire my simplistic blocky logo and minimalist space themed imagery to evoke physical space from siding with winged politics as it is a centrist newspaper.