Analysing Newspapers

Introduction

Newspapers are the oldest mass-media form on the AQA specification and, paradoxically, one of the most urgently contemporary. They have faced existential disruption from the internet for two decades; they remain politically and culturally powerful; and they have pivoted (with varying success) to digital subscription and advertising models. The CSPs typically pair a tabloid and a broadsheet — or a mid-market tabloid and a broadsheet — allowing comparative analysis of form, politics, audience, and industrial strategy.

This lesson covers the distinction between tabloid and broadsheet conventions, mode of address, political alignment, news values (Galtung & Ruge), the decline of print circulation, and the digital pivot.

Tabloid vs Broadsheet: Conventions

The tabloid/broadsheet distinction is a British journalistic convention. Originally it referred to physical page size (tabloid = half the size of a traditional broadsheet), but it has come to mean a cluster of editorial, visual, and linguistic choices.

Tabloid conventions

• Shorter articles.
• Dramatic, emotive headlines (often puns, alliteration).
• Large, bold typography.
• Photography dominant; image often larger than text.
• Focus on celebrity, sport, scandal, human interest.
• Populist register — colloquial language, direct address.
• Often politically partisan and overt.

Broadsheet (sometimes "quality press") conventions

• Longer, more analytical articles.
• Restrained headlines, often clause-based.
• Smaller, more varied typography.
• Photography secondary to text.
• Focus on politics, international affairs, economics, culture.
• Formal register — standard English, more complex sentence structures.
• Political alignment present but often more nuanced.

Feature	Tabloid	Broadsheet
Layout	Bold, image-led	Text-led, structured
Headlines	Punchy, emotive	Descriptive, neutral
Language	Colloquial	Formal
Content mix	Celebrity/sport/human interest	Politics/analysis/culture
Political stance	Usually overt	Often implicit
Audience social grade	C1–E	AB

Mid-market tabloids

Some UK newspapers occupy a mid-market position — tabloid format but with more serious content than a red-top. They typically target an older, more socially conservative audience and have been among the most politically influential titles in modern British history.

Mode of Address

Mode of address is how a text speaks to its reader. Newspapers construct implied readers through:

• Vocabulary and register — is the reader assumed to be educated, working-class, expert, casual?
• Headline grammar — imperatives and exclamations suggest immediacy; clauses suggest reflection.
• Direct address — use of "you", "we", "our country".
• Assumptions — what knowledge does the text take for granted?
• Photography — who is looked at, and how? A front-page image of a weeping mother addresses emotion; a photo of a chart addresses reason.

A close study of mode of address often reveals the political and class assumptions a paper makes about its audience.

Political Alignment

British national newspapers are almost all aligned politically. They are explicit about their alignment at election time, when they may formally endorse a party. Between elections, alignment shows in:

• Which stories are front-page, which are buried.
• The framing of stories (language, photo choice).
• Which politicians are interviewed sympathetically, which are attacked.
• Editorial columns.
• The choice of commentators.

graph LR
  A[UK Press] --> B[Right-leaning tabloids/mid-market]
  A --> C[Left-leaning tabloids]
  A --> D[Right-leaning broadsheets]
  A --> E[Centre-left broadsheets]
  A --> F[Business-focused]

A central concept here is agenda-setting (McCombs and Shaw): the press may not tell us what to think, but it is very successful at telling us what to think about. By selecting which stories to cover and how prominently, newspapers shape the terrain of public debate.

News Values: Galtung and Ruge

Johan Galtung and Mari Holmboe Ruge published their foundational study of news values in 1965. They asked: why does one event become "news" while another, equally significant event, does not? Their answer identified a cluster of factors that make events newsworthy.

Galtung and Ruge's news values (selected)

• Frequency — events that unfold on a timescale matching news cycles (a bomb, not a slow cultural shift).
• Threshold — the bigger the event, the more likely it is to be news.
• Unambiguity — clear events are more news-friendly than ambiguous ones.
• Meaningfulness — cultural proximity and relevance to the audience.
• Consonance — fits expectations and existing narratives.
• Unexpectedness — surprise increases newsworthiness.
• Continuity — once a story is running, it keeps running.
• Composition — the balance of stories in a paper shapes what gets in.
• Reference to elite nations — stories about powerful countries are more newsworthy.
• Reference to elite people — stories about powerful individuals are more newsworthy.
• Personification — stories that can be told through individuals are preferred.
• Negativity — bad news is considered more newsworthy than good.

Galtung and Ruge = news values. This is one of the key theorist references you must get right.

graph TD
  A[Event] --> B{Passes news values filter?}
  B -->|Yes| C[Becomes news]
  B -->|No| D[Ignored]
  B --> E[Frequency]
  B --> F[Threshold]
  B --> G[Elite reference]
  B --> H[Negativity]
  B --> I[Personification]

Updating news values

Later theorists (Harcup and O'Neill, 2001 and 2017) have updated Galtung and Ruge's list for the digital age, adding values like: