The British Press.

The British press consists of several different kinds of newspapers. The national papers are the ones sold all over the country. They have a large circulation and give general news. They are produced in London. In recent years the circulation of the national newspapers has gone down. Some newspapers had to close because they were not making enough money either from the sale of the papers or from advertising in them.

There are two main types of national papers - the popular papers and the quality papers. The popular papers or tabloids are smaller in size with lots of pictures, big headlines and short articles. They are easy to read and often contain little real information. They do not report important world events, if a political story is sensational enough they will report it, but most of their space is devoted to what only can be described as gossip and personalities. To attract readers they concentrate on emotive reporting of stories featuring sex, violence, the Royal Family, film and pop stars, and sport. The aim of the popular press is to entertain its readers rather than inform them. They usually have “human interest” stories about ordinary people and events which are included because they are amusing or odd. Examples of this type of newspapers are the Daily Express, the Daily Mirror both with circulation of over four million daily, the Sun and the Daily Mail. The tabloid press is far more popular than the quality Press as for every Englishman who reads one of the “serious” newspapers there are ten others who read the “popular” papers..

Quality papers appeal to the more serious reader who wants to read about politics and foreign affairs. The quality papers carry information on national and international news, on business, economics. These papers, such as The Daily Telegraph, The Times and The Guardian are bigger in size, with longer articles and a wider coverage of events. They have different pages for home events, foreign affairs, features, fashion, business, sport and so on. The Financial Times is an international business paper mainly concerned with economics, but with a good news service. Most of these newspapers have a circulation of only between 100,000 and 300,000. The great majority of these newspapers are strongly conservative in their politics, but they report fairly fully on political events, so that an intelligent reader can form some idea of what is going on in the world. The quality or serious papers are more expensive than the popular ones.

People in Britain buy more papers on Sunday than on weekdays. Most of Sunday papers publish more reading matter than the daily ones, and several of them also include colour supplements. The supplements are separate colour magazines which contain photographically-illustrated feature articles. It is traditional for many British households to read a Sunday paper. In addition to Sunday newspapers there are the evening papers such as London’s Evening Standard and Evening News.

Besides national papers there are provincial or local papers serving towns and areas outside London. Nearly every area in Britain has one or more local newspapers reporting local news and advertising local business and events. The total circulation of all provincial daily newspapers, morning and evening together, is around 8 million. Some provincial papers are quite prosperous. They do not need their own foreign correspondents; they receive massive local advertising, particularly of things for sale. The truly local papers are weekly. The most famous provincial newspapers are The Scotsman, the Glasgow Herald, the Yorkshire Post and the Belfast Telegraph.