Reading II British Newspapers

1. Read the text and fill out the graphs classifying British newspapers.

British newspapers can be classified into groups according to various criteria, such as area of distribution, size of sales, socioeconomic class of their readers, days (and times) of publication, and political bias. Each of these different criteria will lead to more or less different groupings.

With regard to the area of distribution, a fairly clear distinction can be made between national papers and local papers. The nationals, e.g. The Times, The Daily Mirror, the Sunday Express, are readily obtainable in virtually all parts of the UK at the same time. On the other hand, local papers e.g. The Yorkshire Post or The Liverpool Echo, serve a particular area, and outside that area must be specially ordered.

As regards the sales figures, we must recognize that there is no clear line that will distinguish between large and small sales. However, we make a somewhat arbitrary distinction here, partly based on copies sold, but also influenced by the type of content of the papers. This separates the so-called “popular” papers from the “quality” papers; the qualities like The Sunday Times or The Financial Times, tend to have longer, more serious articles than the popular newspapers, such as The People or The News of the World. In general, the popular papers appeal to a larger audience than the quality papers and therefore, they have larger sales. The major exception to this division is The Daily Telegraph, which is quality in the sense of having long, serious articles, but popular in the sense that it sells well in excess of a million copies a day.

Regarding the socioeconomic class of the readers, a classification on these lines will to a large extent reflect the above distinction into quality and popular. This is because the quality papers are mostly intended for the upper income groups, while the popular papers find their readers among the lower socioeconomic groups. Thus, a reader of The Observer or the Financial Times, which are quality papers, is likely to be an educated person with quite a good income, while a reader of The Daily Mail or The Sun is more likely to be a less well-educated person with a lower income. This is obviously a broad generalization, for although in the main it follows the facts, it is nevertheless true that a more detailed study would show that the complete picture is somewhat more complicated.

As to the days of publication, most British papers are either so-called daily papers, (which in fact do not appear on Sundays), e.g. The Guardian or The Scotsman, or Sunday papers, like The Sunday Times or the News of the World. Local papers with small circulations, however, might appear only once or twice a week, or even less frequently, depending on the demand for them. Concerning the time of publication, the vast majority are morning papers, i.e. they go on sale early in the morning, while the minority are the so-called evening papers, whose sales might start as early as midday, and then continue until the evening.

From the political point of view, British newspapers are not party organs, that is to say, they, are not owned by one of the political parties and expected to support its views unquestioningly. However, all papers have a more or less clear political bias, and the great majority of the British press falls at some point between the center and the right of the political spectrum. Of the sixteen daily and Sunday national papers, only four, namely The Daily Mirror, The Sunday Mirror, The Sun and The People, are fairly consistent in their support of the Labour Party. The only exception is the Guardian which usually gives loyal support to the Liberal Party.

Thus, while all papers have certain individual characteristics, it is still possible to classify them into different groupings according to certain general features, which they share with others.

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