Researching National Newspapers

Again, i have scanned in a front cover and two inside pages of a few newspapers, however this time i am going to analyse national newspapers to see any comparisons or contrasts with local newspapers that i need to take note of.

The Sun

My initial thought of The Sun newspaper is that it is very colourful and opinionated; as you can see on the left hand page they are criticising Victoria Beckhams coat and it seems that is all they are interesting in, humiliating her as they don't acknowledge she is there for a charity event. Furthermore on the right hand page they have photoshopped a picture of Tony Blair to turn him into a devil with flames in the background which also indicates the newspaper is very right wing and the use of the rhetorical question above him also suggests the newspaper knows there audience very well, they know what the audience would answer to that and are addressing them very well. This shows the people that are likely to buy the sun are also right wing. There doesn't seem to be much of a house style to this newspaper apart from headlines that take up the majority of the page and a lot of colour to stimulate and attract the reader. Additionally; The Sun seems to use humour to relate to their audience with examples from the Tony Blair picture and the Gordon Brown story on the cover. The Suns political views are very obvious and is a very strong theme throughout the newspaper. This is a very busy newspaper, it seems that if there is any space left over on a page layout they will try and cram a small 'snippet' of a story in the gap.

The quality of the newspaper is very low and it is aimed at lower class, this is shown as it's very colourful, it has a busy look and it is very bias.

The Independent

This newspaper looks very high end, it has a very professional look to it and is very elegant, this show the good quality of the newspaper and the higher social class audience, in comparison to The Sun. The flag looks very traditional and the whole layout of the newspaper is neat and consistent. The Independent seems to be right wing and bias too, the front cover is all about the expense scandal and has three 'mug shots' of three MP's. The similarity to The Sun is that The Independent also knows its audience very well as it also uses a rhetorical question heading to relate to the audience as they know the audience they appeal to shares the same views, especially in politics and this is how newspapers such as The Sun and The Independent can be so opinionated. The majority of the inside pages have been taken up with columns of text which shows the consumers of this newspaper are more than happy to sit and read long columns of text and not flick through which is in contrast the the local newspapers i annotated. The house style is subtle but the deep red is present and the photos are very neat and are full pictures which haven't been cropped of photoshopped which just adds to the sophistication of this newspaper. Furthermore the use of a drop cap at the beginning of the story justifies this point further.

Independent Life

The Independant life paper is a small paper which is inside of the main Independant newspaper. Immediately you can tell this is more of a high end paper as the text to photo ratio is much higher, although there is quite a few pictures which are fairly large, because there is so much text that fills all of the space it balances it out. Additionally, there isn't one advertisement on those two pages which also suggests it's in the higher end market. This pull out newspaper is in keep with the main Independents house-style.

The Daily Mail

The Daily Mail is another national newspaper, it is very different from the Independent and shares a lot of similarities with The Sun, however i think it is slightly higher quality than The Sun. The headings are all very large and bold to stand out, however within different stories The Daily Mail has used different fonts, this is very unusual and makes the newspaper look unprofessional, with addition to this, there are a lot of pictures and adverts which lowers the quality of the newspaper and makes it look a little busy. The front cover of the paper is split in two, one half is a large advert and the other half is a very big heading, this may have been done to grab the readers attention with the colourful advert and large text.