THE PRESS IN BRITAIN

THE IMPORTANCE OF HEADLINES

NEWS LAYOUT

DEVELOPING NEWS

• DAILY PAPERS

• SUNDAY PAPERS

• LOCAL PAPERS

• EVENING PAPERS

• THE FREE PRESS

QUALITY PAPERS: also known as HEAVIES, they deal with hard news (politics, home affairs, foreign affairs, finance, economics, etc); they are intended for a well-educated reading public.

POPULAR PAPERS: also known as GUTTER PRESS/TABLOIDS, they deal with soft news (human interest stories, about famous people); they are intended for the mass (ordinary people)

QUALITY AND POPULAR PAPERS

DIFFERENCES IN THE APPROACH TO THE NEWS

Size

typography

news

paragraphs

lexis

QUALITY PAPERS

Size: large format

Typography: few pictures

News attitude: hard news, both reports and comments

Paragraphs: long

Lexis: both neutral and non-neutral; complex and dense

POPULAR PAPERS

Size: small format (tabloids)

Typography: large block headlines, a lot of pictures and photographs

News attitude: soft news (human interest stories)

Paragraphs: short

Lexis: simple, non-neutral, rich in contrasts (comparatives and superlatives)

REPORTS

Any news article which gives information about something that has just

happened in order to narrate neutrally

COMMENTS/EDITORIALS

Any article which gives the writer’s opinion

Most modern newspapers have three sizes:

BROADSHEET : generally associated with more intellectual newspapers. It is the largest of the newspapers formats and is characterized by very long vertical pages. The term derives from types of popular prints usually just of a single sheet, sold on the streets and containing various types of matters, from ballads to political satire.

The most important British newspapers in this format are :

The Daily Telegraph, the Times, The Financial Times, etc.

TABLOID : is half the size of the broadsheet and focuses on local-interest stories and entertainment, emphasises sensational crime stories: gossip columns deal with the personal life of celebrities and sport stars, and also called “junk food news”.

The most important British newspapers in this format are :

The Sun, the Daily Mail, The Daily Express, The Daily Mirror, etc.

BERLINER : is slightly taller and marginally wider than the tabloid, and is both narrower and shorter than the broadsheet format

The most important British newspapers in this format are :

The Guardian and The Observer

They regularly appear after 1870.The crucial factor in their evolution was the use of the telegraph in the

American civil war.

The functions of a headline are:

To attract the reader’s attention

To indicate the writer’s attitude

To summarize the content of the article

To indicate the focus of the article

Newspapers headlines have special linguistic characteristics

SPECIALISED VOCABULARY: words are unusual, sensational and short; language is distinctive and telegraphic;

RHETORICAL DEVICES: headlines play with words (metaphors, puns, assonances, consonances, etc.);

INTERNALLY CONSISTENT GRAMMAR

Newspapers headlines have special linguistic characteristics

THEY PLAY WITH KNOWLEDGE: they focus on the reader’s cultural knowledge;

REGISTER: the register differs according to field (economics, politics, science, etc), tenor (formal/informal, technical/non-technical, neutral/emotional, etc.);

MODE: formal vs informal

Newspapers headlines play with the reader’s knowledge:

SUBSTITUTION: it occurs when a grammatical/lexical item, a homophone or a single letter is substituted

ABBREVIATION: a well-known expression is quoted in abbreviated form

INSERTION: an additional item is inserted into a well-known expression

REPHRASING: an expression is altered in some way

Who writes the headline?

The subeditor/s

When does s/he does it ?

Before being printed, when the journalist has already written the article

What do headlines convey?

They abstract the story, they do not have to begin it

Why are headlines personalised?

It depends on factors, such as the newspaper’s house style, and the subject matter. Some subjects

require formal treatment, others do not.

VERBALISATION VS NOMINALISATION

The headline is verbalised when the main clause is not dominated by a

noun phrase but by a verb.Ex: Phones are the new cars E- commerce takes off PssT, wanna buy a kidney? Can Angel Merkel hold Europe together? That’s all folks Don’t lie to me Argentina We like to move it move it Come and get me

VERBALISATION VS NOMINALISATIONThe headline is nominalised when the main clause is dominated by a

noun phrase.Ex: Out of the limelight Time for super Mario Out with the long Less Mary Poppins Mamma mia Decision time Of music, murder and shopping No time for doubters

VERBALISATION

The verb gives energy, liveliness and pace to the headline

The message is clear, unambiguous, and not deviant The journalist’s position is neutral It has a reporting function

NOMINALISATION

It obstacles the reader’s interpretation It makes the message more ambiguous, the language is more deviant

It underlines the journalist’s position/opinion It attracts the reader’s attention It is an excellent tool to summarize the article

While writing articles the journalist must respect the rules of

communication:

QUALITY: do no say things which are not true

QUANITY: do not say either too much or too little

RELEVANCE: do not say things which are not connected with the discourse

MANNER: be brief, be ordered, be clear, be simple

News stories are socially created; to be published they must respect the general criteria of newsworthiness. News must be:

Real: no invention

Unambiguous: clearly developed and respectful of the cultural proximity

In agreement with the reading public as much as possible

Clearly stereotyped: the readers are supposed to understand

Topic-oriented: the importance of a subject depends on where it is seen from

As Labov (1969) stated, stories have a beginning, a middle, and an

end. A fully-formed narrative story respects the

following pattern:

AbstractOrientation

ActionEvaluation

Result or resolutioncoda

NEWS STORIES have a structure, direction, point, and a Viewpoint (Bell: 1991, 1995,1996)

Abstract vs Lead

The abstract corresponds to the lead/1st paragraph and

the headline: the lead summarizes the central action and

it establishes the main point of a news story. The

headline is the abstract of the abstract, it appears as the

first abstract in the printed story.

The orientation

In narratives and news stories it sets the scene: who the

actors are, where, and when the events take/took place,

what the initial situation is/was. In the news it is

necessary. For journalists who, what, when and where

Are the basic facts which are concentrated at the

beginning of the story, but may be expanded further

down.

Action

At the heart of a personal narrative the action corresponds to

the sequence of events which occurred, it is the temporal

sequence of its sentences; in news stories, by contrast, events

are seldom if ever told in chronological order (the body of the

story).

evaluation

The evaluation, which in narratives distinguishes a directionless

sequence of sentences from a story, in news stories has the

same function; it establishes the significance of what is being

told, it focuses on the events, and justifies them claiming the

reading public’s attention.

Resolution

The personal narrative moves to a resolution. News stories

often do not present such clearcut results. When they do, the

result will be in the lead rather than at the end of the story.

News stories are not temporally structured, or turned in a

finished fashion.

codaThe coda, which is widely used in personal narratives, does not

appear in news stories.

There are three additional categories in news stories:

Background: it represents the past; it covers any events prior to the current action-story.

Commentary: it represents the present, it provides the journalist’s present-time observations on the action, assessing, and commenting on events as they happen. It may provide the context to assist understanding of what is happening, evaluative comment on the action, expectations of how the situation will develop.

Follow up: it represents the future; it covers the story future-time, any action subsequent to the main action of an event. It can include verbal reaction by other parties or non-verbal consequences.

THE INVERTED PYRAMID CONCEPT(Van Dijk, 1988)

Concentration of information in the lead, headline, sub-headline

Developing of information in the body/action, where events are not developed respecting a chronological order

HOW DO THE JOURNALISTS DEVELOP THE NEWS?

While communicating there must be a balance between new information and given information.

given information generally comes at the beginning (theme);

new information generally comes at the end (rheme);

HOW DO THE JOURNALISTS DEVELOP THE NEWS?

While communicating the new element(s), the journalist keeps the readers interested because this is new for them; they are told something they did not know. If all the information were new, without any anchor in shared knowledge, they would not be able to absorb the load.

BREVITY AND EFFICIENCY: information is incapsulated into limited spaces, with respect for the effect it has on the audience

IMPRESSIVNESS : sensational words are chosen

DEVIANCE: deviant language is used to attract, to persuade

PERSUASIVENESS: relevant lexical and grammatical items are selected

QUOTATIONS(journalists quote for three main different reasons)

1. NEUTRALITY : a quote is an unquestionable fact

1. DISTANCE: to absolve the journalist

TRUTHNESS: to add the story the flavour of the newsmaker’s own words

LANGUAGE (to attract the reader’s attention, the journalist

uses)

COLLOQUIAL TERMS: spoken language allow everybody to feel comfortable with both given and new information

FIGURES OF SPEECH: to produce high deviance, suspense, colourfulness and liveliness