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

POPULAR PAPERS: also known as GUTTER PRESS/TABLOIDS,
news (politics, home affairs, foreign affairs, finance,
economics, etc); they are intended for a well-educated
reading public.
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/nontechnical, 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 NOMINALISATION
The 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

MANNER: be brief, be ordered, be clear, be simple
the discourse
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:
Abstract
Orientation
Action
Evaluation
Result or resolution
coda
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.
coda
The 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 futuretime, 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
1.
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
colourfulness and liveliness
high
deviance, suspense,