http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/uk-newspapers-ranked-total-readership-print-and-online
UK newspapers ranked by total readership (print and online)
Gavriel Hollander 29 August 2013
The Sun remains the most read UK newspaper, according to data from the National Readership Survey.
A poll of 36,000 British adults found that just under 13.5m people read The Sun or The Sun (Sunday) either in print or
online every week. The paper is 1.5m readers ahead of its nearest challenger, the Mail, which attracts 12m readers
across its daily and Sunday print titles and the Mail Online.
The total readership figure combines average weekly print readership figures for the year to June 2013 with each title’s
Comscore figure for web readership in June.
All national news groups were slightly down in terms of their total readerships compared with the last time the NRS
published data in May, relating to the year to March 2013. However, regionally, both the Glasgow Herald/Sunday
Herald and Glasgow Evening Times grew their overall reach.
The Guardian/Observer was still the most read of the quality titles, with 5.3m combined readers, ahead of the Telegraph
titles with 4.9m and The Times/Sunday Times with 4.5m.
Title
Print (000s)Website only (000s)Combined (000s)
The Sun/The Sun (Sunday)
12,400
1,076
13,476
Daily Mail/The Mail on Sunday
9,521
2,449
11,970
Metro
7,458
389
7,847
Daily Mirror/Sunday Mirror/The People
6,762
1,123
7,885
The Guardian/The Observer
2,781
2,475
5,257
The Daily Telegraph/The Sunday Telegraph 3,051
1,848
4,899
The Times/The Sunday Times
4,347
178
4,525
London Evening Standard
3,471
272
3,743
The Independent/The Independent on Sunday/i2,607
1,056
3,662
Daily Express/Sunday Express
2,683
291
2,974
Daily Star/Daily Star Sunday
2,774
151
2,924
Daily Record/Sunday Mail
1,503
188
1,691
Financial Times
892
334
1,226
The Scotsman/Scotland on Sunday
334
201
535
The Herald/Sunday Herald
296
136
4,322
Yorkshire Post
287
62
349
Glasgow Evening Times
214
49
263
Tabloid (newspaper format)
A tabloid is a newspaper with compact page size smaller than broadsheet, although there is no standard for the precise
dimensions of the tabloid newspaper format. The term tabloid journalism, along with the use of large pictures, tends to
emphasize topics such as sensational crime stories, astrology, celebrity gossip and television. However, some
newspapers, such as The Independent[1] and The Times, are in tabloid format, and this size is used in the United
Kingdom by nearly all local newspapers. There, its page dimensions are roughly 430 mm × 280 mm (16.9 in × 11.0 in).
In the United States, it is commonly the format employed by alternative newspapers. Some small-format papers which
claim a higher standard of journalism refer to themselves as compact newspapers instead.
Larger newspapers, traditionally associated with higher-quality journalism, are often called broadsheets, and this
designation often remains in common usage even if the newspaper moves to printing on smaller pages, as many have in
recent years. Thus the terms tabloid and broadsheet are, in non-technical usage, today more descriptive of a
newspaper's market position than its physical size.
The Berliner format used by many prominent European newspapers is sized between the tabloid and the broadsheet. In
a newspaper context, the term Berliner is generally used only to describe size, not to refer to other qualities of the
publication.
History
The word "tabloid" comes from the name given by the London based pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome &
Co. to the compressed tablets they marketed as "Tabloid" pills in the late 1880s.[2] The connotation of tabloid was soon
applied to other small compressed items. A 1902 item in London's Westminister Gazette boted, "The proprietor intends
to give in tabloid form all the news printed by other journals." Thus "tabloid journalism" in 1901 originally meant a
paper that condensed stories into a simplified, easily absorbed format. The term preceded the 1918 reference to smaller
sheet newspapers that contained the condensed stories.[3]Types
Tabloid newspapers, especially in the United Kingdom, boast a very high degree of variation as far as target market,
political alignment, editorial style, and circulation are concerned. Thus, various terms have been coined to describe the
subtypes of this versatile paper format. There are, broadly, two main types of tabloid newspaper: red top and compact.
The distinction is largely of editorial style; both red top and compact tabloids span the width of the political spectrum
from socialism to capitalist conservatism. Red top tabloids are so named due to their tendency, in British and
Commonwealth usage, to have their mastheads printed in red ink; the term compact was coined to avoid the connotation
of the word tabloid, which implies a red top tabloid, and has lent its name to tabloid journalism, which is journalism
after the fashion of red top reporters.
Broadsheet
The broadsheet is the largest of newspaper formats and is characterized by long vertical pages (typically 22 inches or
560 millimetres). The term derives from types of popular prints usually just of a single sheet, sold on the streets and
containing various types of material, from ballads to political satire. The first broadsheet newspaper was the Dutch
Courante uyt Italien, Duytslandt, &c. published in 1618.
History
Historically, broadsheets developed after the British in 1712 placed a tax on newspapers based on the number of their
pages. Larger formats, however, had long been signs of status in printed objects, and still are in many places, and
outside Britain the broadsheet developed for other reasons, including style and authority, unrelated to the British tax
structure.
The original purpose of the broadsheet, or broadside, was for the purpose of posting royal proclamations, acts, and
official notices. Eventually the people began using the broadsheet as a source for political activism by reprinting
speeches, ballads or narrative songs originally performed by bards. With the early mechanization of the 19th century
came an increase in production of printed materials including the broadside as well as the competing penny dreadful. In
this period newspapers all over Europe began to print their issues on broadsheets. However, in the United Kingdom, the
main competition for the broadside was the gradual reduction of the newspaper tax, beginning in the 1830s, and
eventually its dismissal in 1855.[4]
With the increased production of newspapers and literacy, the demand for visual reporting and journalists led to the
blending of broadsides and newspapers, creating the modern broadsheet newspaper.