The different types of national daily paper

Monday, 23 June 1990 was an important day in British politics: Margaret Thatcher completed a complicated re-sorting of jobs in her conservative government, a series of moves and replacements which involved 31 ministers; the Labour party put forward new proposals on local taxation; there were key developments in the Government’s plans to sell the National Electricity Generating Board.

The next day, all these stories were featured on the front page of the Times and several other newspapers, but they did not receive front-page coverage in other national daily newspapers. Both THE SUN and the DAILY MIRROR featured a story about a particularly unpleasant double murder. MADMAN MURDERS 2 WOMEN was the headline in THE SUN. The only other story on the front page of this newspaper was about a husband and his unfaithful wife. By contrast, THE TIMES gave the murder story only a quarter-column on page two. Probably in no other country there are such great differences between the various national daily newspapers - in the type of news they report and the way they report it.

On the one hand, there are the "quality" newspapers: THE TIMES, THE INDEPENDENT, THE GUARDIAN, the FINANCIAL TIMES and THE DAILY TELEGRAPH. These concern themselves, as far as possible, with factual reports of major national and international news stories, with the world of politics and business and with the arts and sport.

On the other hand there are the “populars” or “tabloids”, so called because of their smaller size. The tabloids - the most widely read of which are THE DAILY MAIL, THE SUN and THE DAILY STAR - concentrate on more emotive reporting of stories often featuring sex, violence, the Royal Family, film and pop stars, and sport. It is often said that the popular press aims to entertain its readers rather then inform them.

The tabloid press is far more popular than the quality press. The average daily circulation in 1989 for the DAILY MIRROR, for example, was almost 3,200,000, while for the TIMES it was less than 450,000. The most popular quality paper is THE DAILY TELEGRAPH with a circulation of around 1,100,000 per day, compared with THE SUN'S circulation of over 4,170,000. Of course, more than one person usually reads each newspaper that is sold (the readership of THE SUN, for instance, is probably over 11,000,000 per day). It is estimated that two out of every three adults regularly read a national daily newspaper, and that three out of four adults regularly read a local newspaper (see below). This means that the British are one of the biggest newspaper-reading nations in the world.