Sales per day Readers per day

(millions) (millions)

The Sun	3.7	9.9
The Mirror	2.3	6.3
Daily Mail	2.2	5.1
The Express	1.1	2.6
The Daily Telegraph	1.0	2.5
The Times	0.7	2.0
Daily Star	0.6	1.9
The Guardian	0.4	1.2
The Independent	0.2	0.7
Financial Times	0.2	0.6

(Sales and readership of national daily newspapers, 1998.

Source: National Readership Surveys Ltd.)

There are approximately 130 daily and Sunday papers, 1,400 weekly papers and over 6,500 periodical publications. More newspapers, proportionately, are sold in Britain than in almost any other country. On average, two out of three people over the age of 15 read a national morning newspaper. National newspapers have a circulation of about 1 3 million on weekdays and 1 7 million on Sundays, but the readership is twice this figure. The high numbers reflect the fact that newspapers are not only popular with educated middle-class but also with working-class people. At first glance, therefore, the British press seems in good health. The national newspapers, both on weekdays and on Sundays, fall into two broad categories: the 'popular' and 'quality' press.

The more serious, weightier papers are known as broadsheets on account of their larger, rather cumbersome format. The lighter, easier-to-read papers have a page size half as big, and are called tabloids. The Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian and Independent are broadsheets; The Sun, Mirror and Star aretabloids. The Express and Mail arein between - tabloid in size, but semi-broadsheet in content.

The cultural gulf between the broadsheets and the tabloids is enormous;it almost seems strange to call them both newspapers. In the words of one ex-editor of The Times:

The values of mass journalism are the traditional romantic values of energy, intuition, personality, sexuality, excitement and myth. The romantic element in the mass mind responds instinctively to the energy in the mass newspaper. Readers are presented with an exciting world of demons and temptresses, a flickering and exotic fairy tale...By contrast the values of the serious press are those of analysis, rationality, truth, lucidity, balance, reality and, I would hope, compassion.

A serious paper like The Independent emphasises news coverage, political and economic analysis and social and cultural issues. It gives long, detailed news stories with historical analysis, and carefully balanced comment which is usually separate from the news reporting. It has a lot of foreign news; it has sections on books, education and computers; it rarely mentions the National Lottery except to discuss its organisation.

All the popular papers, with the exception of the Sunday Express, are 'tabloid' in format. The tabloids are essentially mass entertainment. They are smaller than the other papers, and are distinguished by large illustrations, bold captions and a sensational prose style. The lightest of the tabloids, The Sun, has very short items on politics and world events in which it freely mixes facts and comment; it has many pages of gossip about TV celebrities and lots of sex stories; it has competitions and horoscopes and semi-pornographic photos of women; it is obsessed with the lottery and lottery winners.In spite of the apparently light content of the tabloids, they appear to have as much if not more political influence than the broadsheets.

Britain has a substantial number of regional newspapers also. Of these the two Scottish ones, The Scotsman (Edinburgh) and the Herald (Glasgow) are the most important, since they are also national papers. They each sell about 750,000 copies daily. But others with a large circulation include the Birmingham Evening Mail (200,000), the Wolverhampton Express and Star (208,000), the Birmingham Sunday Mercury (145,000), and the Leeds Yorkshire Post (75,000). These, too, are all in numerical decline. Britain's ethnic minority communities also produce their own papers, both in English and in the vernacular languages. The oldest of these is the Jewish Chronicle, founded in 1841. But there are Asian, Caribbean and even Arabic newspapers published in Britain.

Finally, there are over 800 free newspapers, popularly known as 'freebies', almost all of them weekly and financed entirely by advertising. They achieve a weekly circulation of over 40 million. They function as local noticeboards, where local events are advertised, and anyone can advertise in the 'for sale' or 'wanted' columns.

The best-selling weeklies are those giving details of the forthcoming week's television and radio programmes, What's On TV, the Radio Times and TV Times, with circulations in 1996 of 1.6 million, 1.4 million and 1 million, respectively. Second to them in popularity are women's magazines, of which easily the best-selling is Take a Break, with a weekly sale of almost 1.5 million, and Woman's Weekly, Woman's Own, Woman, Woman's Realm, which sell between 300,000 and 800,000 copies each week. During the early 1990s some recently established men's magazines, Loaded, GQ and Esquire, became popular with circulations of 100,000 to 240,000. The leading opinion journals are The Economist, a slightly right-of-centre political and economic weekly, the New Statesman and Society, a left-of-centre political and social weekly, the Spectator, a right-of-centre political weekly, and Private Eye, a satirical fortnightly with a reputation for devastating attacks on leading personalities, and some libel suits against it in the law courts. With almost 1,500 staff in 91 countries, no newspaper anywhere can compete with Britain's formidable news agency, Reuters. Across the world its name has become an assurance of objectivity, accuracy and reliability. Although run from London, Reuters deliberately avoids any image of being a British institution with English news values. As the day progresses, its world news file is edited from three different cities, switching time zones from Hong Kong to London to New York. Its reports are filed in French, German, Japanese, Arabic and Spanish, as well as English. Reuters also owns Reuters Television (RTV), the largest international television news agency in the world, providing news video to broadcasters in 89 countries.

Exercise 1 Answer the following questions

• Are any British newspapers available in our country? Have you read any of them?

• What is the advantage of newspapers over TV for news?

• What is the relationship between newspapers and political parties in our country?

Exercise 2 Read and translate the sentences below into Russian or English

1)Yet reports in the so-called quality press and on television have blamed tabloid newspapers.

2) Странность состоит в том, что более солидные издания посвящают акры страниц историям о королевской семье, в новостях при малейшей возможности показывают о ней скандальные сюжеты, а потом обвиняют желтую прессу во вторжении в частную жизнь.

3) The tabloid newspapers - or gutter press as they're known in Britain - have always been а source оf fascination to media watchers.

4) Очевидно, что по сравнению с буднями меньшее количество людей смотрит телевизор в пятницу вечером, а по субботам найдется не так много охотников почитать газеты.

5) With the Easter holiday upon us, the mass circulation paper, ‘The Sun’, focuses оn а strike by French air traffic controllers. In typically robust fashion ‘The Sun’ headlines the story: FILTHY FRENCH SINK OUR HOLS.

6) В современных газетах вы найдете статью практически на любую тему, так как редакторский состав пытается угодить всем своим читателям, отражать веянья времени и «быть ближе к народу». Но при всем при этом очевидно, что газеты с массовым тиражом обнаруживают свой обычный интерес к историям, «замешанных» на сплетнях и сенсациях.

Exercise 3 Fill the gaps with a suitable word as in the example.

1 A: Is the paper..... published.............every day?

B: No, it....................................out once a week.

2 There are more than ten national....................................newspapers in Britain.

3 I haven't read 'Hello' magazine. Is it a weekly or a....................................?

4 The manager was interviewed for the paper by their best known....................................

5 Do you understand this_____________? '200 WOMEN GIVEN WRONG DIAGNOSIS'

6 The picture on the front page was taken by one of their youngest...................................

7 There was a fantastic....................................in the paper yesterday about 'Space'. Did you read it?

8 I read a....................................of his latest film. It doesn't sound very good.

9 You often see....................................in the paper which promise that you can learn a language in ten hours with this method. It's nonsense.

10....................................to The Times, the government is starting to panic.

Exercise 4 Read the text below and think of the word which best fits each space. Use only one word in each space. There is an example (0) at the beginning.

Millions of people 0) from all around the world buy a newspaper every day. Some people read a broadsheet 1)___________ its analysis of world events. Others just flick 2) __________ a tabloid for the latest celebrity gossip or to glance 3) ______________ the horoscopes or TV listings. Whatever the reason, your paper can provide you 4) _____________ all sorts of useful and entertaining information. In the past, newspapers played an even 5) ______________ important role, as they helped to improve literacy and encouraged people to fight 6) _________________ freedom and human rights.

The concept of newspapers can be traced as 7) ____________ back as ancient Rome, where each day handwritten notices would 8) __________ put up around the city and its provinces. They would give news about government decisions, important marriages, births and deaths, and even the results 9) _________ gladiatorial contests. Printed reports of news events started 10) _________ appear in the 16th century, and 11) _____________ the late 18th century newspapers were common in Europe and the USA. In fact, many newspapers which are still going strong today, 12) _____________ The Observer and The Times in London, date back to this period. As printing technology has improved, newspapers have 13) ______________ able to increase circulation, and now individual newspapers can sell millions of copies. Even 14) ______________ the introduction and development of other media, such as TV and radio, newspapers still 15) __________ an important part in our live

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