British press

The British press consists of several different kinds of newspapers.

The national papers are the ones sold all over the country, with a large readership or “circulation”, giving general news; they are produced in the capital city, London. In recent years, the circulation of the national newspapers has gone down. Some papers had to close because they weren’t making enough money – either from the sale of the paper or from the advertising in it. Some newspapers have started up in the last twenty years – for instance, The Sun and The Daily Star.

There are two main types of national paper – the “popular” papers and the “quality” papers. The popular papers are smaller in size with lots of pictures, big headlines and short articles. They are easy to read and often contain little real information; sometimes they give more space to opinion than to news. They usually have “human interest” stories, stories about ordinary people and events, which are included because they are amusing or odd. Examples of this type of newspapers are The Daily Mail, The Sun and The Daily Mirror.

“Quality “ papers appeal to the more serious reader, who wants to read about politics and foreign affairs. These papers, such as The Daily Telegraph, The Times and The Guardian are bigger in size, with longer articles and a wider coverage of events. They have different pages for home news, foreign affairs, feature articles, fashion, business, sport and so on.

People in Britain buy more papers on Sunday than on weekdays. The Sunday papers have a higher circulation than the dailies. As with the dailies, there are both popular and quality Sunday newspapers. The quality ones have different sections and a colour magazine (usually full of advertisement).

In addition to these there are the evening papers such as London’s Evening Standard and Evening News. Provincial or local papers serve towns and areas outside London; some of them are quite famous, like The Birmingham Post, for example.

Most of the papers have a political viewpoint. They give opinions and news which favour a political party or group.