Newspaper Cover Analysis

Firstly, the masthead 'The Sun', encourages interest in the front cover story and the newspaper itself due to the 'The Sun' being a respected tabloid and trusted, local, Sunday edition source of the latest news stories on current events and also due to the large size of the bold read text capturing the eye of the audience. Beside the the masthead is a plug, where it says ''free new-look tv mag'', the word 'free' persuades the audience immediently into looking into the newspaper as it helps them spark interest into possibly winning some sort of free prize. Furthermore, the plug uses star-billing as they show a picture of ant  and dec, two respected and iconic celebrities on British television. The main image used is highly impactful in persuading the audience as it shows a image of firemen holding/saving a civilian from what looks to be a recent attack or incident of some sort and so this would spark interest within the reader to find out what incident has occurred. The main headline works with the main image to create a highly impactful news paper cover. The main headline reads ''massacre in Paris'', here the word 'massacre' has connotations to high amounts of death, chaos and possibly destruction so this would interest and therefore encourage the readers to engage into the story and the newspaper itself to find out more about the incident. Above the main headline are two straplines, the most impactful strapline is the first which states some grim facts about the incident that occurred such as ''40 killed in gun and bomb terror attacks'', this is greatly impactful into drawing in a audience as these added facts give he reader an insight on the depth of the situation to help them more understand why this story is being regarded as a 'massacre', this gives the readers a trust in a solid source of news. Lastly, i identified a pull quote from this newspaper due to the small boxed text in the bottom right with a photo beside it which seems to be some sort of extremist group member. A pull quote is similar to a strapline as it is meant to be a brief source of information on the main text of an article used as a subheading or graphic feature as seen on this newspaper cover, this is to catch the readers attention, hence it being called a 'pull' quote.


I will now define and explain the newspaper industry and their tactics used to gain the attention of readers. Firstly, a range of different newspapers are published in the uk, these include national, local and Sunday editions. The newspaper cover i have chosen is from 'the sun' which is a Sunday edition newspaper. 'The sun'' is also a tabloid newspaper rather then a broadsheet. This is because this can be identified with its 'red top' masthead and the fact that their newspapers are more colourful generally with much less information/script on the front page, instead usually a large main image, large main headline with minimal straplines and pull quotes. However, a broadsheet can usually be identified by much less colour and graphics being shown on its front page and more solid facts and news stories and much smaller main images and headlines on the front page instead, and example would be 'the guardian'. Furthermore, most newspapers have a political bias, either left or right wing. Left wing would be those that tend to support political parties such as the Labour party an socialist policies that advocate social equality, an example of this would be 'The Morning star'. Right-wing newspapers are those that tend to support conservative party and UKIP, believe in the free marker and oppose socialism, an example would be the newspaper i have chosen which is 'the sun'. Ownership has a great impact on the production and distribution of a set newspaper product. Rupert Murdoch has by far the largest newspaper corporation, this includes newspapers such as The Times, The Sunday Times and the newspaper i chose to analyse which is The Sun. The newspaper industry is in the hands of only a few powerful individuals and media groups. Even though overall newspaper sales are decreasing, the newspapers front pages till hold importance in communicating messages  targeted toward the audience. Every newspaper has news agendas, these are decisions made by gatekeepers who decide how the news is selected and constructed for an audience. The news values are the criteria that influence decisions made by the individuals or media groups who decide what stories should be shown in their newspaper, those consist of the owners themselves, editors and journalists.

These news values consist of: Threshold, this is the size of the story, which means the bigger the event is that occurred determines if it is more likely to get onto the news agenda. For instance the newspaper cover i chose has a large threshold due to the story being very significant and their for a news agenda to capture an audience. Negativity is a news agenda as bad news is more exiting and interesting for audiences rather then good news, this is also shown in the cover i have chosen, showing a terror attack that occurred in France that resulted in multiple casualties. Unexpectedness also relates to the cover i chose as it means an event that is a shock or out of the ordinary which can be related to the Paris terror attack, events such as this can overwhelm other stories off the news agenda and can change many variables of the cover last minute. Unambiguity is the factor of the events being not complex and easy to report, this wouldn't be related to the cover i chose as their are many question left to be answered for why the attack occurred in the first place. Unambiguity in a story can have higher agenda in newspapers. Human interest views in news stories are more likely to be higher in agenda, as readers are more interested in personalised subjects such as celebrities. Proximity is a factor taken more by local newspapers or tabloids such as the sun, this means the story tends to be more local to spark more interest in the reader, they are also more ethnocentric than other quality newspapers this is because local newspaper tend to judge other cultures based on their own preconceptions within their own culture. Elite nations are stories that focus on powerful nations or important individuals, countries such as the U.S would have an higher agenda due to the country being known as a 'superpower'. Continuity are stories which have high significance so it occurs multiple times as new aspects of the story are updated, e.g. Brexit which had multiple stages in the event which each need to be covered by news sources.