THE PRESS IN BRITAIN THE IMPORTANCE OF HEADLINES NEWS LAYOUT DEVELOPING NEWS

THE WEEKLEY NEWES 23 rd May 1622  No news from 1632 to 1638  News again from 1639 to 1660  In 1660 the Royal Monopoly over the press forbade the production of the news, only the Gazette, the official newspaper, was allowed  Censorship was abolished in 1695  On 11 th March 1702 The Daily Courant, the 1 st daily newspaper appeared in England

DAILY PAPERS SUNDAY PAPERS LOCAL PAPERS EVENING PAPERS THE FREE PRESS

 QUALITY PAPERS: also known as HEAVIES, they deal with hard news (politics, home affairs, foreign affairs, finance, economics, etc); they are intended for a well-educated reading public.  POPULAR PAPERS: also known as GUTTER PRESS/TABLOIDS, they deal with soft news (human interest stories, about famous people); they are intended for the mass (ordinary people)

QUALITY AND POPULAR PAPERS DIFFERENCES IN THE APPROACH TO THE NEWS  Size  typography  news  paragraphs  lexis

QUALITY PAPERS  Size: large format  Typography: few pictures  News attitude: hard news, both reports and comments  Paragraphs: long  Lexis: both neutral and non-neutral; complex and dense

POPULAR PAPERS  Size: small format (tabloids)  Typography: large block headlines, a lot of pictures and photographs  News attitude: soft news (human interest stories)  Paragraphs: short  Lexis: simple, non-neutral, rich in contrasts (comparatives and superlatives)

REPORTS Any news article which gives information about something that has just happened in order to narrate neutrally COMMENTS/EDITORIALS Any article which gives the writer’s opinion

Most modern newspapers have three sizes:  BROADSHEET : generally associated with more intellectual newspapers. It is the largest of the newspapers formats and is characterized by very long vertical pages. The term derives from types of popular prints usually just of a single sheet, sold on the streets and containing various types of matters, from ballads to political satire.  The most important British newspapers in this format are : The Daily Telegraph, the Times, The Financial Times, etc.

 TABLOID : is half the size of the broadsheet and focuses on local-interest stories and entertainment, emphasises sensational crime stories: gossip columns deal with the personal life of celebrities and sport stars, and also called “junk food news”.  The most important British newspapers in this format are : The Sun, the Daily Mail, The Daily Express, The Daily Mirror, etc.

 BERLINER : is slightly taller and marginally wider than the tabloid, and is both narrower and shorter than the broadsheet format  The most important British newspapers in this format are : The Guardian and The Observer

They regularly appear after The crucial factor in their evolution was the use of the telegraph in the American civil war. The functions of a headline are:  To attract the reader’s attention  To indicate the writer’s attitude  To summarize the content of the article  To indicate the focus of the article

Newspapers headlines have special linguistic characteristics  SPECIALISED VOCABULARY: words are unusual, sensational and short; language is distinctive and telegraphic;  RHETORICAL DEVICES: headlines play with words (metaphors, puns, assonances, consonances, etc.);  INTERNALLY CONSISTENT GRAMMAR

Newspapers headlines have special linguistic characteristics  THEY PLAY WITH KNOWLEDGE: they focus on the reader’s cultural knowledge;  REGISTER: the register differs according to field (economics, politics, science, etc), tenor (formal/informal, technical/non- technical, neutral/emotional, etc.);  MODE : (written/spoken)

Newspapers headlines play with the reader’s knowledge:  SUBSTITUTION: it occurs when a grammatical/lexical item, a homophone or a single letter is substituted  ABBREVIATION: a well-known expression is quoted in abbreviated form  INSERTION: an additional item is inserted into a well-known expression  REPHRASING: an expression is altered in some way

Examples.  SUBSTITUTION: “Dr Spuhler will maintain Swiss role” (Swiss roll)  ABBREVIATION: “Explorer comes in from the cold” (The Spy Who Came from The Cold by John Le Carré); “Once a catholic” (always a catholic)  INSERTION: “Don’t mind the generation gap” (mind the gap); “Ian Gale gives three artists the chance to put the palette knife in” (to put the knife in)  REPHRASING: “Genius Rev butchered at church” ( killed with extreme violence); “Another catch for the early bird: David Fanning on recordings of Mozart’s piano music” (it is the early bird that catches the worm)

Who writes the headline? The subeditor/s When does s/he does it ? Before being printed, when the journalist has already written the article

What do headlines convey? They abstract the story, they do not have to begin it Why are headlines personalised? It depends on factors, such as the newspaper’s house style, and the subject matter. Some subjects require formal treatment, others do not.

VERBALISATION VS NOMINALISATION The headline is verbalised when the main clause is not dominated by a noun phrase but by a verb. Ex: Phones are the new cars E- commerce takes off Pss, wanna buy a kidney? Renewing America Everybody does it

VERBALISATION VS NOMINALISATION The headline is nominalised when the main clause is dominated by a noun phrase. Ex: Truth in advertising God’s worst linguists Out with the long Less Mary Poppins Mamma mia Our nomadic future Of music, murder and shopping Gaza: the wrights and the wrongs

VERBALISATION  The verb gives energy, liveliness and pace to the headline  The message is clear, unambiguous, and not deviant  The journalist’s position is neutral  It has a reporting function NOMINALISATION  It obstacles the reader’s interpretation  It makes the message more ambiguous, the language is more deviant  It underlines the journalist’s position/opinion  It attracts the reader’s attention  It is an excellent tool to summarize the article

While writing articles the journalist must respect the rules of communication:  QUALITY: do no say things which are not true  QUANITY: do not say either too much or too little  RELEVANCE: do not say things which are not connected with the discourse  MANNER: be brief, be ordered, be clear, be simple

News stories are socially created; to be published they must respect the general criteria of newsworthiness. News must be:  Real: no invention  Unambiguous: clearly developed and respectful of the cultural proximity  In agreement with the reading public as much as possible  Clearly stereotyped: the readers are supposed to understand  Topic-oriented: the importance of a subject depends on where it is seen from

NEWS STORIES have a structure, direction, point, and a viewpoint As Labov (1967) stated, stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. A fully-formed narrative story respects the following pattern: Abstract Orientation Action Evaluation Result or resolution coda

NEWS STORIES have a structure, direction, point, and a viewpoint (Bell: 1991, 1995,1996)  The abstract corresponds to the lead/1 st paragraph and the headline: the lead summarizes the central action and it establishes the main point of a news story. The headline is the abstract of the abstract, it appears as the first abstract in the printed story.

 The orientation: in narratives it sets the scene: who the actors are, where, and when the events take/took place, what the initial situation is/was. In the news it is necessary. For journalists who, what, when and where are the basic facts which are concentrated at the beginning of the story, but may be expanded further down.

 At the heart of a personal narrative the action corresponds to the sequence of events which occurred, it is the temporal sequence of its sentences; in news stories, by contrast, events are seldom if ever told in chronological order (the body of the story).  The evaluation, which in narratives distinguishes a directionless sequence of sentences from a story, in news stories it has the same function; it establishes the significance of what is being told, it focuses on the events, and justifies them claiming the reading public’s attention.

 The personal narrative moves to a resolution. News stories often do not present such clearcut results. When they do, the result will be in the lead rather than at the end of the story. News stories are not temporally structured, or turned in a finished fashion.  The coda, which is widely used in personal narratives, does not appear in news stories.

There are three additional categories in news stories:  Background: it represents the past; it covers any events prior to the current action-story.  Commentary: it represents the present, it provides the journalist’s present-time observations on the action, assessing, and commenting on events as they happen. It may provide the context to assist understanding of what is happening, evaluative comment on the action, expectations of how the situation will develop.  Follow up: it represents the future; it covers the story future- time, any action subsequent to the main action of an event. It can include verbal reaction by other parties or non-verbal consequences.

THE INVERTED PYRAMID CONCEPT (Van Dijk, 1988)  Concentration of information in the lead, headline, sub-headline  Developing of information in the body/action, where events are not developed respecting a chronological order  News stories have a purpose  News stories never end with a conclusion/coda

HOW DO THE JOURNALISTS DEVELOP THE NEWS?  While communicating there must be a balance between new information and given information; given information generally comes at the beginning (theme), new information generally comes at the end (rheme);

HOW DO THE JOURNALISTS DEVELOP THE NEWS?  While communicating the new element(s), the journalist keeps the readers interested because this is new for them; they are told something they did not know. If all the information were new, without any anchor in shared knowledge, they would not be able to absorb the load.

HOW DO THE JOURNALISTS DEVELOP THE NEWS?  The weighting of the new information determines the level of communicative dynamism; theme is seen as the basis of the information content (low communicative dynamism), while rheme completes the information and fulfils the communicative purpose (high communicative dynamism).

 BREVITY AND EFFICIENCY: information is incapsulated into limited spaces, with respect for the effect it has on the audience  IMPRESSIVNESS : sensational words are chosen  DEVIANCE: deviant language is used to attract, to persuade  PERSUASIVENESS: relevant lexical and grammatical items are selected

 QUOTATIONS: journalists quote for three main different reasons: NEUTRALITY : a quote is an unquestionable fact DISTANCE: to absolve the journalist TRUTHNESS: to add the story the flavour of the newsmaker’s own words

LANGUAGE: to attract the reader’s attention, the journalist uses:  COLLOQUIAL TERMS: spoken language allow everybody to feel comfortable with both given and new information  FIGURES OF SPEECH: to produce high deviance, suspense, colourfulness and liveliness