Part I. Print media Unit 1 mass media: general notion

Communication can be regarded on two levels:

- personal communication (sharing information by speaking, writing, or other methods);

- sending messages to a large audience. That type of communication is called m a s s c o m m u n i c a t i o n. Books are one of the oldest methods of mass communication, and television is one of the newest. Newspapers and radio are the other ways to send information to many people. Mass media, thereby, denotes a section of the media specifically designed to reach a large audience. The term mass media was coined in the 1920s with the advent of nationwide radio networks, mass-circulation newspapers and magazines.

Mass media exists in the following f o r m s:

- print media (newspapers, magazines and journals);

- broadcast media (radio and television);

- electronic media (electronic papers and other publications posted in the Internet).

The f u n c t i o n s of mass media are:

- to inform a wide audience about the current events,

- to suggest and often to impose their possible interpretation of the event,

- to share an opinion about them with a contemporary.

Mass media, thereby, plays a crucial role in forming and reflecting public opinion, connecting the world to individuals and reproducing the self-image of society.

A newspaper is a publication devoted chiefly to pre­senting and commenting on the news. Newspapers have certain advantages over the other major news media – television, radio, and news maga­zines. For example, newspapers can cover more news and in much greater detail – than can television and radio news bulletins.

There are two major sizes of newspapers – standard and tabloid.

A standard-sized newspaper has pages that measure about 60 cm by 38 cm. It is also called a b r o a d s h e e t (or a quality paper). The major United Kingdom quality papers are The Times, The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph, The Guardian, The Observer, The Independent, The Financial Times. The main US quality papers are The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The USA Today. The Globe and Mail, The National Post are the major Canadian broadsheets (or heavies). In autumn 2010 The Indepenent launched The I – a quality paper of a tabloid format.

The pages of a t a b l o i d are about half the size of a quality paper – at 38 cm by 30 cm. They are The Sun, The Daily Mirror, The Daily Expres, The Daily Mail, The Sunday Express, The Sunday Mirror (in the United Kingdom), The National Enquirer, The Star Magazine, The New York Post (in the USA). In Britain tabloids are known as popular papers (or pops).

There is also a B e r l i n e r or midi format: 47 cm by 31,5 cm. European papers such as Le Monde (France), La Stampa (Italy), El Pais (Spain) and, since 2005, The Guardian (the United Kingdom).

The standard and tabloid sizes are both used in pub­lishing all types of newspapers.

The three main kinds of papers are:

- daily newspapers,

- weekly newspapers,

- special-interest newspapers (they print news of concern to particular groups).

The papers may also be national (all of the mentioned above) or international (such as The International Herald Tribune) that always focus on international issues.

Newspaper style may be defined as a system of interrelated lexical, phraseological and grammatical means which is perceived by the community speaking one language as a separate unity that serves the purposes of informing and instructing the reader.

There exist two schools of thought on the newspaper style, represented by the Western and Russian schools.

The first approach lists genres of newspaper writing into two large groups. They are news articles and analysis articles (or analytical articles). The first group encompasses two genres – news articles proper and brief news items. The second group embraces five major genres:

- a feature article,

- an editorial,

- a column,

- an op-ed (opposite the editorial),

- letters to the editor.

Russian linguists (I. Galperin being one of them) list the following newspaper genres: brief news and communiqués; editorials; press reports; articles purely informative in character; advertisements and announcements.

Genres of print media

News articles generally follow an inverted pyramid structure for conveying information about a current event, incident, or issue of public interest.

The first sentence of the article, or the lead, gives the most important facts (Who? What?), and the following paragraphs present, in descending order of importance, the details of the event, incident, or issue (Where? When? How? Why?).

The format is valued because readers can leave the story at any point and understand it, even if they don’t have all the details.

A news article strives to remain objective and uses neutral language while presenting a diversity of opinions, voices, and perspectives of the event, incident, or issue under discussion.

The function of brief news items is to inform the reader. They state only facts without giving comment. The bulk of their vocabulary is neutral and common literary.

A feature story (a feature article, or simply a feature) is less time-sensitive than news articles, and may describe selected issue in-depth (people, places, or events of general interest to the public).

As print media faces ever stiffer competition from other sources of news, feature stories are becoming more common as they can be more engaging to read. In many newspapers, news stories are sometimes written in feature style, adopting some of the conventions of feature writing while still covering breaking events.

An editorial is an intermediate phenomenon between the newspaper style and the publicistic style. The function of the editorial is to influence the reader by giving interpretation of certain facts or commentaries on political and social events and happenings of the day.

An op-ed is an abbreviation representing opposite the editorial (page). Op-eds are written for newspaper publication and present the writer's opinion on an issue of current public interest. They are concise enough to appear in 2-3 columns of a standard newspaper, and therefore are sharply focused. Unlike editorials, op-eds are always signed.

A column is a recurring piece or article written by a columnist. It meets each of the following criteria: a) it is a regular feature in a publication; b) it is personality-driven by the author; c) it explicitly contains an opinion or point of view.

Letters to the editor (sometimes abbreviated LTTE or LTE), is a piece of writing (e.g. a letter) sent to a publication about issues of concern from its readers. Like op-eds, they present the writer’s opinion on a current topic, and may be based on personal expertise or on research.

The news article formal structure

Every news article comprises the following formal components – a headline, a lead and a by-line.

The headline is placed at the top of the article and indicates its nature. It is followed by a lead (the first sentence of the article that gives the most important facts). The lead is followed by a by-line – the name of the writer of a news story, feature article, or special column.

In some newspapers there are two or more headlines to one article. The second headline is called a subhead.