Tabloid newspaper
A tabloid is an industry term for a smaller newspaper format per spread; to a weekly or semi-weekly alternative newspaper that focuses on local-interest stories and entertainment, often distributed free of charge (often in a relatively small newspaper format); or to a newspaper that tends to sensationalize and emphasize or exaggerate sensational crime stories, gossip columns repeating scandalous and innuendos about the deeply personal lives of celebrities and sports stars, and other so-called "junk food news" or junk mail (often in a relatively small newspaper format). As the term "tabloid" has become synonymous with down-market newspapers in some areas, some small-format papers which claim a higher standard of journalism refer to themselves as "compact" newspapers instead.
The tabloid newspaper format is particularly popular in the United Kingdom where its page dimensions are roughly 430 × 280 mm (16.9 in × 11.0 in). Larger newspapers, traditionally associated with 'higher-quality' journalism, are called broadsheets though several British 'quality' papers have recently adopted the tabloid format. Another UK newspaper format is the Berliner, which is sized between the tabloid and the broadsheet and has been adopted by The Guardian and its sister paper The Observer.
History
The word "Tabloid" comes from the name given by the London based pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome & Co. to the compressed tablets they marketed as "Tabloid" pills in the late 1880s. Prior to compressed tablets, medicine was usually taken in bulkier powder form. While Burroughs Wellcome & Co. were not the first to derive the technology to make compressed tablets, they were the most successful at marketing them, hence the popularity of the term 'tabloid' in popular culture. The connotation of tabloid was soon applied to other small items and to the "compressed" journalism that condensed stories into a simplified, easily-absorbed format. The label of "tabloid journalism" (1901) preceded the smaller sheet newspapers that contained it (1918).
An early pioneer of tabloid journalism was Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe (1865–1922), who amassed a large publishing empire of halfpenny papers by rescuing failing stolid papers and transforming them to reflect the popular taste, which yielded him enormous profits. Harmsworth used his tabloids to influence public opinion, for example, by bringing down the wartime government of Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith in the Shell Crisis of 1915.
As a weekly alternative newspaper
The more recent usage of the term 'tabloid' refers to weekly or semi-weekly newspapers in tabloid format. Many of these are essentially straightforward newspapers, publishing in tabloid format, because subway and bus commuters prefer to read smaller-size newspapers due to lack of space. These newspapers are distinguished from the major daily newspapers, in that they purport to offer an "alternative" viewpoint, either in the sense that the paper's editors are more locally-oriented, or that the paper is editorially independent from major media conglomerates.
Other factors that distinguish "alternative" weekly tabloids from the major daily newspapers are their less-frequent publication, and that they are usually free to the user, since they rely on ad revenue. As well, alternative weekly tabloids tend to concentrate on local- or even neighbourhood-level issues, and on local entertainment in the bars and local theatres.
Alternative tabloids can be positioned as upmarket (quality) newspapers, to appeal to the better-educated, higher-income sector of the market; as middle-market (popular); or as downmarket (sensational) newspapers, which emphasize sensational crime stories and celebrity gossip. In each case, the newspapers will draw their advertising revenue from different types of businesses or services. An upmarket weekly's advertisers are often organic-grocers, boutiques, and theatre-companies while a downmarket's may have those of trade-schools, super-markets, and adult-services, both usually contain ads from local bars, auto-dealers, movie theaters, and a classified-ads section.
As a sensational, gossip-filled newspaper
The term "tabloid" can also refer to a newspaper that tends to emphasize topics such as sensational crime stories, astrology, gossip columns about the personal lives of celebrities and sports stars, and junk food news. Often, tabloid newspaper allegations about the sexual practices, drug use, or private conduct of celebrities is borderline defamatory; in many cases, celebrities have successfully sued for libel, demonstrating that tabloid stories have defamed them. It is this sense of the word that led to some entertainment news programs to be called tabloid television. Tabloid newspapers are sometimes pejoratively called the gutter press.
In the U.S. supermarket tabloids are large, national versions of these tabloids, usually published weekly. They are named for their prominent placement along the checkout lines of supermarkets. Supermarket tabloids are particularly notorious for the over-the-top sensationalizing of stories, the facts of which can often be called into question. These tabloids - such as The Globe and The National Enquirer - often use aggressive and usually mean-spirited tactics to sell their issues. Unlike regular tabloid-format newspapers, supermarket tabloids are distributed through the magazine distribution channel, similarly to other weekly magazines and mass-market paperback books. Leading examples include The National Enquirer, Star, Weekly World News (now defunct), and Sun.
Most major supermarket tabloids in the U.S. are published by American Media, Inc., including The National Enquirer, Star, The Globe, National Examiner, ¡Mira!, Sun, Weekly World News and Radar.
Collectively called the "tabloid press", tabloid newspapers in Britain tend to be simply and sensationally written, and to give more prominence than broadsheets to celebrities, sports, crime stories and even hoaxes; they also more readily take a political position (either left-wing or right-wing) on news stories, ridiculing politicians, demanding resignations and predicting election results. The term Red tops refers to tabloids with red nameplates, such as The Sun, the Daily Star, the Daily Mirror and the Daily Sport, and distinguishes them from the black top Daily Express and Daily Mail. Red top newspapers are usually simpler in writing style, dominated by pictures, and directed at the more sensational end of the market.
In the United States
The daily tabloids in the United States date back to the founding of the New York Daily News in 1919, followed by the New York Daily Mirror and the New York Evening Graphic in the 1920s. Competition among those three for crime, sex and celebrity news was considered a scandal to the mainstream press of the day. In comparison, today's American daily tabloids are generally much less overheated and less oriented towards scandal and sensationalism than their predecessors, or their British counterparts. With the exception of the supermarket tabloids (see below), which have little mainstream credibility, the word "tabloid" in the U.S. can refer more to format than to content. The tabloid format is used by a number of respected and indeed prize-winning American papers.
However, since its initial purchase by Rupert Murdoch in 1976, the New York Post has become the exemplar of the brash British-style tabloid in the US, and its competition with the Daily News has become newspaper legend.
Prominent US tabloids include nationally the Metro, locally, the Philadelphia Daily News, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, the Boston Herald, the New York Observer, Newsday on New York's Long Island, the San Francisco Examiner and Baltimore Examiner. (Newsday co-founder Alicia Patterson was the daughter of Joseph Patterson, founder of the New York Daily News.)
- Also see the Wikipedia page [ Tabloid newspaper ]
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