[B][part I] Tabloid | Berliner | Broadsheets [/COLOR][/B]
Tabloid is a newspaper format particularly popular in the United Kingdom. A tabloid format newspaper is roughly 23 by 14 3/4 inches (597 mm × 375 mm) per spread. This is the smaller of two standard newspaper sizes; the larger newspapers, associated with higher-quality journalism, are called broadsheets. A third major format for newspapers is the Berliner, which is sized between the tabloid and the broadsheet. The phrase tabloid press is used to refer to newspapers focusing on less "serious" content, especially celebrities, sports, sensationalist crime stories and even hoaxes, though in recent years several "mainstream" newspapers have begun printing in the tabloid format (see below and supermarket tabloid). The term red top (as in "News International red tops sweep the board") is also used in Britain for these less serious newspapers, on account of the red nameplates used by most of them. Tabloid is also known as the gutter press by people who wish to express it in a negative manner.
Recently, three traditionally broadsheet daily newspapers—The Independent, The Times, and The Scotsman—have switched to tabloid size; due to the negative connotations of the label, they generally refer to themselves as being in 'compact' format.
[B][part II] overviews [/COLOR][/B]
The name seems to derive from Burroughs-Wellcome's 1884 trademark for their process of making "tablet-like" compressed pharmaceuticals. The connotation of compressed tablet was soon applied to other small things 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).
There are two distinct uses of the term today. The more recent usage, actually deriving from the original usage, refers to weekly or semi-weekly alternative papers in tabloid format. Many of these are essentially straightforward newspapers, publishing in tabloid format. What principally distinguishes these from the dailies, in addition to their less-frequent publication, is the fact that they are usually free to the user, relying on ad revenue, as well as the fact that they tend to concentrate more on local entertainment scenes and issues. A modern tabloid can be positioned up market (quality), mid-market( popular) or down market (sensational). Newspaper studies have shown that readers prefer the smaller size - particularly commuters.
In its traditional sense, tabloids tend to emphasise sensational stories and are reportedly prone to create their news if they feel that the subjects cannot, or will not, sue for libel. In this respect, much of the content of the tabloid press could be said to fall into the category of junk food news.
This style of journalism has been exported to the United States and various other countries. In the People's Republic of China, the popularity of Chinese tabloids have exploded in popularity since the mid-1990s and have tested the limits of press censorship by taking editorial positions critical of the government and for engaging in critical investigative reporting.
Since 1999 all major US supermarket tabloids (as distinct from local newspapers in the tabloid format) ; i.e., the Enquirer, Star, Globe, Examiner, Mira!, Sun, and Weekly World News) have been under single ownership, which some readers fear has undermined the tabloids' traditional competitiveness and has significantly altered their editorial policies and news coverage.
The daily tabloids in the United States -- which date back to the founding of the New York Daily News in 1919. are slightly less overheated than their British counterparts. 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 (though the News usually refrains from matching the Post 's level of sensationalism).
Other prominent US tabloids are the Philadelphia Daily News, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Newsday on New York's Long Island and The Examiner which is a free newspaper published in San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. (Newsday co-founder Alicia Patterson was the daughter of Joseph Patterson, founder of the New York Daily News.)
The biggest largest tabloid (and newspaper in general) in Europe, by circulation, is Germany's Bild-Zeitung, with around 4 million copies (down from above 5 million in the 1980s). Although its paper size is bigger, its style was copied from the British tabloids. (from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia )
[B][part III] How we got the measure of a Berliner [/B][/COLOR]
To show his solidarity with the people of divided Berlin in 1961, President Kennedy claimed that he, too, was a citizen of Berlin. "I am a Berliner," he said. "Ich bin ein Berliner." He didn't know that in German he was saying, "I'm a jam doughnut" (in Frankfurt he would not have said that he was a Frankfurter). He could also have been laying claim to being a newspaper size.
The Berliner format has been around a long time, one of the three in continental Europe when vast rotary presses were built for printing newspapers be fore the first world war. The alternatives to the Berliner - or more correctly, the Berlin - were the so-called North German and the French sizes.
Presses were built to a newspaper's specific needs. The format was important, not just to the finished product, but to its production. The bigger the format the slower the printing. There is a limit to the tremendous speed which a long reel of paper can snake through the press without tearing.
The Guardian's printed area is now 287x443mm and the paper's page size 315x470mm. Ironically, Berliners have every size except a Berliner: their papers are less standardized than their doughnuts. Die Welt and Berliner Morgenpost share a size with the other German national broadsheets - 374x528mm; the evening Berliner Abendblatt is smaller, but still big. The Berlin Daily Sun has never heard of the Berliner format. But that's not surprising. It's published in Berlin, New Hampshire.
There are Berliners elsewhere, though. Barcelona's La Vanguardia and La Repubblica, which is published in Rome, both use the format. The 40,000 daily copies of the Guardian international edition will be printed on presses in Paris, Marseilles, Frankfurt and Madrid.
Berlin was the home of the German Standards Committee which established the paper sizes we use now - A4 and so on. Their proportion, recommended by the Nobel prize-winning chemist Wilhelm Ostwald in the early 1900s, is a rectangle which, when folded in half across its length, retains the same proportion, and forms the next smallest size. In halving their size, the broadsheets which have become tabloids have taken on new proportions.
And there is a three-dimensional aspect to the newspaper. The folded newsprint becomes an object. Apart from taking the ink without its spreading or showing through, the sheet of dried woodpulp and recyled fibre must flex and fold to make up something substantial at the newsagent, in the letterbox, in the hand.
Because Berliners - that is, the people of Berlin - read on buses, they have become experts in folding their broadsheets to read a few columns at a time. Yet, with their shrinking size, European papers have lost some of their versatility. Folded under the arm, the newspaper added sophistication to the silhouette of the urban male. Sticking from the pocket it was a sign of seriousness, on the dog track and on the way to the Bourse. They are now less comfortable to snooze under and much less practical for concealment at the breakfast table. But the format does not threaten its use as a signal: "I shall be wearing a black T-shirt and carrying a copy of the Guardian".
The same size as the reduced Le Monde and the Neue Z?rcher Zeitung, the Berliner format will be handier than the old Guardian. And it won't be mistaken for a doughnut.
Richard Hollis Saturday September 10, 2005 The Guardian
· Richard Hollis is a graphic designer and author of the forthcoming book, Swiss Graphic Design: The Origins and Growth of an International Style 1925- 1965, published by Laurence King |
发表于 2006-5-20 11:35:00
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发表于 2006-5-23 17:37:00
