This document outlines several conventions of tabloid newspapers regarding their register, mastheads, news agenda, layout, headlines, audience, bias, purpose, and how some newspapers like the Daily Mail break conventions to appeal to both upper and lower class readers. It discusses how tabloids typically use informal language, focus on celebrity gossip and soft news, have large images overlapping headlines, and aim to entertain readers. Broadsheet newspapers tend to focus more on hard political news for upper-class audiences. The Daily Mail exhibits qualities of both formats to attract a wider readership.

1. Newspaper Conventions:
Tabloids
Research into the generic conventions of Tabloid Covers

2. Register
• The register on tabloids is more informal
and they often contain play on words.
Tabloids will rarely use direct address
with things like "we" or "let's".
• Normally the person on the front cover
will be looking at the reader which does
give a sense of direct address.
However, this is normally all the direct
address given by tabloids as they mainly
tell stories of celebrities.

3. Mastheads
• For most newspapers, the masthead shows
the title and the top story of the newspaper.
For most tabloids, the logo is in big bold
letters. However, the Daily Mail breaks this
convention by typing their logos in a
more medieval looking font. Often The Sun
and the Daily Star are more complicated.
• The Daily Express uses a Knight image in-
between the words. All other tabloids only
use words except for the Daily Mail that
has a crest in-between the two words. The
image makes the headline standout from
the other tabloids. Even though the Daily
Express uses a basic font the inclusion of
the medieval looking soldier helps link
it with the Daily Mail which uses the
medieval font.

4. News Agenda
• The news agenda on tabloids is much softer than
the hard news agenda on the broadsheet
newspapers. Tabloids mainly focus on celebrity
news and gossip. Tabloids tend to stay off of the
more heavy, political related news. The news
agenda is always centred around current events
however they normally talk about current British
events. The normal British topic is to do with the
Royal family.
• This links into the myths about England's
population being obsessed with the Royal family.
• This links into Barthe's theory of myths and
ideologies and shows that tabloids abide by the
myths.

5. Layout
• The layout of most tabloid papers is that there is a
large image that dominates the page, and the headline
will overlap the image. However, the Daily Mail and
the Daily Express sometimes have several smaller
images and lots of information spread out around
them. We can see however that this Daily Mail front
page example has one large image that dominates the
whole page. The reason this image breaks the normal
conventions of the Daily Mail, is because the story
focuses on hard news matters, and since tabloids
normally don't focus on hard news matters, then this
convention is also being broken alongside the
conventions of the smaller images.
• However, one thing that they all share is that their
masthead is located at the top of the page.
• Another thing that all tabloids share, is the fact
that for most of them they often have a promotional
reference for something in the paper near the top or
the bottom of the page.
• The Sun, the Daily Mirror and the Daily Star are all
known as being Red Top newspapers because of their
mastheads.

6. Headlines
• Tabloids tend to use puns such
as 'BeLEAVE in Britain' which was
a headline on Brexit. Most headlines are
banner headlines which span the page.
• However, often tabloids can have more
serious topics. They may still focus on
celebrities, but the news will be more
serious and often sad as seen in the
image.
• The headlines normally take up a large
amount of space on the page. Sometimes
there will be a couple of headlines on a
page. One headline is a big title but there
will also frequently be a smaller headline
that tells a story.

7. Audience
• Often the audience of tabloid newspapers
will be the more lower-class/working class
people. The tabloids rarely focus on political
matters and focus on the more celebrity and
sport news stories. Thusly, tabloids tend to
exhibit news that would effect the lower
classes to relate to their audience.
• More upper-class people might prefer to
hear about the more political news stories
or stories that focus on the more hard news
topics rather than the softer news topics
that tabloids feature.

8. Bias
• The Mirror is the most left-wing newspaper.
Left-wing newspapers are often progressive.
• The Daily Mail is the most right-wing
newspaper. Right-wing newspapers are often
conservative.
• Right-wing newspapers are often in greater
demand however there are still many popular
left-wing newspapers.
• The Daily Mail is the only newspaper with a
higher female reader percentage with around
55% of readers being female.

9. Purpose
• The purpose of tabloids is to be
entertaining. The news in tabloids is
presented as entertainment.
• Normally the titles of tabloids contain
puns, and this shows that the
newspapers are for entertainment.
• Also, the news topics are very gossip
related to do with celebrities.
• Tabloids are often very emotive and
will sensationalise stories to help
draw the readers in.

10. Breaking Conventions: The Midmarket
The Daily Mail
The Daily Mail is described as a mid-market
newspaper as they exhibit qualities of both
broadsheets and tabloids, however they are
more like tabloids and classified as such.
Thusly, The Daily Mail features more copy
and columns of text to more appeal to the
upper-class audiences that tend to read
Broadsheets to encourage a wider and more
populated reader base.
As tabloids are generally read by lower-class
audiences, the Daily Mail incorporates a
more broadsheet-esque news agenda and
layout to better attract the upper classes
whilst being recognisable enough as a tabloid
to also draw in lower-class readers, to
maximise readership from all classes: a
midmarket newspaper.

11. Inspiration: Conventions/ Breaks
These Daily Star and Morning Star
layouts will be the basis for my
tabloid. As will the 'The' prefix to the
name, for my broadsheet is called 'The
Nova'
The clean and san-serif font used by
theses newspapers will inspire my
simplistic blocky logo and minimalist
space themed imagery to evoke
physical space from siding with
winged politics as it is a centrist
newspaper.