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Newspaper

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Media

   A selection of newspapers
   Enlarge
   A selection of newspapers
                       Topics in Journalism
                         Professional Issues

   Ethics & News Values
   Objectivity & Attribution
   News Source & Libel Law
   News & Investigation
   Reporting & Writing
   Business & Citizen
   Alternative & Advocacy
   Sports Journalism
   Science Journalism
   Computer and video game journalism

   Journalism Education & Fourth Estate
   Other Topics & Books
                            Social Impact

   Infotainment & Celebrity
   'Infotainers' & Personalities
   News Management
   Distortion & VNRs
   PR & Propaganda Model
   'Yellow' Journalism
   Press freedom
                             News media

   Newspapers & Magazines
   News Agencies
   Broadcast Journalism
   Online & Blogging
   Alternative Media
                                Roles

   Journalist, Reporter, Editor, News presenter, Photo Journalist,
   Columnist, Visual Journalist

   A newspaper is a publication containing news and information and
   advertising, usually printed on low-cost paper called newsprint. It may
   be general or special interest, most often published daily or weekly.

   The first printed newspaper was published in 1605, and the form has
   thrived even in the face of competition from technologies such as
   radio, television, and the internet. Recent developments on the
   internet are posing major challenges to its business model, however.
   Paid circulation is declining in most countries, and advertising
   revenue, which makes up the bulk of a newspaper’s income, is shifting
   from print to online, resulting in a general decline in newspaper
   profits. This has led to some predictions that newspapers’ role in
   society will shrink or even disappear, although historically, new media
   technologies such as radio and television never supplanted print media.

Content

   General-interest newspapers are usually journals of current news. Those
   can include political events, crime, business, culture, sports, and
   opinions (either editorials, columns, or political cartoons).
   Newspapers use photographs to illustrate stories; they use editorial
   cartoonists, usually to illustrate writing that is opinion, rather than
   news.

   Some specific features a newspaper may include are:
     * weather news and forecasts
     * an advice column
     * critic reviews of movies, plays, restaurants, etc.
     * editorial opinions
     * a gossip column
     * comic strips and other entertainment, such as crosswords, sudoku
       and horoscopes
     * a sports column or section
     * a humor column or section
     * a food column

   Reading the newspaper: Brookgreen Gardens in Pawleys Island, South
   Carolina, United States.
   Enlarge
   Reading the newspaper: Brookgreen Gardens in Pawleys Island, South
   Carolina, United States.

Types of newspaper

   A daily newspaper is issued every day, often with the exception of
   Sundays and some national holidays. Saturday, and where they exist
   Sunday, editions of daily newspapers tend to be larger, include more
   specialized sections and advertising inserts, and cost more. Typically,
   the vast majority of these newspapers' reporters work Monday to Friday,
   so the Sunday and Monday editions largely depend on content done in
   advance or content that is syndicated.

   Weekly newspapers are also common and tend to be smaller and less
   prestigious than daily papers. However, those Sunday newspapers that do
   not have weekday editions are not considered to be weekly newspapers,
   and are generally equivalent in size and prestige to daily newspapers.

   Most nations have at least one newspaper that circulates throughout the
   whole country: a national newspaper, as contrasted with a local
   newspaper serving a city or region. In the United States and Canada,
   there are few truly national newspapers, with the notable exceptions
   The Wall Street Journal and USA Today in the US and The Globe and Mail
   and The National Post in Canada. Large metropolitan newspapers with
   expanded distribution networks such as The New York Times and The
   Washington Post can fill the role of de facto national newspapers. In
   the United Kingdom, there are numerous national newspapers, including
   The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Observer, The Daily
   Mail, The Sun, The Daily Mirror, The Daily Express and The Independent.

   As English has become the international language of business and
   technology, newspapers formerly in non-English (only) languages have
   been publishing an English-language edition. In places as varied as
   Jerusalem and Bombay (Mumbai), newspapers are printed to a local and
   international English-speaking public. The advent of the Internet has
   also allowed the non-English newspapers to put out a scaled-down
   English version to give their newspaper a global outreach.

   There has also been an emerging class of international newspapers.
   Some, such as The Stageman International Weekly, Christian Science
   Monitor and The International Herald Tribune, have always had that
   focus, while others are repackaged national newspapers or
   “international editions” of national-scale or large metropolitan
   newspapers. Often these international editions are scaled down to
   remove articles that might not interest the wider range of readers.

   The owner of the newspaper, or person in charge, is the publisher. The
   person responsible for content is the editor, editor in chief, or
   executive editor.

   Newspapers have been developed around very narrow topic areas, such as
   news for merchants in a specific industry, fans of particular sports,
   fans of the arts or of specific artists, and participants in the same
   sorts of activities or lifestyles.

   Newspapers often refine distribution of ads and news through zoning and
   editioning.

   Zoning occurs when advertising and editorial content change to reflect
   the location to which the product is delivered. The editorial content
   often may change merely to reflect changes in advertising — the
   quantity and layout of which affects the space available for editorial
   — or may contain region-specific news. In rare instances, the
   advertising may not change from one zone to another, but there will be
   different region-specific editorial content. As the content can vary
   widely, zoned editions are often produced in parallel.

   Editioning occurs in the main sections as news is updated throughout
   the night. The advertising is usually the same in each edition (with
   the exception of zoned regionals, in which it is often the ‘B’ section
   of local news that undergoes advertising changes). As each edition
   represents the latest news available for the next press run, these
   editions are produced linearly, with one completed edition being copied
   and updated for the next edition. The previous edition is always copied
   to maintain a Newspaper of Record and to fall back on if a quick
   correction is needed for the press. For example, both the New York
   Times and Wall Street Journal offer a regional edition, printed through
   a local contractor, and featuring locale specific content. The
   Journal's global advertising rate card provides a good example of
   editioning.

Format

   Most modern newspapers are in one of three sizes:
     * Broadsheets: 600 mm by 380 mm (23½ by 15 inches), generally
       associated with more intellectual newspapers, although a trend
       towards “compact” newspapers is changing this.
     * Tabloids: half the size of broadsheets at 380 mm by 300 mm (15 by
       11¾ inches), and often perceived as sensationalist in contrast to
       broadsheets.
     * Berliner or Midi: 470 mm by 315 mm (18½ by 12¼ inches) used by
       European papers such as Le Monde in France, La Stampa in Italy and,
       since 12 September 2005, The Guardian in the United Kingdom.

   Newspapers are usually printed on inexpensive, off-white paper known as
   newsprint. Since the 1980s, the newspaper industry has largely moved
   away from lower-quality letterpress printing to higher-quality,
   four-colour process, offset printing. In addition, desktop computers,
   word processing software, graphics software, digital cameras and
   digital prepress and typesetting technologies have revolutionized the
   newspaper production process. These technologies have enabled
   newspapers to publish colour photographs and graphics, as well as
   innovative layouts and better design.

   To help their titles stand out on newsstands, some newspapers are
   printed on coloured newsprint. For example, the Financial Times is
   printed on a distinctive salmon pink paper, the Italian sports
   newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport is printed on pink paper, while
   L'Équipe (formerly L'Auto) is printed on yellow paper. Both the latter
   promoted major cycling races and their newsprint colours were reflected
   in the colours of the jerseys used to denote the race leader; thus, the
   leader in the Giro d'Italia wears a pink jersey, while the Tour de
   France leader wears a yellow jersey, or maillot jaune.

Circulation and readership

   The number of copies distributed, either on an average day or on
   particular days (typically Sunday), is called the newspaper’s
   circulation and is one of the principal factors used to set advertising
   rates. Circulation is not necessarily the same as copies sold, since
   some copies or newspapers are distributed without cost. Readership
   figures are higher than circulation figures because many copies are
   read by more than one person.
   Newspaper vendor, Paddington, London, February 2005
   Enlarge
   Newspaper vendor, Paddington, London, February 2005

   According to the Guinness Book of Records, the daily circulation of the
   Soviet newspaper Trud exceeded 21,500,000 in 1990, while the Soviet
   weekly Argumenty i fakty boasted the circulation of 33,500,000 in 1991.

   According to United Nations data from 1995 Japan has three daily papers
   —the Asahi Shimbun, Mainichi Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun— with
   circulations well above 4 million. Germany’s Bild, with a circulation
   of 4.5 million, was the only other paper in that category.

   In the United Kingdom, The Sun is the top seller, with around 3.2
   million copies distributed daily (late-2004).

   In India, The Times of India is the largest English newspaper, with
   2.14 million copies daily. According to the 2006 National Readership
   Study, the Dainik Jagran is the most-read, local-language (Hindi)
   newspaper, with 21.2 million readers .

   In the U.S., USA Today has a daily circulation of approximately 2
   million, making it the most widely distributed paper in the country.

   A common measure of a newspaper’s health is market penetration. Market
   penetration is expressed as a percentage of households that receive a
   copy of the newspaper against the total number of households in the
   paper’s market area. In the 1920s, on a national basis in the U.S.,
   daily newspapers achieved market penetration of 130 percent (meaning
   the average U.S. household received 1.3 newspapers). As other media,
   such as radio and television, began to compete with newspapers, and as
   printing became easier and less expensive giving rise to a greater
   diversity of publications, market penetration began to decline. It
   wasn't until the early 1970s, however, that market penetration dipped
   below 100 percent. By 2000, it was 53 percent 1.

Advertising

   Most newspapers make nearly all their money from advertising; the
   income from the customer’s payment at the news-stand is small in
   comparison. For that reason, newspapers are inexpensive to buy, and
   some are free. The portion of the newspaper that is not advertising is
   called editorial content, editorial matter, or simply editorial,
   although the last term is also used to refer specifically to those
   articles in which the newspaper and its guest writers express their
   opinions. In recent years, the advertorial emerged. Advertorials are
   most commonly recognized as an opinion-editorial which third-parties
   pay a fee to have included in the paper. Advertorials commonly
   advertise new products or techniques, such as a new design for golf
   equipment, a new form of laser surgery, or weight-loss drugs. The tone
   is usually closer to that of a press release than of an objective news
   story.

   Publishers of commercial newspapers strive for higher circulation, so
   that advertising in their newspaper becomes more effective, allowing
   the newspaper to attract more advertisers and to charge more for the
   service. But some advertising sales also market demographics: some
   newspapers might sacrifice higher circulation numbers in favour of an
   audience with a higher income.

   Many paid-for newspapers offer a variety of subscription plans. For
   example, someone might want only a Sunday paper, or perhaps only Sunday
   and Saturday, or maybe only a workweek subscription, or perhaps a daily
   subscription.

   Some newspapers provide some or all of their content on the internet,
   either at no cost or for a fee. In some cases, free access is available
   only for a matter of days or weeks, after which readers must register
   and provide personal data. In other cases, free archives are provided.

Newspaper journalism

   Since newspapers began as a journal (record of current events), the
   profession involved in the making of newspapers began to be called
   journalism. Much emphasis has been placed upon the accuracy and
   fairness of the journalist — see Ethics.

   In the yellow journalism era of the 19th century, many newspapers in
   the United States relied on sensational stories that were meant to
   anger or excite the public, rather than to inform. The more restrained
   style of reporting that relies on fact checking and accuracy regained
   popularity around World War II.

   Criticism of journalism is varied and sometimes vehement. Credibility
   is questioned because of anonymous sources; errors in facts, spelling,
   and grammar; real or perceived bias; and scandals involving plagiarism
   and fabrication.

   In the past, newspapers have often been owned by so-called press
   barons, and were used either as a rich man’s toy, or a political tool.
   More recently in the United States, a greater number of newspapers (and
   all of the largest ones) are being run by large media corporations such
   as Gannett (the largest in the United States), The McClatchy Company,
   Cox, LandMark, Morris Corp., The Tribune Company, etc. Many industry
   watchers have concerns that the growing need for profit growth natural
   to corporations will have a negative impact on the overall quality of
   journalism.

   There is no doubt, however, that newpapers have, in the modern world,
   played an important role in the exercise of freedom of expression.
   Whistle-blowers, and those who “leak” stories of corruption in
   political circles often choose to inform newspapers before other
   mediums of communication, relying on the perceived willingness of
   newspaper editors to expose the secrets and lies of those who would
   rather cover them. However, there have been many circumstances of the
   political autonomy of newspapers being curtailed.

   Even though the opinions of the owners are often relegated to the
   editorial section, and the opinions of other writers and readers are in
   the op-ed (“opposite the editorial page”) and letters to the editors
   sections of the paper, newspapers have been used for political purposes
   by insinuating some kind of bias outside of the editorial section and
   into straight news. For example, The New York Times is often criticised
   for a perceived leftist slant to its stories, or, by others, for
   supporting the American political establishment, whereas the opinion
   pages (but not the news pages) of the The Wall Street Journal generally
   take right-wing positions.

   Some ways newspapers have tried to improve their credibility are:
   appointing ombudsmen, developing ethics policies and training, using
   more stringent corrections policies, communicating their processes and
   rationale with readers, and asking sources to review articles after
   publication. Many larger newspapers are now using more aggressive
   random fact-checking to further improve the chances that false
   information will be found before it is printed.

The future of newspapers

   The future of newspapers is cloudy, with overall readership slowly
   declining in most developed countries due to increasing competition
   from television and the Internet. The 57th annual World Newspaper
   Congress, held in Istanbul in June 2004, reported circulation increases
   in only 35 of 208 countries studied. Most of the increases came in
   developing countries, notably China.
   Front page of The New York Times on Armistice Day, November 11, 1918.
   Enlarge
   Front page of The New York Times on Armistice Day, November 11, 1918.

   A report at the gathering indicated that China tops total newspaper
   circulation, with more than 85 million copies of papers sold every day,
   followed by India with 72 million—China and India are the two most
   populous countries in the world—followed by Japan with 70 million and
   the United States with 55 million. The report said circulation declined
   by an average of 2.2 percent across 13 of the 15 countries that made up
   the European Union before May 1. The biggest declines were in Ireland,
   down 7.8 percent; Britain, down 4.7 percent; and Portugal, where
   numbers fell by 4.0 percent. One growth area is the distribution of
   free daily newspapers, which are not reflected in the above circulation
   data. Led by the Metro chain of newspapers, they grew 16 percent in
   2003.

   Another growth area is high-quality tabloids, particularly in the UK,
   where several of the major broadsheets are experimenting with the
   format (see “ Switch to smaller sizes”). Smaller and easier to hold
   than broadsheets, but presenting serious journalism rather than
   traditional tabloid fodder, they appear to have drawn some younger
   readers who are otherwise abandoning newspapers.

   Newspapers also face increased competition from internet sites such as
   Craigslist for classified ads, especially for jobs, real estate, and
   cars, the advertising of which has long been key sources of newspaper
   revenue.

   However, many believe that the internet can itself be used to
   newspapers’ advantage. For instance, it allows newspapers to
   effectively compete with broadcast journalism in presenting breaking
   news online in a more timely manner than printing allows. The
   credibility and strong brand recognition of well-established
   newspapers, and the close relationships they have with advertisers
   (particularly in the case of local newspapers), are also seen by many
   in the newspaper industry as strengthening their chances of survival.
   The movement away from the printing process can also help decrease
   costs.

   Responses to this sea-change in the competitive environment have
   varied. Some newspapers have attempted to integrate the internet into
   every aspect of their operations, for example with reporters writing
   stories for both print and online, and classified advertisements
   appearing in both media; others operate websites that are more distinct
   from the printed newspaper. Many in both camps believe that newspapers
   will increasingly leave breaking news to online and broadcast media,
   with print publications focused on comment and analysis.

   The moderator of television’s longest-running program began his career
   in news delivering armfuls of newspapers in Buffalo, N.Y. Decades have
   passed, but Tim Russert of NBC's Meet the Press said during a press
   conference at Mount Union College that he can't imagine doing his job
   without print news. “I am very reliant on newspapers. I read them all,
   six or seven a day,” said the former paperboy. Although he could scour
   the internet for news, Russert said, “I still like to hold a newspaper;
   it’s part of my upbringing.” Russert, 55, who is also a political
   analyst for NBC Nightly News and The Today Show, said this in response
   to Akron Beacon Journal reporter Sandra M. Klepach’s questions while
   delivering Tuesday’s Schooler Lecture at Mount Union College’s Timken
   Building.

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper"
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