The main difference between a tabloid newspaper and a broadsheet

The main difference between a tabloid newspaper and a broadsheet is the size of the paper they are printed on. Each page of a tabloid is A3, whereas each page of a broadsheet is A2. Another difference is that tabloids tend to have more celebrity news, gossip and scandal. Broadsheets tend to have more factual articles and politics. In this essay I will be studying two articles, one from a tabloid, the 'Daily Express' and the other from the broadsheet newspaper 'The Times'.

Each article is from Friday, April 19th 2002 and is about when a light aircraft flew into the Pirelli Tower in Milan. The headline of the 'Daily Express' reads: "Five killed as plane flies into packed skyscraper". The use of a verb in the headline makes it more dramatic. Being written in the present tense makes it more dramatic too as it gives the feeling of urgency, that it is happening now. The headline gets straight to the point, it tells you directly what has happened but, to make it even more dramatic, the first thing they tell you is the number of people killed.

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The headline in 'The Times' says: "My God, it's like New York all over again" It is more vague than the other article but from the fact that it is a quotation you can understand that someone is comparing the incident to September 11th. By comparing it to something as huge as 9/11 it creates a panic in the reader that makes you read on.

The photographs in the 'Daily Express' take up the bulk of it, a style typical of a tabloid article. There are two photos.

One photo is a long distance shot of the Pirelli Tower and the other is of people running amongst debris. The photos are in black and white but the faces of the people stand out against the dark background. From the caption, we learn that the people in the photos are fire fighters and plain-clothes officers. The caption reads: "DEVASTATION: Fire fighters and plain clothes police officers race to the area after impact yesterday" Writing the word devastation in capital letters draws attention to it. It also dramatises the photographs.