National Newspapers & Their Target Audience

The Sun
I have scanned the first and second page of The Sun.

Front page:


It has a very big, bold headline compared with amount of actual text for the first part of the article. There are two halves to this front page. The first half being the lead story with a big, bold headline "Going down going down going down", this begins in normal case which underlined to the final two words being in capitals and with a the font size increased. The strapline "King's 18 months for breaking girl's nose" typeface is bold and underlined, this is all in a sans serif typeface. This story has a black background and a white typeface for the headline, making it stand out. The article is then in a white box with the strapline text in a black typeface, a photograph is also to the left.

You can see here that the article is in a bold typeface. The first word "soccer" is in capitals. The author's name is placed above the second column, with the name in capitals and underlined.



The second half has two secondary leads which are exclusive stories that can be found inside the newspaper.

This half is alot more colourful, and looks quite magazine-like. It consists of two photographs of the exclusive stories, each have a small red typeface stating that it is an exclusive and a title that is in a larger blue typeface, all in capitals and tilted. They both have a few small lines of black text to the right of the photographs explaining the story. There is also an advert under these two photographs, showing what comes free inside the paper.














This is the first column of the article on the front page and the little cloumn explaining one of the exclusives. The same typeface is used which is bold and sans serif. This typeface is repeated throughout the newspaper for some articles, however for most articles a non-bold serif typeface is used, shown of page 2 below.

This is the masthead, a red background has been used with a white typeface with is in italics. Looking at this masthead has allowed me to see where the date, price and website have been situated.

The price of the newspaper is on the masthead but there is also this extra cirlce telling the reader the price. Putting it in this blue cirlce with a 3D silver font makes it stand out and could attract more people to buy it as the cheap price is clear to them.







Page 2:


The second page looks very busy. There is the main article with a black background and many other articles around it. It also includes the weather forcast for the UK at the bottom of the page.

The headline uses the same typeface as the headline on the front page, but all in capitals. This also shows the strapline which is in the same typeface, it is underlined and not in capitals. This headline and article also has a black background, the same as the article on the front page. I have found the black background with white font has been used alot throughout the paper. I like this type of layout as I feel it makes the headline stand out more that with a white background and black font.

The main article on the page is made up of three columns, it has a photograph on the left and begins with a standfirst in bold. The name of the reporter is in bold capitals underlined above the second column.

The article at the top of this page is made up of a photgraph which then has a white box with two colums of text inside. The article is in bold, the same typeface used for the article on the front page. After looking at many Sun newspapers I have found they often use this layout for articles, especially for the splash on the front page. I like this type of layout and will consider using something like it for my own newspaper.

These are some of the headlines for the smaller stories on the second page. The all use the same sans serif typeface.

This is the small story on the top right of the page. This typeface is used for all the articles that are not in the bold typeface shown on the front page. It is a serif typeface. Each article also begins with the first word in capitals.

This is an enlarged version of the pugs. The Sun has the page number, then the masthead logo and date in full. This is on the left hand side of the even numbered pages and the right hand side of the odd numbered pages.

I have also looked at another Sun newspaper which has a different layout on the front page.

Front Page:

The main story on this front page consists of a large photograph with the headline in a large white typeface that is underlined. There is a small column of text in the same bold font used on the front page of The Sun newspaper above. The article is then continued inside the paper. This headline is not in capitals, this could be as it is a humourous headline, so the serious feeling that capitals convey is not needed. The credits for the photograph is written up the write hand side of it.

Down the left hand side of this page are two other stories which are then coninued inside the paper. The headlines for these are in the same typeface found in the previous Sun newspaper, used for the smaller stories, as seen on the second page above.

This red serif typeface has been used throughout the paper to title some of the pages. For example:

This also shows how the pugs look on the odd numbered pages.


Page 2:

The main story on this second page consists of a photograph with some statistics in red arrows and blue circles around it. There is then a column of text with a white background to the left of the photograph. It begins with the reporter's names, centred and underlined. Then there is the standfirst in bold. Half way down the article there is a crosshead saying "Problems", it is in a larger font, centred and underlined. The headline is big, bold and capitals with a strapline which is smaller, in lower case and underlined.

The bottom of the page is the same as the other issue of The Sun looked at above, with the weather forecast and a chance to get cash for stories.

There are five smaller stories around this main story "Young 'n Doled". These smaller stories have two different typefaces used for the headlines. The first is bold and in capitals and the second in lower case and not bold.

Target Audience

- More than 3 million copies of The Sun are sold every day

- More than 8 million people read The Sun every day

This makes it thew most popular daily newspaper in the world

The Newspaper Marketing Agency has found that:

61% of readers are between the ages of 15 and 44

58% of readers are male

I think The Sun has more male readers than females due to features such as Page 3 and the large sports section. I want my newspaper to be enjoye dby both males and females so I am going to try to include things that will appeal to both sexes.