Traditional versus Tabloid

Substack 2

David Olvera: Cape Times/Citizen  

Traditional coverage seems to include more global stories. They tend to be mainly focused on politics, environment, and current mass issues. The language here is traditional, professional, and standard. The audience for the traditional paper seems to be a global audience as well as a local one. The tabloid however seems to be reaching a strictly local audience. The language here also appears to be standard and quite professional. However, the focus is different, there are more local stories about local problems. There are also more stories about non-news things such as celebrities, the lotto, and lifestyle. The tones of the who papers are a little different; the tabloid seems to be more laid back while the traditional is more strict. As a journalism student I have mainly been trained and taught the traditional news format but in my personal experience I have written a fair amount of lifestyle as well. I would have to train myself to be a little less strict for the production of a tabloid. Writing a news story about the lotto or a café would be new to me personally. However, writing for a traditional paper would force me to increase my standards and critique for my own writing and stories I wish to create.

Daniel Sandoval - Sydney

I chose Sydney and when looking over their traditional news and what’s on the tabloids there is a clear difference when looking over and seeing what the headlines are. The traditional news is covering the impeachment trial of Donald Trump and a wider variety of serious stories as well. Whole on the other hand, the tabloids are covering more local stories and a mix of serious and, lighthearted topics like food, economics, while also covering crimes happening in the area. I feel like the intended audience for their traditional news outlet is the average citizen, working class trying to get a grasp of what’s going on in the world and tabloids would be more for the people who want to know more about what’s going on in Sydney in general. Overall, after reading an article of each, I feel like students can write for both but are trained to write in the traditional way with leads, quotes, and a nut graph. Also, both have their regular staff reporters but also have some wire reporting as well. I lean towards traditional news due to the fact I like learning about more than local stories, I want to get more in depth on what’s going on in the world.

Coco - Singapore

Compared to the Straits Times and the newpaper, the biggest difference that comes to my mind is visuals. It looks like the Straits Times is more professional and spent time to maintain the website. The choice of the topic is similar but the Straits Times is more organized and systematic. In addition, Singapore is a bilingual country, the Straits Times and the newpaper can target people internationally. In general, journalism students would be trained to produce content in traditional publications, since that’s how the basic news comes from. If I would change my training skill, I would prepare more global news for the platform whether it is traditional or tabloid. Since news is circulating in various countries and it is all online now. In this way, more people will know what is happening in other countries.

Praditya Fulumriani - Singapore

Overall, the key differences between traditional and tabloid coverage of world news in Singapore are slim to none. I noticed that they both covered similar topics, such as the new U.S. administration under Biden, the Myanmar coup, and the development of COVID-19 and its vaccine globally. The style of writing is pretty similar as well, however, the design for Singapore’s tabloid site, The New Paper, seemed to be more engaging, the colors are brighter and incorporated a lot of yellow and blue, and the headlines are bigger. On the other hand, the Strait Times seemed more muted in comparison, relying on just black and white for its design. I did notice how the tabloid relied more on wire reports for the coverage, which most likely indicates they do not have as big a budget compared to the traditional newspaper. I do believe the tabloid has a broader appeal because as I pointed out earlier, the visuals seem to be more eye-catching, even if the actual content is the same. I do have to point out how the tabloid outlet has more human interest stories on its homepage. As journalism students, we are trained to produce content for traditional outlets in general, however, since tabloids are not that different in terms of actual content, I don’t think we have to change a lot, perhaps just focus on different subjects instead.