Of Tabloids and Newspapers

A decade ago, if someone were to ask me the difference between a tabloid and a broadsheet, I would give them a blank look. To me, then, a paper is still a paper whether its large or small. Then one day in 1998, my senior copywriter explained that tabloids are normally meant for the hot stuff (like those semi-naked pictures found on the front page of a some tabloids in UK), while broadsheets (such as Utusan), are more serious and normally, its news carry more weight. The senior copywriter, Robert, was commenting on one paper's sneer at another then.

Earlier this evening, I saw a TV advertisement on Berita Harian and that now it is no longer a broadsheet but a tabloid, following the footsteps on its sister newspaper, The NST. The line they used for the Ad was "Zaman Sudah Berubah". Might be so, but it reminded me of Robert's comment; so I did a little googling, and came out with the excerpt as below:

blurit - Tabloids were best known for a lower type of journalism that dealt with sleaze, corruption, sex scandals and other things that their traditionally working and new middle class readership apparently enjoyed.

The broadsheets tended to have better written articles, with much less scandal and gossip, much less sensational headlines and people depended upon them for getting their quota of what could now be called 'serious news'.

These days, the lines between the types of newspaper have blurred. The Mirror for instance in the UK had move back and forth between serious journalism and comic type nonsense for years. However, one of the best moves the Mirror took was removing the semi-naked women from its pages, something other tabloids have yet to manage.

WikiAnswer - The tabliod is more informal then the broadsheet.


I guess there's a heck lot more site on this question were one to look it up, but basically it falls within the definition of the two above. In other words, tabloids such as the new BH, should never be taken seriously or better still, not bought at all. The owners might cite 1,001 reasons for the downsizing but to me, its mere cosmetic. So long as BH and all papers in that stable continue with their lopsided reporting, they belong in the thrash bin. The same goes for Utusan. As a friend would like to say "Its the mentality (reporting) dude, not the looks!".

On almost the same note, FOMCA recently launched the 'Buy Nothing Day'. The BND was targetted to all Malaysians, not to purchase anything for that single day which was on July 16. But since I do not read mainstream papers except for the Star on 2 particular days in a week, I did not know about it until I received an email from FOMCA's CEO, Encik Mohd Sha'ani. But that, had me thinking.
What if, now that almost every Malaysian is up to his ears on the political scenario in Malaysia, all of us were participate in a 'NO BN Day!'? We spread the news far and wide and for one single day, all of us stay away from work. But it has to be a working day for it to have effect. Anyone? No? Hehe, thought so. Oh well...