Newspaper Evaluation Project- the Times

Newspaper Evaluation Project- The Times

Intended Audience

The Gender of the target audience would be targeted at sophisticated males and females who are quite intelligent. This would be the preferred target audience because, The Times is quite factual and has a lot of information inside and out. There are less images and more writing about the different stories around the world. There is no particular race involved as part of the target audience because, all cultures can read a paper like The Times. The age also depends on how factual you like your reading to be. This is also focused on social class people and more upper class people. I would say this because of it looking and being quite factual and with less images would be how that audience would want that newspaper to be like. I feel the intended audience for the Times is less about the age, it is more focused in terms of political beliefs. This newspaper tries its very best to to appeal to fulfil the specific needs its consumers/readers are looking for in this newspaper. 

Founding Ideals

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register. It became The Times on January 1 1788. The Times and The Sunday Times do not share editorial staff, they were founded independently and have only had common ownership since 1967. The Times is the first newspaper to have borne that name, lending it to many other papers around the world, including The Times of India (1838), The New York Times (1851) etc. The Times was founded by publisher John Walter on 1 January 1785. For much of it's early life, the profits of The Times were very large and the competition minimal, so it could pay far better than it's rivals for information or writers. 

 Current news values- how has the Times changed?

Over the years, there have been many changes in the types of machinery used for printing newspapers. Most printing presses no longer use Linotype typesetters or other centuries-old "hot type" technologies. The newer, "cold type" presses are more efficient; they've sped up production and cut costs. From now on, if you want to read The Times or Sunday Times online it is going to cost you. The paper's owner, Rupert Murdoch, has decided that the era of free online content is over. By the mid- 1990s papers were setting up websites as freebie tasters for the real product. Since then, newspaper circulations have been sliding while online reading has climbed. In 2005 the New York Times decided to make its online readers pay for opinion and commenting pieces. 

Newspapers have also changed from the past couple of years by their layout and structure. Back then, newspapers would have been printe din Black & White ink- with mostly text than images. Nowadays, mostly every newspaper is printed in colour and have big catchy headlines and titles. In my defence I feel this has differentiated because of the growth and population in Europe. However, sometimes some people prefer to get updated on their news online rather than buying a newspaper and sitting there at home or in the park or wherever they preferred to read it. This is because, the internet has become so important that literally everything is on there! So most people (especially at work/school/college) tend to read online newspapers in their breaks or free times. But, not all newspapers online are free. Like The Times, Sunday times etc. So it is preferred for The Times to buy their newspapers printed rather than online so you don't have to waste your money every time you visit that site. 

The news values currently from the Times referring to the front cover would be the following:

Negativity- This is because, on the front cover there is an image of the missing girl April Jones who was kidnapped. This shows a negative news value just by looking at the front cover of the Times. 

Closeness to home- This is because, April was kidnapped just from outside her friends house. 

Currency- This story has been going around in newspapers from the minute they found out that she was missing till now, or it may even carry on. April May is in the public eye and people are watching out for her and her kidnapper. 

Personality- This is rare but still is considered to be one of the many news values of this newspaper front cover. This is because, there is also a headline which says  ' BBC yields to pressure over Savile abuse claim'. This and the April Jones story both identify personality of this newspaper by including their names and where April was from/ got missing. 

In my opinion I feel that these are the main areas to include as newspaper values for the Times. 

The Times is considered to be quite factual as well as including eye-catching images and headlines. This also meets the target audience by them being quite upper class with downtime to read this informative newspaper. 

Moral Panics

A moral panic spotted  from the front cover of this newspaper would probably be the 'Savile' headline. This is because it has the word 'abuse' in the headline which automatically creates fear/ eagerness to read what that story is about. 

Ownership- who or what owns the paper and how do they affect the prioritisation of the news reported?

The type of newspaper that the Times is, is a daily newspaper. The owner of the actual newspaper is the News Corporation. The editor of the newspaper is James Harding. The Times newspaper was founded January 1 1785 (227 years, 285 days). The Headquarters of the Times are based in Wapping, London, United Kingdom. The circulation of the Times in June 2012 was 400,120. Other newspapers linked with the Times (sister newspapers) are The Sunday Times. The Times has been around since 1985 still going on in 2012 which makes it 227 years! That is a lot of years. It has been around for a very long time.