The Times and The Sun Comparison

TASK

The Times and The Sun are both owned by the same company News UK, however both have different target audiences and this is shown by their contents and the conventions they use.

As you can see, when it comes to printed papers, the Times has a lot older audience with 34% of them being over the age of 65, whereas the Sun, even though the majority is 65 and over, overall is has a lot younger audience compared to the Times. However, this is for printed version of these papers where the audience is predominantly older as they have grown up with reading the news via tabloid and broadsheet whereas the younger generation are more into the digital versions as shown

Tabloids: A tabloid is half the size of a broadsheet and it contents are also different. Tabloids focus on popular stories and look into more popular topics

Broadsheet: A broadsheet is a large printed news paper, in contrast to a tabloid, a broadsheet typically focuses on more serious topics than topics which are 'hot' in the moment

Splash: The splash is the main story on the front of a paper, and is usually eye catching so that it attracts a larger audience

Photograph: the choice of a the photograph on the front cover is infulentul on how the story is portrayed and if the audience

Headline: the headline is a piece of large, bold text that is used to captivate an audience. The headline is usually something striking so that the audience wants to pick up the paper

Strapline: the strap line is a piece of text that is smaller than the headline but is still larger than normal text. This piece of text is used to add additional information so that the audience knows what the story is about

Pug: the pug of a paper is placed usually in the corners and shows offers and promotions so that paper  has more chance of captivating a larger audience  

Masthead: the masthead usually is at the top of the paper and contains the logo and or the title of the paper, these texts are usually bold and large or contain eye catching and iconic colours so that it draws more of an audience 

Caption: a caption is usually placed under an image and is used to explain or give more of an insight into the story

Byline: the byline is where the reporter or journalists name is placed at the start or ending of an article, this is used so that it can tell people who wrote it but also attract 'fans' of a certain reporter

Cross-head: these are little subheadings that sometimes quotes or extra bits of information so that the audience is more attracted to read a certain article 





The Sun

The Times

 Where the Times' audience was older they're less likely to be into the digital ways of viewing the news, as you can see the Times' audience accounts to around 1,427,147 visitors, the Sun's younger and more digital adapt audience views the mobile version of the news, accumulating 15,673,962 visitors, this also means a lot the focus from the Sun's point of view would be to make their mobile sites at lot easier to navigate and more appealing as their audience is larger on mobile then print.

 I've gathered a few title pages of the Sun and The Times so that I could compare the two

From first look you can clearly see the 'splash' of the papers are very different. The Sun uses large colourful pictures where in contrast the Times uses large pictures but they do not cover up most of the page like the Sun, the Times is predominantly filled with text unlike the Sun where it uses a big photograph and headline followed by a clear, bold and engaging strapline. However the Times, its strapline, isn't colourful or outgoing, its straight to the point.

This is because the audiences are different, the Suns younger, more digital age audience has a shorter attention pan and is a lot more likely to read something if it catches their eye, whereas the Times' audience is more likely to read the content just due to the fact that its the Times. Also, the Sun uses this technique of exaggerated and engaging front pages because it wants to grab as big as an audience as possible, so by having this type of page it is more likely to catch readers eyes as they walk past it in a shop or out and about

The Times

Here a few mood boards I created to show the Times and the Sun's audience and on what type of magazine they would read.

The Times magazines are largely male dominated, the pages are not overly coloured and have clear headings and titles.

The Sun

Whereas the Sun's version of magazines are very colourful and have lots of straplines and sub headings, this is because it wants the reader to pick the magazine, so it uses lots of titles so that it can attract the as big as audience as possible

Here are my attempts of creating a magazine covers that you would see in the Sun and The Times.

The Sun magazine, named 'The Sun Magazine', uses celebrity faces and models, with a very bright text and colours so that it attracts the readers eyes.

In contrast, the Times' magazine is very male oriented and uses a big splash photo. the title a photo are the main part of the magazine, the content inside is not what attracts the audience as the audience will be usual readers and will be picking it up on the look than the content.

Both magazines do not contain all aspects of magazines such as Pugs and Advertisements, both are just concept arts.