|  |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
Printable Version
E-mail to a Friend
APA | MLA | |
Analyse The Mail and The Guardian Websites
The Mail website is much more glamour based within it’s content and the layout on the page. The first major picture, which was seen, was of a celebrity (Amanda Holden), an attractive woman and the headline to this picture was the main headline of the top part of the page. The audience of the Mail tend to be those who want the news but in a basic format, so although the Mail’s readership is to those who are slightly more sophisticated than The Sun, it does spread the news headlines among less important news about celebrities and therefore may not be sophisticated enough for the average Times or Guardian reader. The menu on The Mail website contains many more interactive things than The Guardian website, with things like Sudoku and Fantasy Football, which could be counted as games. Also the news is very basic for The Mail, the heading is ‘News’ and then below are the headlines but within the first page, underneath are all the headlines in a smaller font and bunched together, making it uncomfortable to read and really quite forgettable as it would be easier to move down the page and find some of the selected headlines.
A news item such as the issues in Burma are very important at the moment, but within The Mail site, it is quite near the bottom and in quite a small font but within The Guardian site, it is near the top within the bunch of main headlines. As seen in the past with The Mail, if any English people had been killed within the cyclone then the item would be nearer to the top but because it does not directly affect the UK, The Mail find that it affects it’s readers less and therefore does not need to be included in their daily bite size news chunks. It seems that the representation of women within The Mail is much more widespread than The Guardian- there are articles which either directly affect females or are aimed at females, including interviews about ‘Sex and The City: The Movie’ which is based at females and a whole page called Femail which deals with female issues. This is therefore, in my belief, The Mail trying to say that they are staying a step forward, against the times. They are including women within their news and are in fact, trying to aim specific issues to them, although within these pages, they are usually filled with articles are image (weight, look) and gossip but within these are occurrences of explanations of topics that occur everyday, such as politics and health.
The websites clearly imitate the tradition paper, with The Mail taking on its tabloid views and The Guardian, the Berliner. The menu used on The Guardian website is much more directive and informative to the news. Within the news page or home page, there is a list of types of news, UK, International, Politics etc… and therefore this shows a much more sophisticated audience, with much more in depth news. The headlines are much more spread out and readable within The Guardian, many including pictures. Pictures are used on The Guardian site different to The Mail, the latter, uses less text and more pictures but these tend to the celebrity related and therefore in the traditional form, a much more female based aim and readership. The Guardian site’s collection of headlines are those which directly, indirectly and don’t at all affect us. They range from the Zimbabwe election, comments on a terrorist group, the USA election and the news from Burma. These cover the top of the page and have big titles which are used well because it is known that 100% of the aimed audience, read these strap lines but only 80% continue onto the first paragraph of the article, which is why The Guardian have cleverly added this onto the first page under the title, to gain interest and to hopefully get readers that may not have gone to it, catching keywords and seeing that they understand the topic.
As one goes down the page on The Guardian webpage, they show a selection of two or three of the main headlines from other sections of the newspaper. At the top of the site, above the news menu, there is another, which lists other sections. These are slightly similar to The Mail but also very different. Within The Mail site, there is ‘TV & Showbiz’ which is translated to The Guardian as ‘Culture’ or ‘Arts & Entertainment’, obviously the latter sounds more intellectual and therefore this sets a standard to The Guardian.
The ideology of these sites has an obvious difference, although they are both newspapers, they both set up different terms and conventions which can be attributed to these newspapers. The Mail’s ideology is very attraction and appeal based with news items about the bad things that happens within famous people’s lives and therefore trying to put the point across that us, the readers, the ‘normal’ people’s lives aren’t that bad and that in fact in our day to day dealings, this gives us something to judge and look down on… where are the idols and people we are meant to look up at in The Mail’s world? After digging out the dirt on celebrities, they move on to politicians and within the scandal they drag out, they also insert token paragraphs about the political career or headline. This is a complete contrast to The Guardian which see’s their knowledge as the point of interest. The ideology put across from The Guardian is that they plan to show the reader the facts, they are here to educate and therefore what better way, than to give the information and not in a biased fashion, but in a way that allows a reader to decide on their own opinion (neutral information).
This is clearly shown in their ‘Arts & Entertainment’ as the complete contrast from the physical fascination becomes completely work orientated. They take this section and use it to spread information, not judge but review and say what they feel is good and bad about a song/film/show etc… They advise and this is therefore seen as a helpful hand from the newspaper instead of just looking down at someone.
In terms of media language, the layout of the pages is very different, although they both relatively long pages; they link to other pages in different ways. Due to the massive impact that headline news has on The Guardian website, it covers the top of the page and towards the middle, the site gives previews of other sections within the newspaper and site, the main difference between The Mail and The Guardian, is that the latter sees the news as news whereas the first sees the news as a way that a writer can put their point across and perhaps educate without going into deep detail. The layout on The Mail also allows for much more interactivity with things like polls and competitions whereas The Guardian tends to keep to the news with value neutral information. Dominant images on the pages are also very different; there are many more pictures on The Mail (nearly every article) and they always are either glamorous pictures or appalling, depending on the feeling of the article. The dominant images of The Guardian are more scattered, as there are more colours within this site for the titles, they are depending on the attention of their readers to stay with them and therefore by using fewer pictures, they are getting more information on the page. The main image on the home page is of Mugabe for the Zimbabwe article and this leads straight into the main story- 0ther images that appear are of Nick Cave (a singer) under the ‘Arts & Entertainment’ but there aren’t many others. The relevance of pictures are different between the newspapers as The Mail uses them to keep attention and to appeal to a certain type of reader, almost using page three pictures (The Sun) but with the clothes and without the vulgar connotations.
Different publishing houses in terms of institution own both newspapers and therefore this can influence what goes into the paper and in what style it does. The audience for The Mail expects something different to that of The Guardian and therefore the newspaper would have to conform to the expectation and therefore to the ‘genre’ they have been placed in because otherwise their readership would abandon them and in a cynical way, they would lose money. The assumptions made about the audience in regards to their age and their social economic situation between the two differ, The Mail, could range from teenagers to the elderly who just want to know the basic underlying news without having to fully understand the problems- therefore one may not have to be intellectually advanced to read this whereas The Guardian has a much more simple and bare look which indicates a more informative read, therefore having to be educated well to understand the problems and probably is for the middle to upper classes of mid 20’s until 50’s, mainly for the modern business mind.
|
|
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
