Read and translate the text and a) divide it into logical parts; b) give a title to each part; c) give an outline to each part

The newspapers in the United States can be divided roughly into four categories: weeklies and semiweeklies, small dailies, larger dailies (mostly in the submetropolitan areas), and the gigantic metropolitan dailies. Each of these newspapers has a definite purpose and is tailored to the needs of the community it serves. The size and frequency of a newspaper's edition depend upon the amount of advertising and circulation revenue it commands; trying to publish a newspaper on a grander scale than its community can support is a sure and swift way to bankruptcy.

Most American newspapers have a page that is eight columns wide and twenty to twenty-one inches deep; the normal column width is slightly less than 2 inches. This is called a standard size page. A rather small minority newspapers are tabloid in format, usually five columns wide and 15 inches deep, or approximately half the size of a standard page. Although it is widely agreed that the tabloid size newspaper is very easy for the reader to handle, the problems of printing it and the limitations on its advertising potential have kept many publishers from adopting this format. In spite of these limitations the newspaper with by far the largest circulation in the United States, the New York Daily News, uses the tabloid format.

Unfortunately because of the editorial approach used by some metropolitan newspapers, the word " tabloid" has taken a connotation of sensationalism. This is unfair to many tabloids whose content is no more sensational than that of standard size dailies. Equating physical size and content is a false approach, too often practiced.

No matter what their size, all newspapers have a fundamental organization in common. Each has five major departments:

editorial, which gathers and prepares the news, entertainment, and opinion materials, both written and illustrated;

advertising, which solicits and prepares the commercial messages addressed to the readers;

circulation, which has the task of selling and delivering the newspaper to the readers of a community;

production, which turns the editorial materials and advertisements into type and prints the newspapers;

and business, which oversees the newspaper's entire operation.

Newspaper stories are written to include the " 5 W's and H" - who, what, when, where, why, and how. Their purpose is to present a report of an action or a situation in simple, easily understood language that can be comprehended by a mass audience of different educational levels. Increased emphasis has been placed upon simplicity of writing in recent years and upon explaining the " why" of news situations.

Newspaper advertising is divided into two types, display and classified. The former ranges from inconspicuous one-inch notices to multiple-page advertisements in which merchants and manufacturers proclaim their goods and services. Classified advertisements are the small-print, generally brief announcements packed together near the back of the paper; they deal with such diverse topics as help wanted, apartments for rent, used furniture and automobiles for sale, and personal notices. On almost all newspapers except the very smallest, display and classified advertising are handled by different staffs. Most newspapers receive about three-fourths of their income from advertising and one-fourth from circulation.

Display advertising in turn is broken into two categories, retail and national, sometimes called general. Retail advertising, often called local, comes from the sources its name implies, local merchants and service companies. National advertising comes primarily from manufacturers and other commercial organizations selling brand-name merchandise and services over wide regions or the entire country. Much of this advertising is placed through advertising agencies. Local advertising is usually discussed in terms of column inches whereas national advertising is measured by agate lines, 14 to the inch. A column inch is a space one column wide and one inch deep.

The organizational setup of all newspapers is basically the same, although naturally the larger the newspaper, the more complex its staff alignments. The top man is the publisher, and, in many cases, he is also the principal owner of the newspaper. On some papers the publisher's decisions on all matters are absolute, whereas in other instances he must answer to a board of directors. The publisher's task, is to set the newspaper's basic editorial and commercial policies and to see that they are carried out efficiently by the various departments heads. On quite a few newspapers, especially smaller ones, the publisher is also the editor; he is then usually referred to as " editor and publisher", a nice tribute to the importance of the editorial content in the newspaper.

Frequently there is a business manager or general manager under the publisher to administer the company's business operations, which range all the way from obtaining newsprint to the purchasing of tickets as the newspaper's contribution to a community concert series. The heads of the advertising, circulation, and production departments answer to the publisher through the business manager, if there is one. But the editorial department, jealous of independence to print the news without being subject to commercial pressures (theoretically), demands and generally gets a line of command directly to the publisher. When editorial and business departments clash, as they sometimes do over ways to handle news situations and expenses, the ultimate decision is made by the pub­lisher. (From: Introduction to Mass Communications by Edwin Emery.)

Unit 7

SUNDAY PAPERS – WORLD`S LARGEST