THE OBSERVER: GENRE CONVENTIONS

THE OBSERVER: GENRE CONVENTIONS

In yesterday's lesson we analysed the media language of a quality broadsheet newspaper.

Identify as many genre conventions of a quality broadsheet as you can from The Observer below.

On this edition of The Observer cover, there are a few key points to look at. Firstly, on the top of the page there is a skybox/skyline which is an information panel on the front page that tells readers about other stories to make them want to read more inside. On this cover there are three articles featured, all of which are examples of soft news. One article is about television, another is about celebrity culture and the last is about food.

Underneath the skybox is the masthead/title piece which allows readers to easily know what newspaper they are buying and reading; it also includes the date which it was released and the price it was sold for. Then underneath the masthead is the cover headline. This is usually political, hard news as shown in the extract above. It is often the most important story of the day and the one that will attract most readers.

Sometimes underneath the headline there is a standfirst. A standfirst is a block of text that introduces the story and can been seen on this edition as two blue bullet points which is then followed by the byline that gives the authors name and sometimes their job and location (known as the dateline). Next to these is the main body text; this is what people read if they want to find out more about the headline. In the bottom left corner is a pull quote which is a quote from the story which is enlarged and appears within the text. In this case, it is a quote from another article to tempt someone into reading the inside of the newspaper.

Finally, there’s the photograph or graphic; this helps the page look more interesting and can add some understanding of the story or entice someone to read the article. The photograph almost always has a caption around it and gives a brief description of the photograph or graphic.