Tabloid or Broadsheet

What is a Tabloid format?

A tabloid is a newspaper with compact page size smaller than broadsheet, although there is no standard for the precise dimensions of the tabloid newspaper format. The term tabloid journalism, along with the use of large pictures, tends to emphasize topics such as sensational crime stories, astrology, celebrity gossip and television. However, some respected newspapers, such as The Independent and The Times, are in tabloid format, and this size is used in the United Kingdom by nearly all local newspapers.

Larger newspapers, traditionally associated with higher-quality journalism, are often called broadsheets, and this designation often remains in common usage even if the newspaper moves to printing on smaller pages, as many have in recent years. Thus the terms tabloid and broadsheet are, in non-technical usage, today more descriptive of a newspaper's market position than its physical size.

What is a Broadsheet format?

The broadsheet is the largest of newspaper formats and is characterized by long vertical pages (typically 22 inches or 560 millimetres). The term derives from types of popular prints usually just of a single sheet, sold on the streets and containing various types of material.

Modern printing facilities most efficiently print broadsheet sections in multiples of eight pages (with four front pages and four back pages). The broadsheet is then cut in half during the process. Thus the newsprint rolls used are defined by the width necessary to print four front pages. The width of a newsprint roll is called its web. Thus the new 12-inch-wide front page broadsheet newspapers in the United States use a 48-inch web newsprint roll.

In some countries, especially Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US, broadsheet newspapers are commonly perceived to be more intellectual in content than their tabloid counterparts, using their greater size to examine stories in more depth, while carrying less sensationalist and celebrity material. This distinction is most obvious on the front page: whereas tabloids tend to have a single story dominated by a headline, broadsheets allow two or more stories to be displayed, the most important at the top of the page—"above the fold".

• The Daily Telegraph (The Sunday Telegraph)
• The Financial Times (Monday to Saturday Only)
• The Independent
• The Times (The Sunday Times only)