Newspapers are a primary source of information in the global community. Since its beginning, newspapers have overcome many changes and a lot of challenges within the cyber era. It overcame the advent of the radio, the television and the revolution of the Internet. Newspapers are composed of a printed publication issued daily or weekly containing news, articles, advertisements, and correspondence. However, there is a variety of newspapers’ circulation according the community that it serves. For example, the United States has more than a thousand newspapers targeted to different audiences because of its multicultural population. The circulations include local newspapers, national and regional; for different readers and demographic audiences. The publications consist of general news (local and international), political news, business news, regional news, entrainment news, group-oriented news (health, fashion, science, technology), crime reporting, and sensationalism. In contrast, most of these publications are edited differently, but all of them share the same principle, to inform a determined community. For this, I decided to analyze three different newspapers; La Repubblica, El Diario and the Daily News, newspapers that serve a demographic audience into the New York City community.
Although, the cyber era has closed some newspapers’ circulations, the Daily News, EL Diario la Prensa and La Repubblica have survived the technological advances because of its format, its content, its circulation and the print quality that characterize its pages. These newspapers have their tabloid format and their daily circulations in common. However, what makes those newspapers differ from one another is their audience and news concentration. LaRepubblica is a local Italian newspaper that aims to inform the Italian community in New York City with general Italian news. El Diario La Prensa, is a newspaper dedicated to the Hispanic community in New York City and the Daily News is a local U.S. newspaper serving the local communities with the most important news in the national scope. The Daily News is one of the most read local newspapers and one of the oldest local newspaper in circulation. It serves the community in different areas of interest, sport, politics, entertainment, economics and media. This newspaper is one of the first newspapers who published tabloid news, one of the few publishing on Sundays and one of the few local complete newspapers. When I point out complete, I mean that it serves the purpose of delivering the information to the readers. The Daily News provides fair and detailed information, which fulfill the local community that it serves.
The Daily news editions allure the readers because of its variety. In News Is A Verb, Pete Hamill points out what makes the Daily News to be what it is, a complete and trustworthy local newspaper chosen by many New Yorkers. Hamill stated that what makes a newspaper survive in this era is to recognize change; change in social attitudes, change in ethnic composition, changes in the way women and men work for a living, dress or fall in love (38p). He points this out because if an editor does not recognize change, the newspaper will be dull, antique and uninteresting for its readers. The New York Daily News has innovated with the years. Despite The Daily news being tabloid newspaper, which promotes more sensationalized and entertainment news than politics oriented news, it serves its audience and keep the reader interested with their entertainment reporting. But also, it is informative, innovative; it is split in different sections, which can be kindly read by women and men. Furthermore, it is relevant to the community because it offers a wide coverage about the topics of interest in the local community. For example, the Isis issues and the NFL players’ cases of abuse which have been covered very closely by The Daily News journalists. Through the years, it has improved in printing quality, which has made advertising companies opt for its pages when it comes to advertise on print. In contrast, El Diario La Prensa a tabloid newspaper too, has remained for a century serving the Spanish against all odds. El Diario, also called “El Campeon de los Hispanos or The Hispanic Champion,” is a newspaper that covers national and international news, but it was first intended to empathized with Latin American news. Now it covers more national news of Hispanic interest. This ethnic newspaper is very small. It only has 60 pages, but it is very complete. It is very condensed but still has different sections that fulfill its informative purpose. El Diario has something in particular that I have not seen in the Daily News or La Repubblica. It considers its women readers in a remarkable way making the newspaper prevail in the Hispanic women community. I was amazed when I saw a small magazine call Vista, which is women-oriented and it seems to empower women with different themes. In News is A Verb, Hamill stayed “ To be separated from the readership by class and geography leads to two kinds of missed opportunities, one is journalistic and the other is for business growth, and one of the opportunities to growth is found among the women readers (40p).” This means that El Diario is going with the change in printing press.
On the other hand, there is La Repubblica an Italian newspaper that contains more political news and sports than entertainment. It is left-political centered and it provides the reader with plenty of Italian political information. Also, it has a great coverage of sports. This could say a lot about the Italian community, they love sports and politics. Here, I scarcely see a small section for women; this may be a male-oriented newspaper. Furthermore, this newspaper is well known among the Italians for criticizing the Catholic Church and the left wing in the political scope. La Repubblica has modernized its pages. Now they are more colorful, which makes the paper edition attract their readers in a platform besides their online version. Despite that this newspaper circulation is not as old as the newspaper mentioned above; it has kept its edition in the market since its creation in 1976.
La Repubblica should learn from the Daily News and El Diario la Prensa about their technique in retaining their readers. The fact that LaRepubblica is Politics oriented makes the edition poor in dynamic and not updated with the “change”. It is not that the newspaper should change its format, but it should include more entertainment or article for women. This way, the newspaper will have a bigger scope and it will be more competent at the same time. To make a reader read a newspaper instead of going online to look for news, is a big challenge for today’s newspapers. If an edition is boring, or too serious, or it is lacking in topics of women interest, it probably will not remain in today’s industry, the industry of technology and printing changes.
In addition, the Daily News should learn from El Diario La Prensa, how specific this newspaper is in terms of women interest. It is not that the Daily News does not have a section dedicated to women, but it is all over in the newspaper. If the Daily News organized a women oriented section that would increase their sales, making the newspaper more competitive in the local market. They used to have a woman oriented section on the Thursday edition, but I don’t see it anymore. Also, the Daily News should learn from La Reppublica to cover more news of political interest, for example topics regarding immigration, education and community decisions, this would also increase its Hispanic readers and would have a major scope in two communities; the one that speaks English and other languages, and the one that speaks only English. It is noteworthy that El Diario should learn from the Daily and La Repubblica as well. El Diario La Prensa is very condensed and has more entertainment news than any other news. In the national spectrum, El Diario contains only a few pages, the rest is opinion and entertainment. A little bit more of news would not harm its circulations. Change can means different things, attitudes, beauty, technology, but information about the public interest, including topics of national and international interest will never be displace by the changes that society is experiencing. On the contrary, the information can be tell and portray in a different format with more details.
What it is true is that these newspapers are very relevant for the community they serve. They may need to learn from one another’s editorial format, but they share common characteristics that keep them in the market; to inform, to educate and to entertain the readers. They have prevailed besides technology, they have overcome the challenges television and radio represents for them. Some newspapers circulations are closed others were about to close, others have been involved in veracity issues, but the truth is that they will prevail for many more years. Even in this era, printing press is necessary for future generations.
Bibliography
News Is A Verb, Hamill Pete: Journalism at the end of the Twentieth Century
Broadcasting, Cable, The Internet and Beyond: An Introduction to Modern Electronic Media” 7th Edition By: Joseph R. Dominick, Fritz Messere
http://www.psprint.com/resources/newspaper-history/
http://www.readex.com/content/americas-historical-newspapers
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/es/definicion/ingles_americano/newspaper
http://www.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_different_types_of_newspaper
https://www.nyu.edu/classes/stephens/Collier%27s%20page.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/business/media/17adco.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://www.worldissues360.com/index.php/brief-history-of-tabloid-journalism-21589/
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