Week 03 – Newspaper Front Page: centre-left and centre-right

29th September-5th October 2008

For the next studio session, we were asked to produce a newspaper front page dealing with stories on our chosen thesis subjects.  My topic lends itself quite well to news-related studies so I decided to make two, developing my earlier theme of different sides of  the media – one “serious” tabloid-style paper (a combination of the Mail and the Express (as opposed to less “serious” (more “comic”-like) tabloids such as the Sun and the Mirror, etc.)) and one broadsheet-style paper (based on the Guardian (which is no longer actually a broadsheet but is now in a medium-sized, “Berliner” format)).

I took it as an exercise in graphic presentation, composition and writing style – using, for example, the typographical styles of the papers I was imitating and the language and phraseology of their reporting.  The Guardian, usually, has, comparatively, a lot of text and a number of stories on its front page and even has its own, specially-designed typeface which it uses exclusively, in its variations (bold and italicised, etc.) for different purposes such as headlines, bylines, sub-headings and so on, and of which I used the most approximate equivalent I could find.  The Daily Mail, for a tabloid, has really quite a high production value and is well formatted and laid out but, unlike the Guardian, it only ever has one or two stories, usually with one, dominating banner headline and a panel advertising an inside feature and maybe a big photograph of another story inside.  Quite often, too, the Mail and Express like to have the big photo to be of an attractive lady, attached to some vaguely news-sounding story, as justification.  Similarly, they frequently like to have stories about female celebrities, inside, ostensibly condemning them but, yet,…requiring a series of revealing, titillating photographs.  This type of thing sums up a lot of what these newspapers do – present a socially-conservative and “moral” facade while indulging in the kind of base “journalism” and “reporting” that much of its readership probably thinks is trashy.  A bit like gentlemen’s “style” mags which are really just upmarket lads’ mags – making a more acceptable context for, yes, photos of semi-nude ladies.  It isn’t just the celeb stories, though – it is the same with their coverage of current events and politics.  They have an appearance of “authority”, provided by devices like the gothic typeface of the Mail’s title and its Royal coat-of-arms but are usually no more than thinly-veiled, Tory agitprop.  The Guardian has its own biases and axes to grind and its reporting can be predictable and disappointing in its own way but, like the general left-right of contemporary politics, the left is never as hateful and dangerous as the right.

The front page story on the Daily Crusade, I attributed to John Littlerichard – a play on Richard Littlejohn, the odious Mail columnist whom I discussed in the piece of writing I did about media, politics and public perception, in Week 01.  I made sure, too, that I over-inflated or misquoted figures in the Mail’s portrayal of the story.  The feature banner is taken from a real feature in the Mail in which journalist Quentin Letts actually suggests that the decimalisation of its currency “ruined” Britain.  The man is an idiot.  Worse, he equates Ted Heath’s sacking of Enoch Powell with “giving in” to multiculturalism – implying that multiculturalism is the bad, destructive thing, while “predicting” (and, effectively, accepting) inevitable, violent racial disharmony is, well, it’s fine!!  Isn’t it?  Bloody Quentin Letts.

The Custodian’s main feature, I attributed to Dean Malcolm – another little transposition but, this time, of Malcolm Dean, the Guardian’s former lead writer on social affairs, who wrote the final story from my Week 01 presentation, which advocates a British museum of immigration.  I tried to write stories in the usual range of areas that appear on the Guardian’s front page, all relating to immigration – taken from current news.

Did a funny thing with the Mail’s coat-of-arms and the Express’ crusading knight logo, too – combining the two and changing the text in the scroll, from Dieu et mon droit (“God and my right”) to Dieu dét-estes les pédés (“God hates fags” – a tribute to the despicable Fred Phelps).  Just a wee joke, there.