ABSTRACT
Communicating the news through newspapers has faced constant challenges. From the early seventeenth century to today (in the UK) these challenges have ranged across widespread illiteracy, poor transport and communication networks, active oppression and censorship, burdensome tax regimes, technological constraints and innovations, the concentration of ownership, commercialisation, government meddling, competition from other media and most recently declining circulations and advertising revenues associated with changing news consumption habits. Equally newspapers have, throughout this period, constantly changed their understanding of what is judged to be newsworthy and adopted different ways of telling people the news. Today there coexist different news forms which utilise modes of expression that range from the formal to the vernacular, the serious to the irreverent, the conservative to the progressive and the neutral to the partisan (with some too tendentious to allow easy definition). All of which are pursued in the name of anticipating a newspaper’s readers’ needs and interests. To be blunt, the category of ‘news’ in the UK press constantly evades a concise single definition of what it is and what form it takes.
