ABSTRACT
The journalistic institutions of the contemporary public sphere are information-suppliers in a multi-layered media market, structured by socio-economic audience characteristics such as social class, professional status and educational level. The precise terminology used to distinguish these markets varies between commentators and analysts, and none of the various conventions adopted are entirely adequate. Many refer to the ‘quality press’ when describing the large-format broadsheet newspapers, for example, which is unsatisfactory in so far as it assumes that ‘quality’ is synonymous with the style and content of those newspapers especially, and implies that non-broadsheet titles cannot also be of high journalistic quality. Similarly, the largest-selling popular titles have traditionally been called tabloids, but since the Mail and Express titles (at one time both broadsheets) adopted the newsprint size associated with tabloids some years ago the term has become confusing, and increasingly unhelpful in an era when ‘tabloidisation’ is almost universally used as a critical term of abuse. The designation red-top tabloid is a variation used by some analysts to distinguish the racier tabloid titles (Sun, Mirror, Daily Star) from the tabloid-sized former broadsheets (Daily Mail, Daily Express).
