Second round for the newspaper reviews; after the Morning Star come its antitheses.
The Times, 23 September, £1.40
This newspaper is mostly in tabloid format; the magazine and arts sections are stapled magazines, the former on glossy paper. The paper comes wrapped in a plastic bag, and features three folded sections - a main section, and two tabloids inside. Each tabloid has two sections of the finished paper. It's a messy arrangement, feeling as though the paper explodes while reading. The typeface is a dull serif body, with a lifeless serif headline; only the arts magazine breaks this tedium, though its sans-serif fonts are scarcely less dowdy.
Home news has about 35 pages, straddling the comment section. There's a hagiography of Alistair Chancellor, and an assumption that speeding fines are unfair. Most of the difficult news is relegated behind comment, including the conviction of a Labour councillor for being a liar. It's voluminous, but not particularly enlightening. **
Comment gets 5 pages, readable coumnists, but only Matthew Parris is anything like provocative. The paper's leaders are full of platitudes. **
Foreign news gets 14 pages, buried deep in main section. There's only a couple of pages to cover yesterday's events - everything else is features or slightly timeless. **
Business gets about 20 pages in the back half of main section + 20p of supp. It's more contemporary than the foreign section - about half the coverage must have been written for to-day's edition, most of the rest within the week. good for non-business folk. personal finance also contemporary, but assumes wealth. ***
Sport has 34 pages. It's entirely comprehensive, and well-balanced, except there's nothing on last night's France - Ireland match, not even a result, a big miss. ***
Lifestyle, 2 pages in the main section includes a very good faith essay. 24 page body & soul is entirely for those with children. 32 pages of travel are almost entirely winter sun. 156p glossy mag almost entirely given over to fashion. *
In Arts, the 20 page Books setcion is very good in its own right, and could almost stand alone; this also includes 3 pages of puzzles. 32 pages for other arts is nominally regional, but not for listings, and highlights are national. ***
TV, 4 pages per day, full listings for the big 5, cable channels in primetime only, radio is analogue nationals. **
Weather has a full page just before sport. Large map, too few temp blobs, outlook is in pictures only, good Atlantic chart. Print is mid-grey on light-grey, and needs better contrast. **
Overall: Journalism, the writing is adequate, nothing more. **
Value for money - we would only buy the sport and book sections if they were standalone. That we would leave the entire news and comment section on the shelf shows there's something badly wrong. Those sections occupied us for slightly over an hour. **
Sunday Times, 30 September, £2
This is a big paper, and we're glad that we had a bag on hand to bring it back. News, sport, business, personal finance, appointments, and news review are folded as four broadsheet sections; travel, men's consumption, housing, and two additional business supplements are loose tabloid newsprint, all folded within the news and sports sections. A plastic bag contains the arts magazine (stapled newsprint) and fashion and photo magazines (both on glossy paper). Though it contains more sections than its Saturday cousin, the Sunday edition feels larger to begin with, a paper that begs to be spread out. Typeface is a slightly more open serif than the daily; the broadsheet sections use sans-serifs for features and dominating headlines, large serif type for headlines on smaller stories. It looks decent. The tabloids mostly have sans-serif headlines.
Home receives 15 pages at the front of news section. Tends to the magaziney, and graphics of The Soup Dragon and Space Cadet playing poker was crass. Includes a charity appeal masquerading as news. **
Comment, 6 pages in main section, 9 pages in News Review. Cogent and well-written, but clearly toeing a particular viewpoint. The sheer volume means there's something for most people, but the section needs a commentator who is prepared to challenge the paper's respectable-right orthodoxy. ***
Foreign news has 9 pages, mostly at the back of news section. Reasonable topicality, stuff on Ukranian elections and 2.5p on Burma. ***
Weather, half-page, back of main section. Very clear, with pithy description of week to come. No Atlantic chart is the only miss. ***
Sport has its own 32 page section, very comprehensive coverage, just about getting all the balances right. ****
Business, plus money, appointments, and two corporate puffery sections. Lots of writing, but only the cronically-wrong Irwin Setzler stood out, and he's dragging the score down. **
Lifestyle, 100p glossy magazine has photojournalism. 120p fashion magazine has more readable bits than the Times. 40p travel is mostly winter sun. 40p men's consumption is cars, tech, and girls (and the intersection thereof, Heather Graham). 72p housing section passes us by. Can't help but be impressed with the sheer range of sections. ***
Arts get a 58 page bound mag, inc 14p books, 10p music, 20p features. All well-written, and tolerably comprehensive, without jumping out as brilliant. No attempt at regionalisation. ***
TV, 4 pages per day - text preview, big 5, full listing for key cable channels, pm for a dozen more. Clear bias to other Murdoch-owned channels. National analogue radio gets outline listings, slightly extended for 3 and 4. **
Overall: Journalism, the Sunday Times does a lot of things tolerably well, but none of them excellently. The journalism is entirely predictable and the attitudes staid. **
Value for money, certainly get a lot of paper - 6 broadsheet sections, four regular tabloids, one plain and two glossy mags, adding to about 800 tabloid pages. The drive for a newspaper that has something for everyone produces some value, though the quality is generally lacking. We would seek out the sport section and weather forecast, probably spend ten minutes with the arts section, flick through the rest. ***
Next: The Guardian
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