Newspaper Vocabulary

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Welcome

Hello and welcome to Learn English Vocabulary. My name is Jack and I’m making this podcast for you to learn or revise English vocabulary. 

These podcasts are graded from A2 which is around lower intermediate all the way to C2 which is advanced. 

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Introduction

In this podcast, I’m going to talk about newspapers in the UK and present several items of B2 vocabulary related to newspapers. I have used the excellent English Profile website from the Cambridge university press and some IELTS preparation sites to put together this list. The words I will present in this podcast are, a publication, broadsheets, tabloids, paparazzi. Gutter-press, local newspapers, articles, pieces, columns, column inches, columnist, issue and circulation.

Publications

I’ll start with publication. A publication is the general term for any type of newspaper or magazine. In the UK, there are newspaper groups that are responsible for a range of publications. The Daily Mail Group publishes three daily newspapers so you can say that the Daily Mail Group has three major publications.

Broadsheets

Newspapers come in three main varieties in the UK. You have broadsheets which are generally serious newspapers which focus on news and politics. I don’t think that this is a very common term. It’s usually only used when contrasting serious newspapers with less serious newspapers called tabloids. 

Tabloids

Tabloids are less serious and have more gossip and celebrity news as well as national and international stories. Some tabloids really focus on human interest stories and celebrity gossip. They compete to publish the most eye-catching headlines, the short titles of stories written in large black type on the front page of the paper  These are the papers that fuel the paparazzi, the aggressive photographers that follow celebrities. They are sometimes called the gutter-press

In the past, broadsheets were really big. They were literally broad sheets of paper and tabloids were smaller. However today, some serious newspapers have tabloid formats. 

Local newspapers

The third variety is local newspapers. These feature stories from a region or even from a town. I live in a small town and it has its own local newspaper. 

Articles and pieces

The different stories in newspapers are called articles. Another word for a story in a newspaper or magazine is piece. You might be asked: did you see the piece on Scottish independence in the paper? 

Columns and columnists

The text is divided into columns and the amount of interest a newspaper has in a story is measured in column inches. You might hear that a newspaper has dedicated a lot of column inches to a story or issue.

As well as the actual columns of text, writers can ‘have a column’ in a newspaper. These writers are called columnists and write regularly. Stewart Lee, the comedian, is a columnist in the guardian and regularly contributes satirical opinion pieces

Issues and circulation

Each time a newspaper or magazine is published is an issue of the publication. Many magazines are published or come out every month so you might hear: “has the July issue come out yet?” 

The number of copies of a publication that are distributed is called it’s circulation. The newspaper in the UK with the highest circulation is a free tabloid paper called Metro. There has been a steady decline in newspaper circulation in the UK and more people choose to get their news online. 

Conclusion

So there you have lots of B2 vocabulary related to newspapers. I hope you have found it useful.

If you have enjoyed this podcast, please leave me a comment or a review and don’t forget that you can read the transcript for this podcast and complete some language activities on LearnEnglishVocabulary.co.uk.

Thanks for listening.

Test yourself

Select the correct answers

Discussion questions

  1. How many types of publication can you name?
  2. How often do you read the newspaper?
  3. Do you read physical newspapers or do you read the news online?
  4. Do you read broadsheets or tabloid news?
  5. Do you trust the news that you read in the paper? 
  6. Do you read a leftwing or rightwing newspaper?
  7. Do you agree with any of the following quotes?

Most of us probably feel we couldn’t be free without newspapers, and that is the real reason we want newspapers to be free.

Edward R. Murrow

If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.

Mark Twain

The best fiction is far more true than any journalism.

William Faulkner

The newspaper journalists like to believe the worst; they can sell more papers that way, as one of them told me himself; for even upstanding and respectable people dearly love to read ill of others.

Margaret Atwood

We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.

Alain de Botton

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1 Comment

  • MAJID POURKARIMI
    Posted 26/12/2021 at 10:44 am

    Thanks, Jack!

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