Tabloid vs Broadsheet

By Gordon Hopkins “People who read the tabloids deserve to be lied to.” - Jerry Seinfeld. Next week is Community Newspaper Week, per the proclamation issued by Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen. That and a book I recently finished, “The Last Great Newspaper War” by New York reporter Mike Jaccarino, got me to thinking about one of the most unjustly maligned words in the English Language.No, not hullabaloo, which is justly maligned. The word I'm talking about is this: Tabloid.The mere mention of the word conjures up images of sleazy rags with outrageous headlines like “Bat Child Found in Cave!”, “Dick Cheney is a Robot”, “Hilary Clinton Adopts Baby Alien”, “Man Gives Birth”, “Batboy :Lives!” and others.At this point, I will admit, my plan was to make up a bunch of funny headlines. Only, I couldn't come up with any half as ridiculous as even the tamest of those. Every one of those headlines is real. And they aren't even the worst. Decorum prevents me from publishing many that I found.Of course, celebrities are the mainstay of the sleazy supermarket tabloids, the way politics is to more legit newspapers. The Kardashians and the Baldwins and pretty much anyone who ever appeared on TV or in a movie or made a record gets skewered in a story that may or may not have anything to do with reality.Gossip and sensationalized crime stories and astrology also have a home in such periodicals.Indeed, the very word has become shorthand for all that is crass and tacky and dubious in modern society.So why do I say the word is unjustly maligned? Because tabloid is really just a newspaper format. Newspapers primarily come in two different formats: the broadsheet and the tabloid.Broadsheet newspapers are published on long, vertical sheets of paper. A fine example of such a publication would be The Fairbury Journal-News. Some other, lesser known papers also used the format, like The New York Times and The Washington Post, but you probably haven't heard of those.In contrast, the tabloid format is more compact, printed horizontally and folded over, book-style.The word only became associated with trash because it is the preferred format of papers like The Weekly World News, famous for its “batboy” stories.Yet, there are plenty of legitimate newspapers printing legitimate, important news that publish in the tabloid format. The Chicago Sun-Times, which once published the film criticism of Roger Ebert, is tabloid. Newsday has won 19 Pulitzer Prizes.There are some, though, that straddle the line between serious and sensational news. The book I mention above is a memoir of the battle between the New York Daily News and the New York Post. The Post is responsible for what is probably the most famous tabloid headline ever, “Headless Body in Topless Bar.”Yes, the Daily News has printed plenty of ridiculous headlines and sensationalist stories but has also won 11 Pulitzer Prizes and published such journalist heavy hitters as Pete Hamill and Jimmy Breslin.The tabloid format is also favored by alternative newspapers, which cover a lot of stories ignored by more traditional news outlets.I guess my point, trite though it may be, is don't let the way a story is told convince you the story isn't worth reading.

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