Quantative analysis of the content in a newspaper is pretty boring, it’s also a lot of work and the results aren’t spectacular. For the latecomers, this is a series of entries about what’s actually in a newspaper as distinct from what the newspapers try to tell you as a reader. As we will see, it isn’t all “news” and there are some interesting variations.
Just a quick note about definitions. My classification system is as follows -
- Journalism
- Graphics and photos
- Advertising
- Headlines
In turn the journalistic content is broken down into these categories -
- Journalist
- Editor
- Agency
- Photographer
- Cartoon
Naturally this is not an exact science, some newspapers don’t attribute certain content and the contribution of editors is subject to a certain amount of guesswork. As I said before these results are indicative rather than definitive.
The journalistic content results from the Financial Review in broad percentages look like this -
- Journalist – 62%
- Editor – 13%
- Photographer – 11%
- Agency – 11%
- Cartoon – 2%
The breakdown of contributor numbers look like this -
- Journalists – 46
- Photographers – 14
- Agency contributions – 11
- Editors and guest commentators – 9
- Cartoons – 3
Thrilling isn’t it? Wait till we get to the Telegraph!
