"Journalists are like Magpies, constantly looking for new shiny things"

I can now see why "clinic" is an appropriate name, with all us young journo's spread around the room with our heads buried in to our paper waiting in what felt like a doctors surgery. After listening to the Today programme on Radio 4, and taking a trip down to the hospital shop to buy a paper, I am pleased to say I followed Horrie's 8am lecture start instructions and for the first time I felt as though I had my eyes and ears fully open to the news.

This was one of the first lectures that I found directly related to Journalism, as a 'focus group' we discussed Audience and Agenda of each paper:

The Sun - "white man van", working class (Right Wing*)

Daily Mail - Regular men, 40+ middle class (Right Wing)

Independent - Male 30+ (Left wing* - liberal paper, the only paper which didn't have a poppy on, subtly symbolising that they are not telling you what to think - Locke would agree with his strong views on human nature and freedom)

The Times - Older males, upper class profession e.g Business man, Lawyer (Right Wing)

The Telegraph - aka "Tory-Graph" conservative paper, oldest readership (Right Wing)

The Guardian - previously classed as a university paper as many students read it (Left Wing) 

The Mirror - Females audience as many features geared towards fashion (Left Wing)

The Star - youngest readership

*Right Wing - Conservative, Fascism, Rich

*Left Wing - Communism, for the 'people'

To cut a long story short, look out for DFS adverts, the clue is behind advertisements, they are a key to the target audience of the paper. As we established today in our seminar, the difference in the price advertised for DFS adverts differs between each paper as it is targeted towards different readership classes. Evidently, the cheaper prices were published in The Mirror and The Sun ranging from £399-599, compared to the increased price of £899 in The Guardian. 

To be more technical, audiences are broken down in to different classes

A - Upper Middle Class

B - Middle Class

C1 - Lower Middle Class

C2 - Skilled Working Class

D - Working Class

E - Lowest Level 

[Broadsheets are in the ABC1 Bracket, and tabloids are in the C2DE bracket]