Go
New
Find
Notify
Tools
Reply
  
red-top journalist Login/Join
 
Member
posted
quote:
That is a "red-top" journalist's trick and one I despise

What's a red-top journalist?
 
Posts: 1242 | Location: San FranciscoReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of BobHale
posted Hide Post
In England some of the newspapers, usually the more down market ones, traditionally print the name of the newspaper in red ink.


"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson.
 
Posts: 9421 | Location: EnglandReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of arnie
posted Hide Post
A "red-top" is a UK newspaper that concentrates on sensational news of footballers' liaisons with ladies not their wives, pop-stars' indiscretions, and the like. They are so called because their mastheads are printed in red ink. They include The Sun, The Mirror and The Star.

Until a while ago they were also often known as "tabloids" because their size was smaller than the usual broadsheet style favoured by the more serious papers. However, a number of the more serious papers have switched to the tabloid format so a different distinction has to be made.


Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
 
Posts: 10940 | Location: LondonReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
Due to the rather frivolous and sensationalist nature of many of the stories carried in red-top newspapers their journalists are not viewed as having the same level of integrity as those working for the very best newspapers like The Times or The Daily Telegraph. If we hear of a journalist using fairly suspect means to secure a story it may be viewed as a 'red-top journalists trick'. I think it is all very well planned and I suspect that many of these newspapers deliberately end up in court and paying fines and compensation because they know that the extra circulation gained will more than compensate them.

I find at school that I can use the 'red-top' newspaper argument to battle the 'popular' choices that the kids make. They may argue that the music they like is better than mine because theirs is more 'popular' but I can always counter by pointing out that The Sun is the most popular newspaper so that should tell us something about the nature of popularity.
 
Posts: 291 | Location: EnglandReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of Kalleh
posted Hide Post
I don't think we use the term in the U.S., do we?
 
Posts: 24735 | Location: Chicago, USAReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of Caterwauller
posted Hide Post
I've never heard it, Kalleh. We talk about tabloids and rags . . . but we have some other terms for journalists of shady character:

yellow journalism
hacks
popparazzi (who started this one?)

Surely there are others.


*******
"Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.
~Dalai Lama
 
Posts: 5149 | Location: Columbus, OhioReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of arnie
posted Hide Post
quote:
popparazzi (who started this one?)
The word is actually "paparazzi". The Word Detective has an article on this --
quote:
"Paparazzi" take their name from the celebrity photographer Signor Paparazzo, a character in Frederico Fellini's 1960 film "La Dolce Vita." Fellini evidently didn't like the paparazzi any more than today's celebrities do. Before Fellini's film made "paparazzo" synonymous with "pushy creep with a camera," it was an Italian dialect word meaning "buzzing insect."


Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
 
Posts: 10940 | Location: LondonReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of jheem
posted Hide Post
Fellini, agreat filmmaker, had the dubious pleasure of being harrassed by a group who took their generic name from a character in one of his movies. (La dolce vita is still a fun film, available on DVD.)
 
Posts: 1218 | Location: CaliforniaReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
I saw La dolce vita recently and I wondered why Mastroianni kept calling his photographer friend "paparazzo". That's not very polite, I thought.
 
Posts: 2428Reply With QuoteReport This Post
  Powered by Social Strata  
 


Copyright © 2002-12