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Headline! Understanding English news

These days, it’s important to know what’s going on in the world around you. Reading English newspapers can be difficult if you’ve never learned how, though, so here are some handy hints to make sure you get the scoop!

tabloids and broadsheets

Newspapers have different names according to when and how often they are published, and what type of news they report. A tabloid or rag is a newspaper that prints mainly gossip or sensational material. It usually has a smaller format than a broadsheet (a newspaper with full-size pages). Other common names for newspapers include gazette, journal, chronicle and times.

front page

This is the first page, or cover page of a newspaper, and contains the most important articles (news stories).

headline

This is the title or heading of an article, e.g. Exports shoot up as dollar plunges. Headlines are usually written in a special, abbreviated style, and are sometimes hard to decipher.

classifieds

This is a section of the paper containing advertisements placed by the general public, like offers or requests for jobs, houses, apartments, used cars and so on. Special classified ads called personals help lonely people find romantic partners.

editor

This is the person who supervises the publication of the newspaper. The editor is also responsible for writing a section of the paper called the Editorial, in which he expresses his opinion about a current topic.

journalist

The people who write newspaper articles are called journalists or reporters, while the newspaper industry as a whole is known as the press.

circulation

Readers are the people who buy and read the newspaper. The newspaper’s success can be measured by its readership or circulation, the number of readers it has.

paparazzi

This is a negative term for newspaper or magazine photographers, especially those who follow celebrities trying to take intrusive photographs of them.

scoop

This is a slang expression meaning an important piece of news, especially something that has not yet been reported by other newspapers. To get the scoop means to find out or report the news before others do.

breaking news

This phrase is used when reporting an event that has just happened. A similar expression is Hot off the press!, meaning that the newspaper has just been printed and the news is very recent.