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Twelve daily newspapers and eleven Sunday-only weekly newspapers are distributed nationally in the United Kingdom. Others circulate in Scotland only and still others serve smaller areas. National daily newspapers publish every day except Sundays and 25 December. Sunday newspapers may be independent; e.g. The Observer was an independent Sunday newspaper from its founding in 1791 until it was acquired by The Guardian in 1993, but more commonly, they have the same owners as one of the daily newspapers, usually with a related name (e.g. The Times and The Sunday Times), but are editorially distinct.
UK newspapers can generally be split into two distinct categories: the more serious and intellectual newspapers, usually referred to as the broadsheets, and sometimes known collectively as the 'quality press', and others, generally known as tabloids, and collectively as the 'popular press', which have tended to focus more on celebrity coverage and human interest stories rather than political reporting or overseas news. The tabloids in turn have been divided into the more sensationalist mass market titles, or 'red tops', such as The Sun and the Daily Mirror, and the middle-market papers, the Daily Express and the Daily Mail.
Most of the broadsheets, so called because of their historically larger size, have changed in recent years to a compact format, the same size as the tabloids. The Independent and The Times were the first to do so. The Guardian moved in September 2005 to what is described as a 'Berliner' format, slightly larger than a compact. Its Sunday stablemate The Observer followed suit. Both The Guardian and The Observer now use the tabloid format, having done so since January 2018.[1] Despite these format changes, these newspapers are all still considered 'broadsheets'.
Other Sunday broadsheets, including The Sunday Times, which tend to have a large amount of supplementary sections, have kept their larger-sized format. The national Sunday titles usually have a different layout and style from their weekday sister papers, and are produced by separate journalistic and editorial staff. All the major UK newspapers currently have websites, some of which provide free access. The Times and The Sunday Times have a paywall requiring payment on a per-day or per-month basis by non-subscribers. The Financial Times business daily also has limited access for non-subscribers. The Independent became available online only upon its last printed edition on 26 March 2016.[2] However unlike the previously mentioned newspapers, it does not require any payment to access its news content. Instead the newspaper offers extras for those wishing to sign up to a payment subscription, such as crosswords, Sudoku puzzles, weekend supplements and the ability to automatically download each daily edition to read offline. The London Economic is another example of a British digital/online only newspaper, however, unlike The Independent it has never run a print publication.
Most towns and cities in the UK have at least one local newspaper, such as the Evening Post in Bristol and The Echo in Cardiff. Local newspapers were listed in advertising guides such as the Mitchell's Press Directories.
They are not known nationally for their journalism in the way that (despite much syndication) some city-based newspapers in the USA are (e.g. The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times). An exception to this was the Manchester Guardian, which dropped the 'Manchester' from its name in 1959 and relocated its main operations to London in 1964. The Guardian Media Group produced a Mancunian paper, the Manchester Evening News, until 2010 when along with its other local newspapers in the Greater Manchester area it was sold to Trinity Mirror.
Broadsheet and former broadsheet newspapers
Tabloid newspapers
Title Days of publication Circulation Established Editor Owner Political
orientationPolitical party support
in the 2019 general electionThe Sun Daily 1,210,915[a] 1964 Victoria Newton News Corporation Right-wing Conservative Party The Sun on Sunday Sundays 1,013,777[a] 2012 Daily Mail Daily 745,629 1896 Ted Verity Daily Mail and General Trust plc The Mail on Sunday Sundays 637,877 1982 David Dillon Daily Express Daily 163,610 1900 Gary Jones Reach Sunday Express Sundays 163,610 1918 Michael Booker Daily Mirror Daily 258,043 1903 Lloyd Embley Centre-left Labour Party Sunday Mirror Sundays 193,360 1915 Sunday People Sundays 65,460 1881 Peter Willis Daily Star Daily 146,949 1978 Jon Clark Largely non-political None Daily Star Sunday Sundays 87,798 2002 Denis Mann Morning Star Daily N/A 1930 Ben Chacko People's Press Printing Society Left-wing Labour Party
