Obituary for the newspaper? Tracking the tabloid

Discussing newspapers in the 21st century commonly entails a narrative of impending extinction arising from technological, demographic, and cultural change. This article reports on research into three Australian newspapers (two broadsheet, one tabloid) that is concerned, in the first instance, with the concept of ‘tabloidization’, and the proposition that identifiable tabloid properties, such as the simplification and spectacularization of news, are increasingly characteristic of contemporary newspapers. Adaptive changes to newspaper design, style, and content in the interests of survival and renewal are addressed through quantitative content analysis in tracking formal changes to newspapers, and qualitative research through interviews with journalists in exploring their everyday negotiation of the role and trajectory of newspapers. These questions of industrial context, textual form, occupational practice, professional ideology, and politico-cultural judgment are raised in seeking to understand the dynamics of the shifting forms and contested readings of contemporary newspapers through a critically reflexive analysis of tabloidization discourse and process.