Shine on (The Sun)

Member Name: sympatic

Product:	The Sun
Date:	21/10/05 (107 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Can make you laugh

Disadvantages: Does not contain any news

The Sun has become a very British institution and I remember American friends when visiting being amazed at the sight of a topless model on the third page of a national newspaper. It is the Page 3 pictures that the Sun is probably most well known for, that and it's abiity to claim an exclusive story out of thin air.

Part of the Murdoch empire it started life as a left leaning paper however it swung to the right during the rise of Thatcher. Aimed primarily at the working class audience it provides a cheap summary of the news with a big focus on sport and gossip column style reporting.

The editorial stance is always on the right however I do remember them coming out in favour of Labour under Tony Blair which is probably more of a reflection of Labours shift to the centre right and Tory incompetence rather than a change of political view by the papers owner.

Wat you get with the Sun is part comic part glossy magazine however it is very good at what it does and can provide an entertaining read all be it with a very limited vocabulary. My former politics teacher once reckoned that this was limited to about 10,000 words to wich one wag commented that 50 of these related to terms describing breasts.

It usually devotes the first few pages to news items with the front page being dominated by a huge headline banner. The style is typically patrioticor sensationalist. A few pages in however there is an increasing amount of stories about the world of entertainment before the regular features of a letters page, TV guide, a page of cartoons and an hilarious problems page with the emphasis on titillating problems.

Each day there is a regular feature either focusing on motoring, sport, womens pages or finance which occupies the middle section. The back pages are dominated by sport with the emphasis on football and horse racing, other sports are covered however this is not always very comprehensive and seem sto depend on the amount of stories available on football. This is no surprise given Murdochs ownership of Sky and its reliance on football as a means of attracting new customers.

I do read the Sun occasionally especially when there is a free DVD that I want on offer however most of the content can be found on its website which saves the 30p cover price.

Summary: National newspaper