London’s tawdry tabloids turn upmarket

Bill Hagerty, editor of the British Journalism Review, said that young readers, many of whom grew up with the Internet, are starting to expect their news for free.

Increasingly, newspapers are trying to survive by helping readers move to their Web sites. John Lloyd, director of the Reuters Institute for the study of journalism at Oxford University, said the readers of the upscale papers generally “want to be information-rich” so they easily migrated online.

Upscale papers, also known as “quality” newspapers, have done well with polemical columnists, who have avid fans, and the competition for topics covered by tabloids, namely sex and celebrity, is fierce online.

As society evolves, views of what’s shocking have changed. “Once there was history of sitting down to read headlines like, `Vicar Runs Off with Choir Master.’ These days, who cares” about a story like that? said Ray Snoddy, a media commentator.

The tabloids have had to dial up the intensity of their material, but now the courts have dealt a setback to those efforts.

In March, the News of the World tabloid published a story with the headline “F1 Boss Has Sick Nazi Orgy With 5 Hookers.” The boss in question was Max Mosley, who heads the organization that oversees Formula One auto racing events and is the son of Oswald Mosley, leader of the British fascist movement during World War II.

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