The National Examiner

The National Examiner dated February 7, 2011

The National Examiner’s cover is brightly colored and has many pictures of celebrity faces. The biggest words on the cover are “GAY STARS ON TV” and under it reads “WHO IS, WHO ISN’T!” The font used for this title is bigger than the name of the tabloid. Other headlines are “Meg Ryan falls for rock star!” “Caroline Kennedy Stalker Nightmare! – Creep drifter haunts Jackie O’s granddaughter” and finally “Hitler’s godson is a child molester!” They all use exclamation points and most of the words are in all caps. Also advertised on the front cover is the possibility of winning 4,315 dollars in puzzles and giveaways. Enticing.

So I open it and the first thing I read in tiger printed font “Tiger Mothers!” “Shocking way Chinese-American parents raise their kids to be overachievers”. The images take up a lot of space on the page and the paragraphs are short. Some of the paragraphs are only a sentence long. This article seems bias in some ways. It talks about how strict Chinese parents are with their children and it is pretty harsh at some points. “’Chinese mothers can say: ‘Hey, fatty, lose some weight.’”

The next page spread is ‘Bakery Fakery,’ which is an article about a Georgia Bakery that makes super realistic cakes with a word bubble that says, “These are all CAKES!” Next to each picture of a cake is a caption. For example next to the octopus cake it says, “This octopus is a real grabber.” Next to the cake that is a purse with a dog in it says, “Paris Hilton might accidentally grab this Gucci handbag toting a Yorkie.”

The next page has three parts: National Examiner Giveaway, Teen Jaywalker hit by car-then gets ticket while in coma and Treasure Hunt. The giveaway is about a chance to win a soda maker. The Teen Jaywalker is a small article about a girl who got hit by a car and got a ticket while she was in a coma. I actually saw this on CNN also. The treasure hunt is a chance to win 100 dollars by finding the symbol provided somewhere within the tabloid.

There’s really too much content to keep going on like this. I’ve noticed the headlines are huge and hard to read at times. They’re targeted audience is really hard to identify. I’ve come to the conclusion that their main target audience is women aged 10-100. There are advertisements for bras- two for 9.98 and advertisements for rings and dachshund figurines. Additionally I think they target Christians because in some articles there are Christian undertones and biases.