Tabloids are about more than trashy headlines
Love them or hate them, their history and future are long
BEFORE any journalist thought to use the word, a drugs company trademarked it in 1884. “Tabloid”, a portmanteau of “tablet” and “alkaloid”, denoted drugs in tablet form but quickly assumed a broader meaning: “anything compressed or concentrated for easy assimilation”. That also describes what has come to be known as tabloid journalism: brief sentences, punchy (and often incendiary) headlines, short articles, famous subjects.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “It’s an ink-stained world”
Culture September 14th 2024
- The information wars are about to get worse, Yuval Noah Harari argues
- Why many French have come to like “Emily in Paris”
- Paul Gauguin is an artist ripe for cancellation
- The riveting story of the longest-held American prisoner-of-war
- “The Perfect Couple” and the new map of Moneyland
- Tabloids are about more than trashy headlines
From the September 14th 2024 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionDiscover more
Angela Merkel sets out to restore her reputation
But her new memoir is unlikely to change her critics’ minds
The best books of 2024, as chosen by The Economist
Readers will never think the same way again about games, horses and spies
What to read to understand Elon Musk
The world’s richest man was shaped by science fiction
Tech and religion are very much alike
They both have gods, rich institutions and secretive cultures
Woodrow Wilson’s reputation continues to decline
A dispassionate new biography chronicles the former president’s hostility to suffrage
The cult of Jordan Peterson
What the Canadian intellectual gets right about young men