W 039 F

Introduction
One possibility to gather information about a period of time is to read newspapers. To access one specific day we shall read daily papers. Of course, newspapers are different. There are popular papers, or "tabloids", aiming at mass entertainment with exciting gossip columns. Quality papers, the so called "broadsheet papers" belong to another group.

I was born in Budapest, on the 18th of January, 1977. That day probably brought different news for the different people. This is the reason why I decided to compare a Hungarian and a British daily; to find out features that may indicate the differences between two European countries of that period. I was curious whether I would find articles about different countries and themes in the two newspapers. If yes, that would imply the concerns of the two countries.

I selected The Guardian and Esti Hirlap. The Guardian was a British quality paper with political, economic analysis, and social, cultural issues. Esti Hirlap was an evening paper with various columns as well. Both newspapers seemed true and balanced, telling the reality therefore I found them a good choice for my research.

Method
I compared Esti Hirlap and The Guardian from various aspects, such as the contents, the issues they discussed, and the titles. Besides, I examined the cover pages, the back pages, and the foreign news columns of the dailies, focusing on the topics of the articles. I compared the types of columns, the structure of the paper, and the themes of the leading articles separately. I also compared the countries the papers dealt with. Additionally, I looked for common news, whether there was anything which drew both Hungarian and English people's attention that day.
Results and discussion

The cover page
When holding a newspaper, one reads the cover page first therefore editors put the most eye popping, the most exciting news on this page. According to Lastrego and Testa " daily papers contain articles of foreign affairs and of actual home affairs on the cover " (46). There is always a leading article which is longer than the other ones and provides information about an important event or problem. Table 1. shows the headlines which appeared on the cover of the two dailies.
Esti Hirlap The Guardian

"Épül a metró új szakasza" "Carter loses CIA chief to the critics"
"Megrongált vezetékek, felbontott "Gilmore gets his death wish"
utak" "Commons pay tribute to Avon"
"Földomlás Jugoszláviában, "Labour fights hard on Silkin"
úttorlaszok Bulgáriában" "Cheap Saudi oil for Britain"
"KGST-tanácskozás a kubai "Public inquiry hint on Hughes"
fõvárosban"
"Itália napilapok nélkül"
"Közel-Kelet: Minicsúcs februárban"
"Rodézia: Bábpárt"

Table 1.: The headlines on the cover pages of Esti Hirlap and The Guardian.

The cover page of Esti Hirlap contained seven articles. The leading article dealt with the construction of the metro in Budapest. It occupied the top-middle section of the page. Besides this article, there were three other long news. These dealt with the problems concerning road constructions in the capital, the COMECON meeting in Cuba, and the difficulties caused by the weather in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. The right side of the page included short articles about foreign politics.

The Guardian' s cover had two more articles than Esti Hirlap, if we count the soccer results and the introduction of a report which appeared on the second page. There were actually two leading articles with the same length. The one on the top of the page dealt with USA politics, with the title "Carter loses CIA chief". The other, more arousing news came from the US as well; it was about the execution of Gary Gilmore in Salt Lake City. It was deemed important because there had not been executions in the United States for ten years. Besides these dominating articles, the cover informed readers about the death of a former Prime Minister, Lord Avon, and also about some other actualities in British life, politics, and economy.

A considerable difference in the structure of the two dailies was that most news of the Guardian' s cover were not finished, which means that the articles continued on another page[s]. On the contrary, the Hungarian cover had complete articles. In spite of this difference, the outlook of the two covers were similar, though the Guardian presented two photographs besides the articles, whereas Esti Hirlap did not.

The back page
Besides the cover page, the back page is to draw readers' attention, because it is easy to look at without turning over pages. Therefore it should be similar to the cover with arousing titles and topics. Table 2. shows the headlines appearing on the back pages of the two dailies.

Esti Hirlap The Guardian
"Halálra ítélték a kislány "Trade news boost for Government"
gyilkosát" "Gilmore gets his death wish"
"Változóan felhõs idõ- "MPs press for murders inquiry"
Nincs komolyabb akadály a "Equity threat to Chorus Line"
közlekedésben" "Labour fights hard on Silkin attack"
"Vonatra zuhant a híd"
Table 2.: The headlines on the back pages of the two dailies.

When I glanced at these pages of Esti Hirlap and The Guardian, I saw the weather reports at once. It occupied great parts in both papers, though Esti Hirlap put it on the left side, while The Guardian had it on the right side. There was another peculiar coincidence as well; both back pages had leading articles about death verdicts. The difference lies in the cases. Whereas The Guardian continued the article dealing with Gary Gilmore's execution, Esti Hirlap presented the case of Imre Miskei, killer of an eight-year-old girl, and announced that he was sentenced to death.

Besides the leading article, the Hungarian back page contained shorter news about car accidents, a serious train crash in Sydney, and about various one-sentence topics, including a photo of a lamp collection.

The Guardian continued some other articles from the cover page, the ones dealing with home affairs and politics. The page included a critique about a West End musical, and a photo of a politician as well.

On the whole, the back pages of the two dailies looked similar, regarding the themes of leading articles, the structure, and the number of photos. But they differed concerning some of the topics. While the back page of Esti Hirlap lacked news about economy and culture, The Guardian did not present articles of accidents on its back page.

Columns
According to Lastrego and Testa, "dailies issue different columns on different pages, and the various papers deal with certain topics on different scales" (48). On table 3. I present the contents of the two dailies.

Esti Hirlap The Guardian
page 2: Culture page 3-4: Overseas news
page 3: Economy page 6-7: Home news
page 4: Home news page 8: Arts, reviews
page 5: Foreign news page 9: Guardian Women
page 6: TV, Radio Programs page 12-14: Business & Finance
page 7: Sports page 14-17: Education Guardian
page 8-11: Personal & Travel page 18-19: Sports
advertisements page 20: TV, Radio Programs
page 21: Personal, Crossword
Table 3.: The contents of the two dailies.

From the table it was clear that The Guardian dealt with most topics on two pages, unlike Esti Hirlap, which provided one page for each column. The Guardian was twice as long as the Hungarian paper, but readers found basically the same columns of foreign news, home news, culture, economy, sports, programs, and advertisements in both dailies. A difference was that the British paper had a women page and an education page as well.

I compared the Foreign news columns of the two dailies, and I did not find articles dealing with the same countries or events. Esti Hirlap presented political news from Portugal, Belgium, Austria, the Sovietunion, and also reported accidents from Turkey and Yugoslavia. On the contrary, The Guardian dealt with Lebanon, Rhodesia, Greece, Cyprus, and Spain.
The longest article of this column in The Guardian was about the crash of an American ship and a Spanish coaster in Barcelona harbour, which caused the death of at least 23 US seamen. Esti Hirlap did not say a word about this, although I found a short article about the tragedy in Magyar Nemzet.

On the contrary, there was a short article in Esti Hirlap about Katherine Oppenheimer, the daughter of the inventor of the atomic bomb. She had been found dead in her home, Cruz Bay, the day before I was born. The Guardian did not deal with this, however.

An interesting fact is that the longest article of the Hungarian column was about the meeting of socialist and communist countries, which was held in Moscow the previous weekend.

Common news
There was only one country with which both Esti Hirlap and The Guardian dealt: Rhodesia. Both articles were short. While Esti Hirlap put it on the cover page, The Guardian presented the article on page 3, in the Overseas column. The difference was in the opinions implied by the articles regarding the liberation movement of Zimbabwe. The key issue of The Guardian was the degree of British involvement. On the contrary, Esti Hirlap reported about a conference that dealt with the condemnation of the imperialist powers which tried to supress the liberating forces.

Titles
Titles play great role in newspapers, because readers decide to read an article if the title is arousing enough. According to Lastrego and Testa "there are two basic types of titles with different aims and effects" (47). One is the title consisting of more parts. In such case, there is a subtitle besides the headline, informing the readers with details about the topic of the article. Most titles in Esti Hirlap belonged to this type. An example on the back page:

headline: " Halálra itélték a kislány gyilkosát."
subtitle: " A bizonyitékok igazolták a vádat."

The other type of title relies on the curiosity and imagination of readers, consisting only of a brief headline. The titles of the Guardian were mainly of this type; these did not say details, but still drew attention. Some examples, included:

" Gilmore gets his death wish "
" Sailors drown in crash "
Of course, journalists may combine these types, depending on their purpose and the topic of the article.

Conclusion
My findings confirmed my expectation that there would be remarkable differences between the Hungarian and the British newspaper. By summarizing the findings, I showed that Esti Hirlap mostly wrote about socialist countries, like Yugoslavia, Cuba, the Sovietunion, and Bulgaria. There were articles dealing with the COMECON meeting, the meeting of socialist countries in Moscow, and the disapproval of imperialist powers regarding Rhodesia.

By contrast, The Guardian issued numerous articles about US politics and other more sensational events, which did not appear in Esti Hirlap. Besides, many photographs from America and elsewhere made the paper more stirring.

On the whole, these differences clearly imply the concernment and lifestyles of Hungarian and British people on the day I was born.