Tickle the Public

The purpose of this thesis is to find out if Dutch journalists (with the specialism in Dutch news) from popular newspapers (De Telegraaf and AD) and journalists from quality newspapers (NRC and de Volkskrant) have different opinions on the subject of tabloidization and sensationalism in newspapers articles. The results are discovered through interviews with the subjects and are indicating that both the journalists from qualitative and popular newspapers are seeing a shift in style in the quality newspapers. According to all the journalists, the style of writing, the outlay and de choice of subjects became more popular in the last decade. Further investigation showed that journalists from quality newspapers described sensation in newspaper articles through means of the function the article has for the society, while journalists from popular newspapers described sensation in newspaper articles through means of the way of gathering and processing information. Journalists from the two groups are interpreting sensation in newspaper articles each in their own specific way, in order to incorporate it in their moral standards and ideas about how to make a good newspaper.