Newspapers---give us quick overview
 

While in the UK this fall, we would love to read some of the newspapers--especially over breakfast--our daily habit.
We are confused by which ones to read.
We read our local ones, the Contra Costa Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, and also read, online, the NY TImes, and sometimes articles on the Christian Science Monitor (we are not religious, just like the rather non-biased reporting)
We are not liberal or conservative in most political issues,,,just sort of independent.
That all give you a clue as to which papers we would like in London and Edinburgh?
Recommendations, please!!
Thanks.

The Independent then.

The Guardian is the left-wing paper of choice - to wit the recent revelations in it of spying on everyone - The Times is more conservative but still a paper of record like the NYTimes - the Telegraph is conservative and then you have the likes of the notorious tabloids - like the Daily Mail, known for always having a topless bosom young lass just inside the cover.

At the B&B I stay at I had a Guardian paper and the land lady said "ah that's for people who want to think" - she was reading the Daily Mail.

W/ your description I'd read the Independent and the Telegraph (which is 'conservative' but not conservative in US use of the term - quite middle of the road actually)

But really - try lots of them -- the number and breadth of newspapers in the news agents/kiosks is one of the best things about the UK.

OH, PalenQ, My laugh for the day. Thanks.
So, to summarize:
1.)Guardian...like my Chronicle sort of "left-wing", liberal
2.)The Times and Telegraph, perhaps more like our conservative Wall Street Journal (partly a financial paper, but conservative politically, I would say)Not to be compared to your Financial Times, probably? Living in Northern California, we don't have many "conservative" newspapers, to offer in comparison.

Oh, thanks, janisj...Must have been typing while you were.
Thanks for the clarification as to "conservative"
Going to be fun to compare the newspapers...but will skip the big bosom Daily Mail, hopefully.

"like the Daily Mail, known for always having a topless bosom young lass just inside the cover"

This is so incorrect!
The Mail (as the Daily Mail is always called) does NOT have page 3 girls (as they are known).

The Grauniad (Guardian) has always been our paper of choice. You can read it online before hand to get a feel for it, the same with the Torygraph (Telegraph), and the Indy.

The Times, is behind a pay-wall I believe like most of Murdoch's rags.

The redtops - Mail, Sun, Mirror are comics. The Mail doesn't have topless ladies - the Sun does. The Daily Star (not to be confused with the Morning Star)doesn't even merit the term comic.

The Express is fine if you are a Princess Diana fan and believe she was murdered by Prince Philip. Well kind of, that is the impression I always have of it, but I haven't read it in several decades, not since long before she died.

All have Sunday version. The Observer being the Sunday version of the Guardian.

There are also plenty of local papers, some very local, just a town, usually weekly, others covering a county for instance.

If you like lots of reading then the Guardian on Saturday and the Sunday Times will keep you going over a weekend and beyond. Both have good Travel Sections and have lists and analysis of What's On (the Guardian is better on this). The Guardian on Friday have a good section on Film - if that's something you might do over here.

We read the Mail and the Guardian in this household - covers all bases!

The only newspaper worth making even a short trip to buy, IMHO, is <i>The Times</i> or its sister <i>The Sunday Times</i>, which regretfully can't be read online without a subscription these days. Most of the others you can find online with a Google search, so can see what they are like before you get to the UK.

I would include <i>The Guardian</i> in the comic category, myself. That is the newspaper which comically tried to influence Ohio voters in the 2004 US presidential election, and may have swung the vote in the opposite way it intended: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/3981823.stm :-))

check them all out online and choose one before you go! I read the Guardian everyday and the daily mail for weird stories not news!They are all availble!

Brighten up your breakfast by reading Private Eye and Viz.

Private Eye for the stories the papers are too afraid to publish and Viz is.. well, you'll just have to buy it and find out.

In Edinburgh you should read the Scotsman the daily paper printed in the city and it's evening local paper Edinburgh Evening News.the main Scottish Tabloid is the Daily Record.

Some of the statemens above are just plain wrong. Whatever you think of the Daily Mail as a source of news, it is certainly not a "red-top" and has never had any "page 3 girls". It's more up-market than the Sun, Star or Mirror and the typical readership traditionally has been middle class housewives and comfortably off retired people.

I read the Telegraph when in the UK--some hotels have reading copies available.

PQ likes folks to think he knows a lot about the UK - knowledge mainly derived from watching Coronation Street- but honestly where did he come up w/ page 3 girls in the Daily Mail???

Geeze

I think you will find most middle class, middle income, intelligentsia read The Guardian on the train.......but have a copy of The Mail hidden inside.

Who gives a damn about the size of the US treasury's quantitative easing when you can find out who Harry Styles is bopping this week.

The Sun is great for wrapping your fish and chips up.

In terms of blatent sexual exploitation The Sunday Times tries to place scantily clad 25 year old female models on every page. I think last Sunday they achieved this on 82% of their pages which is a new record.

As someone posted earlier The Independent.

Failing that save the money and use the BBC website as most of the population is increasingly doing so.

Going off on a slight tangent, one of the ironic things about the Daily Mail (as Private Eye is always keen to point out) is its long-running campaign to ban internet porn sites, yet their own website www.dailymail.co.uk is packed with gratuitous photos of scantily clad women. Mind you, that's not as bad as the Sun who run stories ranting against the menace of paedophiles yet used to run page three photos of girls as young as 16.

Do realize that most responding are telling you what <i>they</I> would read - not what you would read based on your criteria. You may find the guardian is much more left leaning than you are used to. Quite left of the Chron. UK is in general much more liberal (small L) than most of the States.