An Overview on Presentation of Entertainment in Newspapers' Weekend Supplements

Introduction

Individuals in modern life and in their lives that is surrounded by various oppressions and external pressures try to fill their time that is left out from work in by heading towards entertainment. The underlying basic motive for this tendency is to break loose of the stress of life and take a breath, but the capitalist system that the individual is a part of wants them to relax in entertainment time that one fills their spare time, but does not want them to get out of the system.

Individuals who take place in the working life, in their spare time that is left out of working time prefers various entertainment methods in order to get rid of their daily stresses. Entertainment is a term which is hard to describe with one and only description; many various activities can be a part of the definition of entertainment. From taking part in culture and art activities to travelling many actions can be estimated in the definition of entertainment.

Entertainment styles which are the easiest to reach are the content that is produced in media organizations. When other entertainment styles are considered, reaching entertainment contents that take part in is made both easier in temporal sense and more reachable in financial sense. At any time that individuals have spare time, they can access to mass media such as television, newspapers, or magazines, and they can spend time with them.

Discussions around the relationship between media and entertainment are held around visual media generally. Visual media products such as television, cinema, and video games are mostly thought as closer to entertainment. As printed media is perceived to be more focused on news, it is not usually associated with entertainment. Where magazines and books are considered with entertainment factor, newspapers can be ignored. Though, newspapers, especially mass newspapers, want individuals to have a good time.

Other than informing society, newspapers also have a duty of entertaining and directing to entertainment. In the specific case of Turkey, supplements that newspapers give out help individuals to have a good and entertaining time, and even supplements of the newspapers that come into the house may be demanded more than the newspaper itself.

Newspaper supplements are related to entertainment in two ways: first, newspaper supplements themselves are a type of entertainment. It is a medium that pledges having a good time for individuals that want to spend their weekend at home. And second, it takes on the task of a guide that orientates individuals through the ways of having fun. Newspaper supplements inculcate their readers about where to go, what to eat, what to buy or what to watch.

One of the basic duties of media organizations is to sustain the existing capitalist system and providing individuals to be part of the consumer society. Texts that are represented in the media for the sake of entertainment impose a specific ideology and life style while creating entertainment.

As a result of Turkey’s articulating the neo-liberal policies that started to prevail since through 1980s, media suffered from censorship in consequence of the military coup. In the same year a different journalism arose. In a period where most of the world experienced a similar process, an attitude towards the neo-liberal policies faced after the military coup in Turkey was not stroked, then a media which is far from public opposition and which reflects the imposed to society by accepting them emerged. This situation that is specific to Turkey apart from the other parts of the world has significance in terms of the changes experienced in the structure of media.

One of the consequences of changes experienced is change in the structure of newspapers’ ownership and reflection of this change onto newspapers’ management body as well. Executive editors of the newspapers became the representatives of the boss rather than a journalist. This change reflected onto the content of the newspapers too. Especially in early 1990s, “life style” journalism started in newspapers’ weekend supplements. With this type of journalism, a different life style was presented and established to the audience.

This study examines how news that take place in newspaper supplements present entertainment. In the study, it is accepted that newspaper supplements are both an entertainment factor and a medium that gives recommendations to the readers about entertainment. And another topic that will be covered in the study is whether there exists a difference between publication identities of newspapers and entertainment perceptiveness that publication policies present.