The article focuses on the main features of newspaper discourse as a mass information discourse type. On the basis of known in linguistics classifications of the discourse the place of newspaper discourse among them has been analyzed and defined as evaluative, extensive, compelling, interlocutory and manipulative. Its main functions (informing and influencing) and categories (cognitive, communicative, metadisсursive) have been singled out. The newspaper discourse has been considered from the points of view of the addresser and the addressee of media messages. As the recipient of newspaper communication is the mass audience with different interests, knowledge degree, intelligence, background, age, culture, life experience, and geographical location, the addresser should solve a difficult problem of engaging the interest to their edition of the most part of this audience. For this purpose, authors use different models of covering the material (actual and author’s), as well as means and devices of presenting the information by selecting the expressive verbal and nonverbal components corresponding to the addressee, appealing to their consciousness, influencing them by means of a combination of expressiveness and standardization. In the article the difference between the terms “mass information media” (MIM) and “mass communication media” (MCM) has been explained. Thus, MIM are monological, unidirectional and responsible for mass informing of the society, whereas MCM, forming public opinion, influence public and individual consciousness, create situations of dialogueness/interactivity, and multidirectional information flow. The comprehensive purposes of a newspaper discourse, such as informing, influencing the reader and forming public opinion, have also been outlined, especially referring to electronic newspapers, MCM of the new age. It has been defined that these convergent media as the center of a modern newspaper discourse are easily accessible, fast, popular with youth, have additional opportunities (photos or videos, comments, discussions, hyperlinks to other sources, two-way communication), and therefore the addresser has a more effective influence on the necessary category of addressees.