Newspapers: News Values

Galtung and Ruge defined a set of news values to explain how journalists and editors decide that certain stories and photographs were accepted as newsworthy, while others were not. 

The following list is adapted from their work:

Immediacy: has it happened recently?
Familiarity: is it culturally close to us in Britain?
Amplitude: is it a big event or one which involves large numbers of people?
Frequency: does the event happen fairly regularly? 
Unambiguity: is it clear and definite?
Predictability: did we expect it to happen?
Surprise: is it a rare or unexpected event?
Continuity: has this story already been defined as news?
Elite nations and people: which country has the event happened in? Does the story concern well-known people?
Personalisation: Is it a personal or human interest story?
Negativity: is it bad news?
Exclusivity: do any other newspapers have this story?
Visual impact: are there amazing pictures accompanying the story?
Balance: the story may be selected to balance other news, such as a human survival story to balance a number of stories concerning death.


News Values: Blog tasks

Read Media Factsheet 76: News Values and complete the following questions/tasks. 
Our Media Factsheet archive is available here - you'll need your Greenford Google login to access.

1) Come up with a news story from the last 12 months for each of the categories suggested by Harriss, Leiter and Johnson:

• Conflict
• Progress
• Disaster
• Consequence
• Prominence 
• Novelty

2) What example news story does the Factsheet use to illustrate Galtung and Ruge's News Values? Why is it an appropriate example of a news story likely to gain prominent coverage?

3) What is gatekeeping?

4) What are the six ways bias can be created in news?

5) How have online sources such as Twitter, bloggers or Wikileaks changed the way news is selected and published?

6) Complete the task on the last page of the Factsheet regarding Sky News and Twitter:

• What does this reveal about how Sky views Twitter as a news source?
• What does it say about how news is being produced?
• What role does the audience have in this process?
• Why might this be a problem for journalistic standards?

7) In your opinion, how has the digital age changed Galtung and Ruge’s news values? 

8) How would you update them for 2018? Choose TWO of Galtung and Ruge's news values and say how they have been affected by the growth of digital technology.

E.g. Immediacy is more important than ever due to news breaking on Twitter or elsewhere online. However, this in turn changes the approach of other news sources such as newspapers as the news will probably already be broken so different angles might be required. Newspapers now contain more comment or opinion rather than the breaking story.

Due date: on Google Classroom

Coursework: Music video production

We have now completed our Statement of Intent and are well on the way to producing professional-level print work. That leaves the music video element of the brief still to cover.

As you know, we have held off on the music video element while we await further information about lockdown but increasingly it is looking unlikely we will be able to produce the full three-minute video production in the original brief.

Fortunately, AQA have produced an amended brief that offers an option to submit partially realised video production work alongside comprehensive planning documents. Therefore, we are now going to proceed with the following options for the music video element of the brief:

Option 1
Submit a fully-realised three-minute music video that meets the original brief.

Option 2
Submit your 30-second preliminary exercise OR a new 30-second extract from your music video alongside the following planning documents:

• Full music video treatment
• Full shotlist for whole three-minute video
• Full mise-en-scene planning document covering all of CLAMPS for whole three-minute video

Important note: your artist MUST appear in some form in your 30-second extract or preliminary exercise. This may mean you need to add a scene or two or re-shoot your preliminary exercise.

The deadline for the above will be Wednesday 31 March (last day of term before the Easter holidays). However, this may be subject to change if PPEs are scheduled for this half-term.

Newspapers: The future of journalism

One of the factors we must consider when studying the decline of the newspaper industry is the importance of news and journalism to society. 

Technology moves on and industries evolve - but newspapers have traditionally played an important role in holding governments to account, exposing corruption and keeping the public informed about the world they live in. As media students, we need to consider the impact to society of news coverage being driven by 'clicks' and ending up with funny cat videos rather than hard-hitting investigative journalism. 

We've got some excellent video resources to work with on this topic. Both of our videos refer to the 2016 Best Picture winner at the Oscars - Spotlight. This is director Tom McCarthy's film based on the true story of Boston Globe reporters investigating widespread child abuse in the Catholic Church. We highly recommend you watch this film as part of your work on newspapers.

John Oliver on journalism

British comedian John Oliver presents a show called Last Week Tonight on HBO in America. In a previous episode, he put together a report on the decline of journalism in America and its replacement by 'clickbait' stories rather than real news. Watch it here:



Clay Shirky on news: don’t build a paywall around a public good

Clay Shirky is a professor at NYU (New York University) and a worldwide expert on digital and social media. As we know from our work on Online, Social and Participatory Media, Shirky is a named media theorist for A Level Media and he also makes a compelling argument for the role news plays in society. Interestingly, he argues against paywalls - the subscription model that some newspapers use to make money in the digital age - and says that news is a 'public good' that is vital in a healthy democracy. 

The Future of Journalism: Blog tasks

Go to the Nieman Lab webpage (part of Harvard university) and watch the video of Clay Shirky presenting to Harvard students. The video is also available on YouTube below but the Nieman Lab website has a written transcript of everything Shirky says. 



Play the clip AND read along with the transcript below to ensure you are following the argument. You need to watch from the beginning to 29.35 (the end of Shirky's presentation). Once you've watched and read the presentation and made notes (you may want to copy and paste key quotes from the transcript which is absolutely fine), answer the questions below:

1) Why does Clay Shirky argue that 'accountability journalism' is so important and what example does he give of this?

2) What does Shirky say about the relationship between newspapers and advertisers? Which websites does he mention as having replaced major revenue-generators for newspapers (e.g. jobs, personal ads etc.)?

3) Shirky talks about the 'unbundling of content'. This means people are reading newspapers in a different way. How does he suggest audiences are consuming news stories in the digital age?

4) Shirky also talks about the power of shareable media. How does he suggest the child abuse scandal with the Catholic Church may have been different if the internet had been widespread in 1992?

5) Why does Shirky argue against paywalls? 

6) What is a 'social good'? In what way might journalism be a 'social good'?

7) Shirky says newspapers are in terminal decline. How does he suggest we can replace the important role in society newspapers play? What is the short-term danger to this solution that he describes?

8) Look at the first question and answer regarding institutional power. Give us your own opinion: how important is it that major media brands such as the New York Times or the Guardian continue to stay in business and provide news?

Complete for homework: due date on Google Classroom.

Newspapers: Weekly Media homework - news stories

For the Newspapers unit, you have an ongoing mini-homework every week: to find, read and post TWO news stories on your blog.

The very simple detail: every week you must find, read, and post two news stories from the websites of our two newspaper CSPs (one from Mail Online and one from The i news website):

Mail Online
The i newspaper website 

You'll also find stories related to the media linked from our Twitter account, @blogmacguffin (access it online here if you don't have the Twitter app) so make sure you're following that too, particularly in the run-up to the final exams/assessments.

Newspaper news story research: blog task

Create ONE blogpost that you return to and update weekly. Call it 'Newspaper news story research'. Then, each week you need to visit the MailOnline website and the 'i' newspaper website and choose one story from each to summarise and share. 

Most importantly, you need to do the following on your blogpost for each story...

1. Copy the headline, date and link.
2. Briefly summarise the story in a sentence or two: is this is an example of hard news or soft news? Does it reflect the politics or ideological stance of that newspaper/website?
3. Explain in a sentence how or why this story appeals to the audience of that newspaper (use media terminology and theory if you can). Is it quality journalism or an example of clickbait?

We'll be sharing our stories as a starter each week and this will ensure you build up a range of stories from both CSPs to provide examples to use in exam questions and essays. 

Due: EVERY week for the next five weeks. Just update the same blogpost with additional stories each time! 

Newspapers: The decline in print media

Our final topic is newspapers: an industry that has changed hugely in the last 20 years due to the impact of the internet.

This is the final set of targeted CSPs - we will be studying Audience and Industry contexts for the Daily Mail and the 'i' newspaper. This means newspapers will come up in Paper 1, Section B of the exams. 

Notes from the lesson

In the lesson, we looked at the history of the newspaper and some key terminology we need to learn:


Newspapers: hard and soft news

Newspapers cover a range of stories that are generally divided into two categories:

Hard news: stories related to current affairs, politics, economics, wars and other serious news.

Soft news: stories related to entertainment, sport, celebrities, gossip, scandal and human interest/lifestyle topics.

Newspapers: tabloid and broadsheet

Newspapers were traditionally available in two sizes: tabloid and broadsheet. Today, most newspapers are in the smaller broadsheet size but the terms are still used to describe the style of paper:

Tabloid: focusing largely on soft news, famous examples include the Sun and the Mirror. Generally read by more working class audience. Mid-market tabloids are a middle ground between tabloid and broadsheet and include the Daily Mail. 

Broadsheet: serious newspapers that focus more on hard news. The Times, Guardian and Telegraph are all examples. 

Newspapers: sources of news

Newspapers tend to get their news content from two sources:

Journalists: newspapers employ reporters and photographers to attend events, interview people and write stories. 

News agencies: Reuters and Associated Press are examples of global news agencies that are independent institutions that employ journalists to write stories that newspapers and other media organisations can pay to use.

Increasingly in the digital age, newspapers are sourcing news from their audiences using citizen journalism. This is sometimes criticised as creating clickbait – an example of soft news aimed simply to attract online readers.

The decline of newspapers

In the last 20 years, the newspaper industry has faced a sharp decline due to the rise of the internet.

In 2003, almost 30 million newspapers were sold in the UK every day. By 2017 that was down to 12.4 million (source: Ofcom). 

Newspapers have traditionally made their money in two ways: through the cover price and by selling advertising. With so much news available for free online, audiences are not buying newspapers so both these sources of income have been decimated.

The Wall Street Journal produced a short video demonstrating how the industry has changed in the last 100 years:

Once you've learned the key terminology, watched the video and considered the decline in the industry, work through the blog tasks below.

Blog tasks: The decline in print media

Part 1: Ofcom report into news consumption 2019

Read this Ofcom 2019 report on the consumption of news in the UK. Note down the key statistics and changes that Ofcom highlight and answer the following questions (bullet points/short answers are fine):

1) Look at the key findings from the report on pages 2-3. How do UK adults generally get their news? 

2) Read the overall summary for adults on pages 7-8. What do you notice about the changing way adults are getting their news?

3) Look at the summary of platforms used on page 13. What do you notice about newspapers and how has it changed since 2018?

4) Now look at the demographic summary for news platforms on page 15. What audience demographic groups (e.g. age, social class) are most and least likely to read newspapers?

5) Read Section 3 on cross-platform news consumption (page 20). What newspaper brands can you find in the list of most popular news sources across platforms?

6) Now turn to Section 6 focusing on newspapers (page 33). How has the circulation of national newspapers decreased between 2010 and 2018?

7) What are the most-used newspaper titles?

8) What are the most popular titles when print and online figures are combined (look at page 38)?

9) How does the i compare to the Daily Mail?

10) Now study the demographic details for our two CSP newspapers on page 39. What is the breakdown of the Daily Mail audience and the i audience? What differences do you notice?

11) Read section 7 of the report: news consumption via social media (pages 40-52). Pick out three statistics from this section that you think are interesting and explain why.

12) Look at the summary of readers' attitudes for newspapers on page 76. What statements do Daily Mail readers tend to agree with?


Part 2: Factsheet - The death of print media

Go to our Media Factsheet archive and open Factsheet 165: The death of print media. Our Media Factsheet archive is on the Media Shared drive: M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets or you can find it online here - you'll need to log in using your Greenford Google login.

Read the Factsheet and complete the following questions/tasks (bullet points/short answers are fine):

1) What has happened to print media in the last 30 years?

2) Why is the Independent newspaper such a good case study for the decline in print media?

3) What was the Independent newspaper famous for?

4) What did the then-owner of the Independent, Evgeny Lebedev, say about the newspaper's digital-only future?

5) How do online newspapers make money?

6) What did the Independent's longest-serving editor Simon Kelner warn regarding the switch to digital?

7) What is the concern with fake news? What does 'post-truth' refer to?

8) What is your view on the decline in print media? Should news be free? Is it a concern that established media brands such as the Independent can no longer afford to exist as a printed newspaper?

Due date: on Google Classroom.