Fortunately, a huge raft of brilliant articles and links have been published in the last few days that will help with Friday's exam. If you read the following and make notes you'll have some excellent content to reference and quote in the exam. It's particularly relevant to the Section B essay on new and digital media but you may well find useful material for Section A as well.
‘Farewell, readers’: Alan Rusbridger on leaving the Guardian after two decades at the helm
Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has just been replaced by new editor Katharine Viner. In his final piece reflecting on his time in the job, Rusbridger brilliantly summarises the challenges the newspaper industry has faced over the last 20 years. It acts as a perfect MEST3 case study for new and digital media, explaining how the Guardian made certain key decisions such as rejecting paywalls and introducing comment sections ('Comment Is Free') and US and Australian website editions. The whole thing is essential reading for any A Level Media student - make notes and reference it in Friday's exam.
Rusbridger’s farewell illustrates the huge changes to the media in 20 years - Emily Bell
Along similar lines, Emily Bell looks at the media landscape over the next 20 years and particularly focuses on institutions and media ownership. The most interesting aspect here may be the comments below the line - the following quotes are extremely relevant to our case study on news:
blogsters: "In my view the internet has spawned the ability for everyone and their dog to post what they consider to be news. The result is that there's far too much of it and quality has plummeted. Mainstream media felt the need to "compete" when instead it should have retained a focus on quality, not quantity."
LiberalinCalif: "What I have seen recently gradually coming from the Guardian is a trend toward much tripe of the click bait nonsense linked to in Twitter etc. I would caution the Guardian about producing more trash media content hoping to attract the buzzfeed, gawker, whatever crowd. Let them produce the trash crap. There is still room for good quality journalism. Once you cheapen your brand you will be just another difference without a distinction website."Global newspaper readership falls more than 25% in four years
This is on the Guardian website today and is an excellent, easy-to-remember statistic to quote in Friday's exam. However, you need to read the whole story because there is more to the headline figure than meets the eye. In the UK, newspaper reading has held up pretty well and when you add online to the mix the news industry is quite healthy:
“Although print is declining publishers have never been read by more people,” said Jonathan Barnard, head of forecasting at ZenithOptimedia. “The growth of devices has been at the forefront of this shift from traditional paper-based consumption to mobile, tablet and desktop consumption." In the UK, the increase in use of the internet has been dramatic, with the average minutes per day spent online rising 55% from 82 minutes to 2 hours and 7 minutes between 2010 and 2014.
By 2017 the average British internet user will spend almost three hours a day online (176.8 minutes), a 115% increase over 2010 levels. The internet-savvy UK is some way ahead of global trends with the average number of minutes spent online per day at 1 hour 49 minutes in 2014, an 84% increase over 2010 levels. The report estimates that almost 20 million smartphone users in the UK access news on their phone, and nearly 19 million people own tablets.
Jon Connell: ‘People increasingly want help with filtering out the noise’
This Guardian article focusing on a magazine called the Week neatly sums up many of the changes in media and journalism over the last 20 years - particularly the move from news to comment and the falling number of journalists.
After 20 years focused on analysing the output of the newspaper industry, he is well-placed to comment on the changing nature of the content culled from the Week’s stable of sources. “What I feel is that the ratio of comment to news has changed,” he says. “In the sense that there is more comment now and less news. That is partly a function of economics, there simply aren’t as many journalists on the ground reporting, especially abroad. It’s not just a British phenomenon, but it has meant there are less hard facts to go on. You could spend weeks on a story sometimes. That doesn’t happen any more. I don’t think it has changed for the better.”
Good luck with your final preparation for MEST3 and remember to keep writing those Section B essays and revising the key theories and concepts. Your revision checklist is here and there's a bonus new/digital revision post here that's worth reading/watching in full.
As ever, email or pop in during lesson time if you have any questions.
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