Newspapers: The i case study

The i is our very final CSP and provides a compelling case study of a print product actually launched in the digital age.

As with the Daily Mail, we need to study the newspaper from the perspective of audience and industries, linking what we've already learned about the newspaper industry and journalism. Similarly, we need to look at the i newspaper website inews.co.uk just as we studied MailOnline.

Notes from the lesson

The i was launched in October 2010 as the first quality UK daily newspaper to appear in 25 years.

Its major selling point was price and convenience: just 20p at launch (now 60p) and designed to be read quickly, it was aimed at young, ‘time-poor’, middle class commuters who wanted a better quality paper than Metro but didn’t have time for the traditional titles.

The newspaper was originally linked to the Independent, a liberal daily paper that has since stopped its print edition to go digital-only.

The i: key principles and circulation

The i was launched with five key principles:

1. High quality content
2. Pleasing design
3. Balanced comment/opinion
4. Manageable layout
5. Affordable price

It targeted an initial circulation of 150,000 and was an immediate success. Today, its circulation is 244,000 (post-Independent’s print closure) and the paper continues to make a profit.

The i: values and ideologies
The i was designed to create a bitesize version of the Independent, a newspaper that launched in 1986 with the banner “Free from party political bias, free from proprietorial influence”. 

This perspective remains the objective of the i newspaper today – but it is generally seen as significantly more liberal and left-wing than newspapers like the Daily Mail.

The i: ownership
The i was launched by Alexander Lebedev, a Russian billionaire who owns the Independent and Evening Standard.

In 2016 it was bought by regional publisher Johnston Press for £24 million. Johnston Press publishes titles such as the Yorkshire Post and the Scotsman alongside around 200 other UK regional titles.


In October 2018, Johnston Press reported significant financial difficulties and put itself up for sale – leading to the break-up of the company and a new owner for the i. In November 2019, the newspaper and its website were bought by the Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) for £49.6 million. The deal is subject to an investigation by Competition and Markets Authority to ensure DMGT won't become too powerful in the newspaper industry.

Audience 

The i readership key details (according to YouGov profiles):

• Around 61% of readers aged 18-39
• Male 58% - Female 42%
• Around 60% social class ABC1
• Significantly less disposable income than Daily Mail readers
• Likely to work in civil society and charity, media and publishing or community and social care sectors

The i: Friday 31 January 

Our chosen edition of the i to use as our CSP - just like the Daily Mail - is Friday 31 January - Brexit day. Consider the following in your analysis:

Media language
Page design, font, text, images, conventions, hard news/soft news, news values.

Narrative
Selection of news: is there an ongoing narrative? How is narrative created by the paper to engage an audience?

Audience and ideology
What ideologies are present in the text? Is the audience positioned to respond to stories in a certain way?


The i case study: Blog tasks

Work through the following tasks to complete your case study on the i and specifically the 31 January edition of the newspaper. 

The i analysis: Friday 31 January

Carry out a close-textual analysis of the selected pages and answer the following questions.

1) What is the front page story on the 31 January edition of the i and how is it presented?

2) From your analysis of your phone photos of The i, what other stories and topics are covered in this edition of the i? You can alos access the selected pages here if you login to Google using your Greenford details. You should address the following pages in addition to the front page:

• Pages 2-3
• Pages 6-7
• Pages 10-11
• Pages 14-15

3) Media language: Write an analysis of the construction of the i front page: Page design, font, text, images, conventions, hard news/soft news, news values etc.

4) Narrative: How is narrative used in this edition of the i? Look at the selection of news: is there an ongoing narrative? How is narrative created by the paper to engage an audience? Can you link Galtung and Ruge's News Values theory to the use of narrative?

5) Audience and ideology: What ideologies are present in the text? Is the audience positioned to respond to stories in a certain way?



The i: introductory reading

Look at the following articles to give you the background on the i newspaper:

BBC News website: Independent launches new 20p newspaper called i
Campaign magazine: Independent to launch first quality daily newspaper for 25 years



The i launch campaign and success

Read this Marketing Society case study on the launch of the i newspaper and answer the following questions:

1) What was the research that led to the launch of the i newspaper?

2) How did i target readers and lapsed readers of quality newspapers?

3) What was the target audience and why was this attractive to advertisers?

4) What were the statistics that proved the i newspaper was a success - and that it hadn't 'cannibalised' (taken readers from) other newspapers?

5) What was the background to the i newspaper's launch?

6) What were the objectives for the i newspaper launch?

7) The Independent saw an opportunity in the print newspaper market. How did potential i readers view other newspapers and what product did they want?

8) What were the five key principles of the i?

9) How was the newspaper launched?

10) List three statistics quoted in the final section 'Achievements' to demonstrate the success of the i newspaper's launch.



The i newspaper Factsheet

Read Media Factsheet #189 The i Newspaper - Industry Case Study. You can access it from our Media Factsheet archive on the Media Shared drive or download it here via Google using your school login details. Answer the following questions:

1) Summarise the 'Origins' section of the factsheet.

2) How has the i newspaper's ownership changed over the last 10 years?

3) Look on page 3 of the factsheet - Theoretical application. What are the three main ideas from Hesmondhalgh and how do they link to the i newspaper?

4) What does the factsheet suggest are the four key ideas from Curran and Seaton?

5) Which of Curran and Seaton's ideas apply to the i newspaper? How?    


The i ownership history

Johnston Press buys the i

Read this article from the website Hold The Front Page on the announcement of the Johnston Press purchase of the i newspaper - and the closure of the Independent. Answer the following questions:

1) How much did regional published Johnston Press buy the i for?

2) What reasons were provided by Johnston Press CEO Ashley Highfield for buying the i?

3) The comments below the article are overwhelmingly negative. Choose three comments and explain how they criticise Johnston Press and the purchase of the i newspaper.


DMGT buys the i


Read this article from the Guardian on the Daily Mail and General Trust buying The i newspaper and website. Answer the following questions:

1) How much did DMGT buy the i for?

2) Why did the then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn protest against the deal?

3) What did new owner Lord Rothermere say about the political direction and ideology for the i?



inews.co.uk - the i newspaper website


Go to inews.co.uk and analyse the stories currently featured:

1) What are the top five stories? Are they examples of soft news or hard news?

2) How is the homepage designed? Do you see similarities with the print edition?

3) Are there examples of ‘clickbait’? What are they?

4) To what extent do the stories you have found on inews.co.uk reflect the values and ideologies of the i newspaper?

5) What similarities and differences are there between MailOnline and the i newspaper website?

Now read this Business Insider feature on the launch of the i newspaper website (which coincided with the purchase of the newspaper by Johnston Press). Answer the following questions:

1) The interview with Johnston Press CEO Ashley Highfield features the claim there will be "no clickbait". Does your analysis of inews.co.uk support this claim?

2) He states the website will "stick very closely to the brand values of the i". What are these?

3) How does he claim inews.co.uk will differ from online rival Buzzfeed?

4) What audience does Highfield want the website to target?

5) Why is the millennial audience less attractive?



Extension tasks

In order to develop a comprehensive understanding of all things i, you may want to read the following articles.

The i turns five

Read this collection of quotes and messages in the Independent to celebrate the i newspaper's fifth birthday. Answer the following questions:

1) Read Nick Clegg's message ("thoughtful, independent-minded and liberal (with a small 'l')...") What does this tell us about the values and ideologies behind the i newspaper?

2) Why might one of the readers suggest that switching from the Daily Mail to the i has meant their "blood pressure has returned to normal"?

3) Choose three other messages from readers. What do they suggest about the audience pleasures provided by the i newspaper - why do readers love it?

4) Scroll down towards the bottom of the article. What are the campaigns that i have run since their launch in 2010?

5) What do these campaigns tell you about the values and ideologies behind the i newspaper? Do they also tell you something about the readership of the i?

6) What did the critics say when the paper was first launched? Why did many think the paper would fail?

7) Choose three quotes from the critics' reviews and discuss whether these viewpoints remain valid today.

8) Look at the bestselling front page stories from 2011-2015. What do these tell us about the i's values and ideologies - and what do we learn about i readers? 

Additional reading

Read this editorial from the Independent (original parent paper for the i) regarding their royal coverage. How does this approach differ to the Daily Mail?

Read this BBC News article on the end of the Independent's print edition. Look at the analysis and graphs - what do these suggest about newspapers' future online?

Newspapers: MailOnline case study

MailOnline is the most successful English-language newspaper website in the world and one of the most popular news sources in the UK.

We need to study MailOnline alongside the newspaper version of the Daily Mail, again from the perspective of audience and industries. This is particularly important in terms of the editorial stance, the internet's influence on media power, the clickbait-driven business model and the prevalence of soft news or social-media driven stories.

Notes from the lesson

Pluralism: a brief introduction

Pluralists see society as consisting of competing groups and interests, none of them predominant all of the time. Media organizations are seen as enjoying an important degree of autonomy from the state, political parties and institutionalized pressure groups. 

A basic symmetry is seen to exist between media institutions and their audiences, since in McQuail's words the 'relationship is generally entered into voluntarily and on apparently equal terms’. Audiences are seen as capable of manipulating the media and as having access to what Halloran calls 'the plural values of society' enabling them to 'conform, accommodate, challenge or reject'. (Gurevitch et al. 1982: 1)

Curran & Seaton: Power Without Responsibility

Curran and Seaton argue that the media should follow the pluralist model and be shaped by audience demand:

“The free market makes the press a representative institution…newspapers and magazines are to respond to the concerns of their readers if they are to stay in business.”

However, in practice the newspaper industry is dominated by a small number of powerful owners and this influences newspaper coverage and media influence. In short, the free market doesn’t work.

James Curran on the internet and power in the media

Watch James Curran interviewed by Barcelona Centre for Contempory Culture on Vimeo here.

MailOnline: audience-driven news

Curran and Seaton argue audience demand rather than powerful owners should influence news media. But can we trust audience demand?

Original MailOnline editor Martin Clarke said: “We let the readers decide what they’re interested in, that’s why MailOnline is so sticky and why it’s so addictive and why people love it so much.”

The homepage stories are selected by clicks – the most popular stories move to the top of the page. But does this turn news into ‘clickbait infotainment’? Shouldn’t news be about informing the public – not entertaining them?

MailOnline: audience

MailOnline readership key details:

• Average age of 40
• 58% female
• 55% 18-44 year olds
• 68% ABC1

MailOnline: addictive design

MailOnline is designed to encourage readers to stay on the site: the homepage has (virtually) endless scroll, there are thousands of images, embedded social media posts and promotional features linked to the stories. 

Celebrity gossip drives traffic to site (often via social media) with clickbait used heavily to initially attract readers. Then, controversial headlines and opinion columns encourage users to comment, share and engage with the site. 

The right-hand bar (‘sidebar of shame’) means an endless supply of celebrity gossip available on every page. This creates clickbait within the site itself.

MailOnline case study: Blog tasks

Work through the following tasks to complete your case study on Mail Online. 

MailOnline close-textual analysis

Go to MailOnline and analyse the stories currently featured:

1) What are the top five stories? Are they examples of soft news or hard news?

2) What celebrity content is featured?

3) What examples of ‘clickbait’ can you find?

4) To what extent do the stories you have found on MailOnline reflect the values and ideologies of the Daily Mail newspaper?

5) Think about audience appeal and gratifications: why is MailOnline the most-read English language newspaper website in the world? How does it keep you on the site?

Guardian column: So Daily Mail and Mail Online are ‘totally separate’? It depends how you look at it by Peter Preston

Read this Guardian column by Media veteran Peter Preston on a row between the Guardian and the Mail over the controversial MailOnline (ex-) columnist Katie Hopkins. Answer the following questions:

1) Why does Preston suggest that the Daily Mail and MailOnline should be considered to be basically the same publication?

2) How does Preston summarise other newspaper websites?

3) How many readers does the online-only Independent now boast?

4) Do you feel the Daily Mail and MailOnline have a different ‘world view’?

5) Do you see a future for the paper version of the Daily Mail or will it eventually close like the Independent?

Media Magazine MM55: Media, Publics, Protest and Power

Media Magazine 55 has an excellent feature on power and the media. Go to our Media Magazine archive, click on MM55 and scroll to page 38 to read the article Media, Publics, Protest and Power', a summary of Media academic Natalie Fenton’s talk to the Media Magazine conference in 2015. Answer the following questions:

1) What are the three overlapping fields that have an influence on the relationship between media and democracy?

2) What is ‘churnalism’ and does MailOnline provide examples of this kind of news gathering?

3) Fenton argues that news should serve the public and help democracy. Does MailOnline do this?

4) What is infotainment? Is MailOnline guilty of relying on this kind of content?

5) Has the internet empowered audiences or is it still dominated by the major media conglomerates? How does MailOnline fit into this?

Factsheet 182 - Case Study: The Daily Mail (Part 3) Industrial Context

Finally, read Media Factsheet 182 - Case Study: The Daily Mail (Part 3) Industrial Context and complete the following questions/tasks. You won't be able to access our Factsheet archive now school is closed but you can open this factsheet here if you log in to Google using your School email and password.

1) What do Curran and Seaton suggest regarding the newspaper industry and society?

2) Curran and Seaton acknowledge that media ownership in the UK is dominated by what kind of company?

3) What does the factsheet suggest regarding newspaper ownership and influence over society?

4) Why did the Daily Mail invest heavily in developing MailOnline in the 2000s?

5) How does MailOnline reflect the idea of newspapers ‘as conversation’?

6) How many stories and pictures are published on MailOnline?

7) How does original MailOnline editor Martin Clarke explain the success of the website?

8) What does it mean when it says readers are in control of digital content?

9) How is the priority for stories on the homepage established on MailOnline?

10) What is your view of ‘clicks’ driving the news agenda? Should we be worried that readers are now ‘in control of digital content’?

School closed - what now?

With schools closed and exams officially cancelled, we are very much in uncharted waters for exam students.

However, we are going to continue posting the remaining work we would have set you. The main reason for this is that the government has not made it entirely clear how grades are going to be awarded but they have said that any student unhappy with the grade they are given can sit exams next year to try and increase their grade. In case any of us find ourselves in that position, we need to make sure we have completed the course and learned every CSP. This means we have a simple job to do: finish newspapers. This means ensuring the following is complete:

• Decline in print media
• Future of journalism
• News Values
• Regulation: MM article and essay
• Daily Mail CSP case study

The final work to post next week is MailOnline and the ‘i’ CSP case study. We’ll be working on those up until Easter and then will see how things are looking after that.

I’m so sorry you won’t get the chance to prove how brilliant you are at Media but I’m hopeful the grading process will be fair and you will get the grade you deserve. We can’t tell you what that will be but we can assure you we’ll do everything in our power to make sure nobody loses out.

For now, we’ll email you the work each Monday and also post it to the Year 13 Media blog as usual.

Newspapers: Daily Mail case study

The Daily Mail is our first newspaper CSP and a hugely influential voice in British media.

We need to study the newspaper from the perspective of audience and industries, linking what we've already learned about the newspaper industry and journalism.

Notes from the lesson

The Daily Mail is a ‘black top’ or mid-market tabloid newspaper. It is the second most popular daily national newspaper after the Sun.

The Daily Mail was most successful in the early 2000s with more than 2m copies sold daily. It is now down to around 1.2m but still influential.

The paper offers a mix of hard and soft news. It is socially, economically and politically conservative and backs the Conservative Party in politics.

The Daily Mail: ownership and editorial

The Daily Mail is owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT). Its chairman is Jonathan Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere, whose great-grandfather was a co-founder of the newspaper. 

From 1992 until Autumn 2018, the editor was Paul Dacre – a hugely controversial and influential voice in the UK newspaper industry. The editor is now Geordie Greig who moved over from the Mail on Sunday. 

The Daily Mail: influence and accuracy
Even with falling circulation, the front cover of the Daily Mail can set the news agenda and dictate what broadcast media lead on – such as the influential BBC Radio 4 Today programme or Newsnight on BBC2. This is why newspapers are still seen as having a disproportionate influence despite falling sales.

In February 2017, the Daily Mail was labelled ‘generally unreliable’ by Wikipedia editors, discouraging people from using the Mail as a source. The Daily Mail responded by saying it had only been adjudicated ‘inaccurate’ twice by IPSO – but as we know from our newspaper regulations lessons: how effective is IPSO?

Audience 

The Daily Mail readership key details:

• Average age of 58
• Almost half of its readers are over 65 and only 14% of the paper’s readers are under 34 
• The Daily Mail is the only newspaper to have more female readers than male (52% - 48%)
• Two thirds of the readership are ABC1 so middle class. Seen as ‘voice of middle England’

Daily Mail: Friday 31 January 2020

Our chosen edition of the Daily Mail to use as our CSP is Friday 31 January 2020 - Brexit day. Consider the following in your analysis:

Media language
Page design, font, text, images, conventions, hard news/soft news, news values.

Narrative
Selection of news: is there an ongoing narrative? How is narrative created by the paper to engage an audience?

Audience and ideology
What ideologies are present in the text? Is the audience positioned to respond to stories in a certain way?


Daily Mail case study: Blog tasks

Work through the following tasks to complete your case study on the Daily Mail and specifically the 31 January edition of the newspaper. 

Daily Mail analysis: Friday 31 January 2020

Use your notes from the lesson to answer the following questions.

1) What is the front page story on the 31 January 2020 edition of the Daily Mail and how is it presented?

2) From your analysis in class, what other stories and topics are covered in this edition of the Daily Mail? Address the following pages:

• Page 2-3
• Page 4-5
• Pages 6-7
• Page 8-9
• Pages 38-39

3) Media language: Write an analysis of the construction of the Daily Mail front page: Page design, font, text, images, conventions, hard news/soft news, news values etc.

4) Narrative: How is narrative used in this edition of the Daily Mail? Look at the selection of news: is there an ongoing narrative? How is narrative created by the paper to engage an audience?

5) Ideology and audience: What ideologies are present in the newspaper? Is the audience positioned to respond to stories in a certain way?

Add additional notes from class here for future revision. Remember, you will need to write about specific stories from this edition of the Daily Mail and how these stories are constructed to appeal to the Daily Mail readership.


Factsheet 175 - Case Study: The Daily Mail (Part 1)

Read Media Factsheet 175: Case Study: The Daily Mail (Part 1) and complete the following questions/tasks. Our Media Factsheet archive is on the Media Shared drive: M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets

1) Note down three bullet points from the history of the Daily Mail.

2) What news content features in the Daily Mail?

3) What is the Daily Mail’s mode of address? 

4) What techniques of persuasion does the Daily Mail use to attract and retain readers?

5) What is the Daily Mail’s editorial stance?

6) Read this YouGov article on British newspapers and their political stance. Where does the Daily Mail fit in the overall picture of UK newspapers? 

7) What is the Daily Mail’s view of the BBC? What are the possible reasons for this?

8) Why are Richard Littlejohn and Jan Moir controversial columnists? You'll need to Google this to find out more and research. 


Factsheet 177 - Case Study: The Daily Mail (Part 2)

Now read Media Factsheet 177: Case Study: The Daily Mail (Part 2) and complete the following questions/tasks.

1) How did the launch of the Daily Mail change the UK newspaper industry?

2) What is the 'inverted pyramid of journalism' and why was it important in the way the Daily Mail presented news?

3) What company owns the Daily Mail? What other newspapers, websites and brands do they own?

4) Between 1992 and 2018 the Daily Mail editor was Paul Dacre. What does the extract from Dacre’s speech on the freedom of the press tell us about his ideological position?

5) What is Dacre’s view on BBC news?

6) Look at the right-hand side of page 4. Why is the editor of a newspaper so important?

7) Why did Guardian journalist Tim Adams describe Dacre as the most dangerous man in Britain? What example stories does Adams refer to?

8) How does the Daily Mail cover the issue of immigration? What representations are created in this coverage?

9) How did the Daily Mail cover the murder of MP Jo Cox?

10) What was Dacre’s position on Brexit?

There is a lot of work here - easily 2-3 hours reading and writing. You will be given some lesson time to start this but most of this case study work will need to be completed at home - due date specified by your exam class teacher. Don't forget you also need to keep posting your weekly stories from MailOnline and the i newspaper website too.

Newspapers: Regulation

The debate regarding the regulation of the newspaper industry has been one of the most controversial and important media issues of the last 10 years.

You need to understand how the newspaper industry is regulated, how some people think it should be regulated and what might happen in the future. Most importantly, you need to form your own opinion on newspaper regulation and how the industry should operate following the 2012 Leveson Inquiry.

Newspaper regulation: notes

A brief history of newspaper regulation
The newspaper industry was regulated by the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) between 1990 and 2014. It was a voluntary regulator with no legal powers and was heavily criticised for saying it found no evidence of phone hacking at the News of the World in 2007.

The PCC had a code of practice that provided guidelines for newspapers in how to report inaccuracies, crime, news stories involving children and more. However, the PCC was effectively run by the newspaper editors themselves and papers merely had to print a small apology when the regulator ruled against them.

The Leveson Inquiry 2011-12
The Leveson Inquiry in 2011-12 was a judicial public enquiry ordered by the government into the culture and ethics of the British press. This followed the revelations of the phone hacking scandal and the closure of the News of the World.

Post-Leveson: IPSO and IMPRESS
Following the Leveson report, a new press regulator was introduced: the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). IPSO is more powerful than the PCC and can order newspapers to print apologies or corrections on the front page or fine papers. However, it crucially doesn’t act on Leveson’s key recommendation that the regulator is backed by government legislation.

Alongside IPSO, IMPRESS was also set up as an alternative regulator. This was fully compliant with Leveson – but no major newspapers have signed up with IMPRESS.

Watch the following videos on Leveson and the press regulation debate:

BBC News overview:

Newsnight debate:

Channel 4 News debate:




Read the following articles and features on the press regulation debate:

Viewpoints – Should the press be regulated? BBC website
THEOS think tank website – press regulation debate 
Guardian letters – How should the press be regulated?
Roy Greenslade – Why I oppose regulation

Newspaper regulation: blog tasks

Task One: Media Magazine article and questions

Read the Media Magazine article: From Local Press to National Regulator in MM56 (p55). You'll find the article in our Media Magazine archive here. Once you've read the article, answer the following questions:

1) Keith Perch used to edit the Leicester Mercury. How many staff did it have at its peak and where does Perch see the paper in 10 years' time?

2) How does Perch view the phone hacking scandal?

3) What does IPSO stand for and how does it work?

4) What is Perch's view of newspaper ownership?

5) Do you agree with his view that broadcast news should have less regulation so that TV channels can support particular political parties or people?


Task Two: Newspaper regulation essay

Write an essay on your blog answering the following question:

What are the arguments for and against statutory regulation of the newspaper industry? 

Your answer should be at least 750 words and feature a minimum of five paragraphs.


Complete all of this work for homework: due next week.

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 on the Media Shared drive: M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets

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.

Complete for homework: due next week (exact day confirmed by your exam teacher).

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. He's a named media theorist for A Level Media and he 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. 

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), 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 is journalism 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 next week (double lesson).