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 Guardian newspaper website just as we studied MailOnline.
Notes from the lesson
The Guardian is a centre-left, national UK broadsheet newspaper. Its website is freely available worldwide and the Guardian reflects the changing nature of technology, the media globally and the newspaper industry specifically.
The Guardian: values and ideologies
The Guardian’s ideological position – its overall values and beliefs about the world – reflects a progressive stance on a range of contemporary issues (which can cause controversy amongst its readership – such as in the recent debate around trans/gender critical positions).
The political affiliation of the paper has shifted across left-wing parties, and it has a ‘critical friend’ approach rather than unconditional support for one party.You can get a good sense of the Guardian's values and ideologies from this email newsletter to subscribers from editor-in-chief Katharine Viner.
The Guardian: ownership and control
The Guardian has an unusual ownership model:
- Owned by the Guardian Media Group (GMG)
- Parent company of GMG is the Scott Trust - created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian" and "safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values" of the paper.
- The Scott Trust allows the Guardian to make significant losses - usually around £20m - £30m each year. They cope with this by making money elsewhere in their global media business.
- The current editor-in-chief of the Guardian is Katharine Viner.
The Guardian: economic contexts
The Guardian has responded to the decline of the print newspaper industry by focusing on growing its global digital audience. Significantly, it doesn't use a paywall, believing that its journalism should be free for people to read around the world. Instead, it asks readers for voluntary donations and makes money from online advertising and print subscriptions. It has around 500,000 readers making regular donations globally.
Audience
The Guardian readership key details (according to The Guardian Media Kit):- UK audience is 57% male - 43% female.
- 43% of Guardian readers from high/highest income bracket; 81% is ABC1.
- 45% of monthly audience are progressive: influential in driving change, hold progressive views, feels a responsibility to shape the future.
Ofcom report on news consumption
The Guardian is:
- Rated #1 by UK readers for accuracy.
- Rated #2 for trust (just behind the Times).
Circulation and global readership
The Guardian's statistics include:
- UK print circulation now under 100,000 - one of the lowest for daily UK newspapers. Ten years ago it was around 250,000 a day.
- However, when including the website the Guardian boasts 22.4 million cross-platform UK readers a month (print and digital) which is more than the Times and the Telegraph.
- It also has 86 million unique browsers globally each month. This includes 45m in North America, 20m in the UK and 11m in Europe.
Watch the Guardian's Richard Furness talking about this transformation over the last 20 years from print to digital and from UK to global:
The Guardian: regulation
The newspaper industry is regulated by IPSO - the Independent Press Standards Organisation. However, The Guardian has not signed up to IPSO and instead established their own complaints procedure. This includes their own internal ombudsman - called the 'reader's editor' - who responds to complaints raised about the paper.
The Guardian analysis and significant front pages
The Guardian CSP: Blog tasks
Work through the following tasks to complete your case study on the Guardian newspaper and website.
The Guardian newspaper and website analysis
The newspaper industry is regulated by IPSO - the Independent Press Standards Organisation. However, The Guardian has not signed up to IPSO and instead established their own complaints procedure. This includes their own internal ombudsman - called the 'reader's editor' - who responds to complaints raised about the paper.
The Guardian analysis and significant front pages
AQA's CSP booklet suggests studying one entire issue of the Guardian print edition alongside a selection of stories from the Guardian website. You can buy a copy to study for this or alternatively you can take pictures of the Guardian print editions we look at in class alongside some notable Guardian front pages. Either way, consider the following in your analysis:
Selection of news
How is news selected and presented by editors? Is there an ongoing narrative created by the newspaper 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?
You can find a complete history of significant front pages from the Guardian on their website here. These are some of the front pages you may want to study:
Brexit day - 31 January 2020: 
Phone hacking scandal that led to closure of News of the World and Leveson report:
Biden US Presidential election:
Boris Johnson partygate report:
The Guardian website
The Guardian website has become the driving force of the newspaper with four international editions based in the UK, Europe, the USA and Australia. Audience engagement is a major aspect of the newspaper with live blogs and reader comments and interactions a key audience pleasure.
Work through the following tasks to complete your case study on the Guardian newspaper and website.
The Guardian newspaper and website analysis
Use your own purchased copy plus the notable front pages above to answer the following questions - bullet points/note form is fine.
1) What are the most significant front page headlines seen in the Guardian in recent years?
2) Ideology and audience: What ideologies are present in the Guardian? Is the audience positioned to respond to stories in a certain way?
3) How do the Guardian editions/stories you have studied reflect British culture and society?
Now visit the Guardian newspaper website and look at a few stories before answering these questions:
1) What are the top stories? Are they examples of soft news or hard news?
2) To what extent do the stories you have found on the website reflect the values and ideologies of the Guardian?
3) Think about audience appeal and gratifications: what would an audience enjoy about the Guardian newspaper website?
The Guardian newspaper Factsheet
Read Media Factsheet #257 The Guardian Newspaper. 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) Who owns the Guardian and what is their ownership designed to achieve?
2) How is the Guardian regulated? Note its very unusual regulatory approach and give examples where you can.
3) Pick out some key statistics on the Guardian's audience (see beginning of page 2).
4) What are the institutional values of the Guardian? What does it stand for?
5) How is the Guardian's international audience described? See the end of page 2 and pick out some more useful statistics here about their audience .
Read Media Factsheet #257 The Guardian Newspaper. 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) Who owns the Guardian and what is their ownership designed to achieve?
2) How is the Guardian regulated? Note its very unusual regulatory approach and give examples where you can.
3) Pick out some key statistics on the Guardian's audience (see beginning of page 2).
4) What are the institutional values of the Guardian? What does it stand for?
5) How is the Guardian's international audience described? See the end of page 2 and pick out some more useful statistics here about their audience .
6) Now look at page 3 of the factsheet and the Guardian online. Select a few examples of the different sections of the website and copy them here.
7) What different international editions of the Guardian's website are available and what example stories are provided as examples of this?
8) What is the Guardian's funding model? Do you think it is sustainable?
9) What is the Cotton Capital Commission and how does it link to the Guardian's values and ideologies?
10) What audience and industry theories could be applied to the Guardian? How?
Media Magazine articles
Media Magazine has two excellent features on our newspaper CSPs - a focus on Guardian front pages and a comparison of how the Guardian and Daily Mail cover the same story in different ways. You need to read both articles - MM78 (page 12) and MM87 (page 20) - our Media Magazine archive is here. Answer the following questions:
Media Magazine has two excellent features on our newspaper CSPs - a focus on Guardian front pages and a comparison of how the Guardian and Daily Mail cover the same story in different ways. You need to read both articles - MM78 (page 12) and MM87 (page 20) - our Media Magazine archive is here. Answer the following questions:
MM78 - The Guardian
1) What are the Pandora Papers and how does the story fit with the Guardian's ethos, values and ideologies?
2) Pick out all the key statistics and quotes from the section on the Guardian's funding model. In particular, the fall in paper readership, the rise in digital readership and the number of contributors paying to support the journalism.
3) What does it mean when it says the Guardian frames regular payments from readers as a "philanthropic act".
4) What is the Scott Trust and do you think it is a sustainable model for newspaper ownership in the future?
5) Why is the Guardian criticised as hypocritical? Give some specific examples here.
MM87 - The Daily Mail and the Guardian front page analysis
1) What are the stories featured on the Guardian and Daily Mail on November 10, 2023?
2) How do they reflect the values and ideologies of the two newspapers?
3) Why does the writer suggest the front-page images on both papers might be exploitative? Do you agree?
4) What else does the writer suggest regarding the Daily Mail's front-page image of murdered teacher Ashling Murphy?
5) How does the rest of the Guardian's front page (features on Yoko Ono and Todd Haynes) reflect the values and ideologies of Guardian readers?
A/A* extension tasks
Look at the Guardian Media Kit in more detail. What do you notice about the Guardian's audience compared to other newspaper brands? What is a 'typical Guardian reader'?
Take on the tasks at the end of the Guardian factsheet, including the exam question: “Media audiences do not simply consume media content anymore.” Focusing on the newspapers you have studied, to
what extent do you agree with this statement?
Due date on Google Classroom
No comments:
Post a Comment