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 task

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) 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?

2) What is gatekeeping?

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

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

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

6) How would you update these news values for the digital age? 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 social media 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 Show my Homework

Newspapers: The decline in print media

Our final topic is newspapers: an industry that has changed hugely in the last 25 years due to the impact of the internet.

This is the final set of targeted CSPs - we will be studying the Audience and Industry key concepts plus all relevant contexts for the Daily Mail and the Guardian newspapers. This means newspapers will come up in Paper 1, Section B of the exams. Here's one Daily Mail front page we may want to reference:

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

Read this Ofcom report on the consumption of news in the UK and answer the following questions (bullet points/short answers are fine):

1) Look at the headlines from the report on page 5 & 6. Pick three that you think are interesting and bullet point them here. Why did you pick those three in particular?  

2) Now look at the motivations for following news which differs by age on pages 7 & 8. What are the main reasons people gave for following news? What are the percentages? 

3) Look at the platforms used, by age on page 9. What trends do you notice based on the platforms used and by the different age groups?

4) Look at how online news continues to be a key platform for receiving news on page 14. How does the internet enable audiences to access the news in different ways? Can you provide any examples of news organisations with percentages? 

5) Look at the news brands (print newspapers and digital offerings) on page 20. Can you provide percentages of readership of print vs. online?

6) Looking again at page 20 for news brands - how are print newspapers rated by their metrics - can you offer the different metrics with percentages? 

 

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 Show my Homework.

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 Guardian website):

Mail Online
The Guardian website 

This will help familiarise yourself with the two newspapers over several weeks so you can recognise how the news stories reflect the values, ideologies and ownership contexts of the two CSPs.

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 Guardian 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! 

Media Paper 2 mock exam - learner response

This is the second of your vital learner response tasks following the full set of A Level Media mock exams.

Remember, the most important aspect of any mock exam is making mistakes and learning from them. With Paper 2 this is even more significant as it contains the synoptic element  in question 4 and extended essays on in-depth topics throughout.

Here, we need to closely analyse out performance in Paper 2 and identify specific ways we will improve for the real exam on Thursday 5 June (PM). Complete the following learner response tasks in a new blogpost on your Media Exam blog called 'Paper 2 mock exam learner response'. 

Paper 2 mock exam: learner response

1) Type up your feedback in full (you do not need to write mark/grade if you do not wish to).

2) Did you succeed in meeting or exceeding your target grade for A-Level Media in this paper? If not, how many additional marks do you need to achieve your target grade in Paper 2?

These are the grade boundaries we've used (out of 84): 

A* = 71; A = 62, B = 52; C = 43; D = 33; E = 24

Now read through the real AQA mark scheme for Paper 2 and the examiner's report (see your Media teacher's Google Classroom for both of these documents).

3) Write a question-by-question analysis of your performance. For each question, write how many marks you got from your the number available and identify any points that you missed by carefully studying the AQA indicative content in the mark scheme.

Example Q2: 8/25 marks

Additional points: I didn't focus on the question - validity of theory. I should have...

4) Look at question 4 - the synoptic question. How many of the four key concepts did you cover in your answer? Write a new essay plan for this question using the indicative content in the mark scheme and taking care to include at least three of Language - Representations - Audience - Industries. You can use bullet points but make sure you offer enough content to meet the criteria for Level 5 (top level). This will be somewhere between 3-4 well-developed paragraphs planned in some detail.

5) Based on the whole Paper 2 Learner response, plan five topics / concepts / CSPs / theories that you will prioritise in your Easter Media revision timetable.

If you don't finish this in the lesson, complete it for homework - due date on Satchel One