Newspapers Flashcards
(22 cards)
🗞️ Ownership and Industry
The Daily Mirror
Owned by Reach PLC, a large UK-based media organisation.
Operates over 150 newspapers—national and local—demonstrating horizontal integration (buying up competitors, offering similar products).
Benefits from shared resources, such as journalists and infrastructure, allowing for cost-effective production.
As a market leader, it holds significant power and influence in the media landscape.
🗞️ Ownership and Industry The Times
Published by Times Newspapers, a subsidiary of News Corp, a global conglomerate owned by Rupert Murdoch.
News Corp is vertically and horizontally integrated, owning various media outlets across print, TV, and digital platforms.
Their scale and resources allow them to take financial risks, such as implementing a paywall on their website.
Can syndicate stories and journalists across platforms, achieving global distribution through subsidiary companies.
Influence and Power
News Corp has faced controversies, such as the phone-hacking scandal (linked to News of the World), but its power has helped it navigate and mitigate reputational damage.
Rupert Murdoch, an Australian billionaire and prominent conservative figure, has a history of political influence (e.g., donations to the Republican Party).
Although News Corp claims to promote a diversity of political viewpoints, critics argue it leans right-wing.
As publicly owned corporations, both newspapers must protect their brand reputation to maintain shareholder confidence and stock value.
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📜 Regulation
Newspapers are regulated by IPSO (Independent Press Standards Organisation), which is industry-run—raising questions about bias and self-interest.
IPSO does not follow recommendations from the Leveson Inquiry, and often does the bare minimum to regulate harmful or misleading content.
Some papers may intentionally breach regulations for the sake of shock value and clickbait headlines.
Challenges of Digital Regulation
Technology complicates regulation:
Bots and algorithms moderate online content but often fail to understand context, irony, or cultural references.
Audiences can bypass filters using creative spellings, allowing racist, homophobic, or Islamophobic comments to slip through.
Many outlets now use human moderators, who can interpret context but struggle with high volumes of content.
🌐 Digital Transition and Circulation
The Daily Mirror
Print circulation has been rapidly declining in recent years.
Its online platform is thriving, offering free access to attract a broader audience and compensate for print revenue loss.
Generates income through digital advertising, betting services, premium phone lines, and dating websites—expanding digital revenue streams.
🌐 Digital Transition and Circulation
The Times
Print circulation is relatively stable due to its older, wealthier, educated audience.
Implements a digital paywall, reflecting both its perceived content value and a business model tailored to a more affluent demographic.
Subscribers gain access to exclusive offers, such as crossword competitions, wine tastings, and tickets to cultural or political events.
royal shakspeare
👥 Target Audience and Content
The Daily Mirror
Appeals to a working-class, left-wing audience, typically C2DE, males aged 35+.
Offers soft news, such as celebrity gossip, sports, and human interest stories, often with a lower reading age and large images.
Website features include competitions, lottery links, and holiday giveaways, aligning with the interests and economic realities of its audience.
Advertisers include Tesco, Lidl, and Aldi—brands associated with budget-conscious consumers.
👥 Target Audience and Content
The Times
Targets an upper-middle-class, educated, older audience with a conservative political leaning.
Content is often in-depth, with a higher reading age, complex vocabulary, and detailed analysis of national and international affairs.
Advertising reflects its audience, featuring brands like Waitrose, Harrods, and M&S.
Offers a free trial before locking users into a paid subscription, often encouraging sign-ups with follow-up emails and incentives.
Curran and Seaton The Times
Ownership: The Times is owned by News UK, a subsidiary of News Corp, one of the largest media conglomerates globally, owned by Rupert Murdoch.
Profit Motivation: The implementation of a paywall reflects a focus on monetisation over wide accessibility, appealing to a niche, affluent audience willing to pay for content.
Power and Influence:
News Corp has vast political influence, particularly supporting right-wing ideologies in the UK and abroad.
Its vertical and horizontal integration gives it enormous control over the production, distribution, and promotion of media content.
Lack of Diversity: Despite claiming to support a range of viewpoints, News Corp titles (including The Times) often reflect a conservative editorial stance, showing how ownership influences ideological content.
Risk Management: Its vast resources enable The Times to take calculated risks (e.g. paywall), but still within a controlled, profit-maximising framework.
Curran and Seaton The Daily Mirror
Ownership: Owned by Reach PLC, a major UK media company controlling over 150 newspaper titles, showing clear concentration of ownership.
Profit-Driven Strategies:
The Mirror offers free online content to maximise advertising revenue.
It has diversified into digital platforms, including betting and dating services, to sustain profit despite declining print sales.
Market Leadership: As one of the largest UK newspaper publishers, Reach PLC benefits from economies of scale, sharing resources (journalists, content, infrastructure) across titles.
Standardisation and Audience Targeting:
While left-leaning, The Mirror tends to offer predictable, populist content such as celebrity news and soft features, tailored to its working-class readership.
Content choices reflect a commercial strategy aimed at maximising clicks and engagement rather than journalistic innovation.
Hesmondhalg The Mirror
Horizontal Integration: Owned by Reach PLC, which owns multiple national and local newspapers—this allows content sharing and cost-cutting.
Diversification:
The Mirror has expanded into digital advertising, betting websites, dating services, and premium-rate phone lines.
These diversified revenue streams reduce reliance on traditional print sales.
Standardised Content: The Mirror focuses on celebrity gossip, soft news, and sensational stories that appeal to a mass, working-class audience—a low-risk, high-engagement formula.
Risk Avoidance: By sticking to predictable formats (e.g., bold headlines, large images, emotionally charged stories), the Mirror avoids experimental journalism that might alienate its core demographic.
Apply hesmondhalg to the times
Vertical & Horizontal Integration: As part of News Corp, The Times benefits from vertical integration (production to distribution) and horizontal integration (across news, TV, publishing).
Diversification:
Includes revenue from digital subscriptions, events (wine tastings, theatre tickets), and exclusive newsletters and podcasts.
Uses bundled media experiences to maintain a loyal and affluent audience.
Paywall Strategy: The paywall reduces risk by focusing on a smaller but wealthier audience segment willing to pay for “quality” journalism.
Repetition of Success: The Times leans on its reputation for serious, high-brow journalism and political analysis, maintaining brand identity and profitability.
Clay Skiry The Mirror
Active Engagement:
Encourages users to comment, share, and participate in polls, competitions, and text-ins.
Builds stories around user interaction (e.g. social media trends, reader opinions).
Tailored Content: Stories are often designed to generate emotional reactions or debate, maximising social sharing and clicks.
Clickbait & Virality: Headlines and stories are often crafted to go viral—an approach suited to platforms like Facebook and Twitter, where interaction is key.
Clay Shirky The Times
Application to The Times
Controlled Interaction:
Allows limited engagement due to its paywall, which restricts content to paying subscribers.
Offers a more curated, exclusive online space (e.g., newsletters, comment sections for members only).
Digital Participation:
Encourages discussion through features like the crossword, comment sections (for subscribers), and curated cultural events.
Less Dependent on Viral Content: Unlike the Mirror, The Times is less focused on mass social sharing and more on cultivating a loyal, elite readership.
📰 The Daily Mirror and Digital Convergence
✅ Positive Effects:
Free digital access: The Mirror offers its content freely online, relying on digital advertising revenue rather than subscriptions.
Social media integration: Strong presence on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok, pushing viral content (celebrity news, trending stories).
Diversified online offerings:
Betting, dating, and horoscopes integrated into its digital brand.
These are monetised through premium services and affiliate marketing.
Interactive audience engagement:
Comments, shares, polls, competitions—Mirroring Clay Shirky’s idea of the “end of passive audiences.”
⚠️ Challenges:
Declining print circulation has forced the Mirror to prioritise digital at the expense of traditional print revenue.
Clickbait dependency: Content is often shaped to maximise engagement, which can harm journalistic credibility.
📰 The Times and Digital Convergence
✅ Positive Effects:
Paywall model: Uses digital convergence to build a premium online product—high-quality journalism, exclusive newsletters, and subscriber-only podcasts.
Cross-platform presence:
Website, mobile app, email digests, social media (though less viral-focused).
Multimedia journalism:
In-depth articles are now often accompanied by infographics, video explainers, and interactive data visualisations.
Subscriber perks:
Access to events, crosswords, wine clubs, etc.—blending lifestyle content with journalism.
⚠️ Challenges:
Limited reach due to paywall—less likely to go viral or trend on social media.
Older demographic may engage less with some forms of digital interactivity.
🔍 What Was the Phone Hacking Scandal?
The Phone Hacking Scandal refers to widespread illegal voicemail interception by journalists at the now-defunct British tabloid newspaper News of the World. The aim was to access private information from celebrities, politicians, royalty, and even crime victims — in order to publish sensational stories.
This scandal exposed deep ethical failures in parts of the British press and led to:
The closure of News of the World
Multiple criminal trials and convictions
The Leveson Inquiry into press ethics
Lasting damage to Rupert Murdoch’s media empire
🧨 How Did the Scandal Unfold?
Early 2000s:
Journalists and private investigators illegally accessed voicemails by “phone hacking,” using default PINs or software to listen to messages.
Targets included:
Celebrities (e.g., Hugh Grant, Sienna Miller)
Royals (e.g., Prince William)
Politicians
Crime victims (e.g., Milly Dowler — a murdered schoolgirl)
⚠️ The Milly Dowler case was especially shocking — journalists deleted her voicemails, giving her family false hope she was alive.
⚖️ Aftermath: Investigations and Inquiries
1. Leveson Inquiry (2011–2012)
A judge-led public inquiry into press ethics, called by PM David Cameron.
Revealed a culture of law-breaking, cover-ups, and political coziness between press and politicians.
Recommended stronger, independent press regulation — though many reforms were later shelved.
❗ Why Did It Matter? Phone Hacking Scandal
It showed how profit pressures led to unethical journalism.
Exposed police failures and political complicity in ignoring wrongdoing.
Raised major questions about media ownership and influence.
Undermined public trust in both the press and politicians.
📰 How Did It Affect Newspaper Regulation?
Phone Hacking Scadal
✅ What Happened:
The PCC was abolished, replaced by a new body: IPSO (Independent Press Standards Organisation), launched in 2014.
IPSO has more powers than PCC but is still a self-regulator, funded by newspapers.
❌ What Didn’t Happen:
Leveson’s key recommendation for statutory backing of the new regulator was rejected by much of the press and later by the government.
A rival regulator, Impress, was established with state recognition, but only a handful of small outlets joined.
Most major newspapers (like The Times, The Sun, The Daily Mail) refused to join Impress, claiming it threatened press freedom.
