Post on 21-Feb-2021
transcript
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The question will be on one of the ideas below:
media ownership
cross media convergence and synergy
new media technologies
the proliferation in hardware and content
technological convergence
the targeting of British audiences by international institutions
Remember in any question you will be expected to write about
institution and audience.
They may make the question look more challenging by using terms like
production, distribution and marketing.
Don’t be put off by these:
Production: How the Guardian is now a converged multi-media product.
Distribution: On every platform, smartphones, tablets etc as well as in print
Marketing: Integration with social networks, advertising, sponsorship.
OCR Media Studies
Section B- Audiences and institutions
Case study- the Guardian
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Production
The print edition of the paper is in trouble. Costs are high and advertising
revenues are low. Fewer national newspapers are being sold today than at any
time during the past 60 years. The Guardian sales have dropped 50% in the
past ten years.
So… the Guardian’s policy is now ‘digital first’.
The Guardian is now an online news provider. Its product is media-rich,
interactive and available on all platforms.
Production is now synergetic. The same stories are produced for print, the
website, for mobile, for the digital edition, for the audio edition.
The Guardian online has many interactive features. The Comment is Free
section of the website allows readers to comment on any story. This content is
called ‘below the line’. Blogs are hosted by Guardian journalists and citizen
journalists. Disposable blogs are used to report on one-off events like football
matches. Videos are uploaded from mobile devices. Twitter feeds appear on
the site.
This interactivity means that news is now, as Dan Gillmor says, a
‘conversation’.
Citizen journalism - Consumers -can become producers of the news through
blogs, social networks, email, and smartphones. David Gauntlett calls this
group ‘Prosumers’.
The Guardian website is what Gauntlett would describe as a Web 2.0 site which means users can add value and content to the site. This means a high
level of interactivity. One term for this is networked journalism.
Journalists source stories using social networking sites like Twitter.
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Distribution
News is distributed for free by the Guardian online and in apps with
some in-ad purchases available.
The print edition now reaches fewer than 200,000 readers a day, mainly
in the UK. This has dropped from 302,285 in 2010.
Online the paper is viewed by more than 90 million unique users. A third
of these are in the US. The Guardian is in the process of launching their
new Beta site that changes the distribution across the product.
Paywalls – Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation introduced a Paywall
but the Guardian’s editor Alan Rusbridger stated that The Guardian
wouldn’t…
The Guardian expects their current printing presses to be the last they buy
due to the decline in print sales.
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Marketing
More important than any other marketing strategy is the Guardian brand. This means the character/identity of the paper. It is seen as trustworthy,
honest, reliable, liberal. This brand identity means it is attractive to
readers who expect these values from their news provider.
Digital Natives (Marc Prensky) are attracted to the Guardian because it
offers a converged, content-rich, interactive product.
We own the Weekend. One recent advertising campaign pushed the
Saturday Guardian and its sister paper, The Observer. Look at the Shed’s
on fire” ad.
The Three Little Pigs campaign reinforced the Guardian’s liberal brand.
The Guardian also promotes itself by sponsoring events such as
Glastonbury and the Edinburgh Television Festival.
Opening a coffee shop is also a way of marketing the Guardian brand.
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Making Money? The major challenge for all newspapers is to ‘monetise’ their online content. The
Guardian offer their content for free and attempt to generate income from new
initiatives such as their online dating service. As their online audience grows they will
be able to charge advertisers more. Advertising revenue is also important to a paper
like The Times but readers online can only access content by paying a monthly
subscription. This is known as a paywall.
Different Approaches to Monetising Content
The Times Newspaper –(owned by Rupert Murdoch) hard paywall
The Sun –(owned by Rupert Murdoch) hard paywall
Daily Telegraph- Subscription after 20 free pages metered access
The Guardian- Funded by the Scott Trust but needs advertisers because it is
free
The Guardian (broadsheet) attracts different readers , and advertisers, from The
Sun (tabloid).
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Citizen Journalism
Dan Gillmor
Gillmor explores how the explosion of grassroots internet journalists has
changed the way news is handled.
Media corporations cannot control the news any longer, now news is available
in real-time, available to everybody, via social networks.
He states that ordinary citizens use blogs and other online communication tools
to share our own news, which he calls ‘citizen journalism’
Gillmor calls bloggers ‘the former audience’ and writes about news blogs as
new form of people’s journalism.
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Technological convergence
Features of the Guardian website
The App
Take particular notice of the
fact that there is a section for
‘trending’ meaning- what are
other people looking at…
Same news, many platforms.
Has optional push notifications
for breaking news.
The website was launched
in 1999
It is the second most
popular newspaper website
in the world (after the
Daily Mail)
Every story that is in the
newspaper appears on the
website before the paper
goes out to print (synergy). Coverged, media-
rich, interactive,
video, audio etc
Readers can blog, tweet, text,
upload images and video. They can
comment in the Comment is Free
section and personalise their
experience with (RSS feeds, E-mail
alerts, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit.
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Key Terms – Understand and be able to apply these terms in your
exam:
News aggregators- A programme like Summly uses algorithms and
data about a user’s news preferences to send a brief summary of
news stories to their iPhone.
Paywalls – When audiences are have to pay view online news
content.
Prosumers- A term used by David Gauntlett to describe when
audiences can produce and consume media using new media
technologies.
Conglomerate-refers to a large corporation which owns a collection
of companies. E.g News Corporation which owns The Times, The
Sun, The Wall Street Journal etc.
New media technologies- Advances in technologies have had a
significant impact on Newspapers. This means internet enabled
hardware such as smartphones, tablet computers, smart TV’s,
gaming platforms.
Technological convergence- Convergence bringing together of two
or more media technologies: a smartphone is the best example: it is a
phone, radio, a video player, an MP3 player, a camera, an internet
browser, a Sat Nav etc etc etc. The Guardian online is a converged
product it features text, images, video, podcasts, interactive
elements
Beta The Guardian Beta site is experimenting with optimization for
different devices. The content is adapted to match the device it is
being viewed on.
Web 2.0- A Web 2.0 site allows its users /audiences to interact and
contribute to the website's content. (user-generated content).
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The Guardian’s Beta Mobile website….
Tanya Cordrey, Chief Digital
Officer, Guardian News & Media,
on The Guardian Beta... mobile
website……
Our mobile traffic has grown an incredible 63% year on year
and, in line with our digital first strategy, we want to ensure
our readers have the best possible experience when looking at
the Guardian website on any type of small tablet or mobile.
‘’Our new mobile site means that users will be able to reach our
content faster with a refreshed design that automatically
adapts to their device."
More features that can be used to answer any question
Contributors and the audience can discuss and develop a story
in blog format. The Guardian call this ‘networked journalism ‘.
Offer video clips come from external sources such as citizen
journalism
Facebook and twitter integration allows the audience to share
and spread a story with ease.
‘Disposable’ blogs can be set up to channel news around a
certain event or occasion to give a live feed streaming to
provide the latest news in a format that is easy to follow.
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Article from
The chief executive of The Guardian
has delivered a rather grim verdict
about the newspaper’s future (or lack
thereof). ‘At the moment, I believe we
could not survive in the U.K,’ says
Andrew Miller, blaming the
‘oversupply’ of newspapers and the
omnipresence of the BBC. He has been
speaking to the New Yorker magazine
which has run one of its brilliant investigations (read it all here) and his
verdict is reinforced by the editor, Alan Rusbridger, who (the piece says)
‘can envisage a paperless Guardian in five to ten years’. Rusbridger can
also ‘imagine…printing on only certain days’. So the newspaper that
came out with the slogan ‘we own the weekend‘ may soon have to add an
appendage: ‘Mondays to Fridays… Not so much.’
You don’t have to look hard to see what sparks Rusbridger’s imagination.
The Guardian does brilliantly online, with more than 90 million unique
users each month. But print sales have halved over the last ten years and
on current trends the paper will lose its last reader by the end of this
decade. The Guardian, by some measures, has never been more successful:
it is the no3 most-read newspaper in the world amongst people who
don’t pay. But it is haemorrhaging sales amongst those who do.
Miller admits that he does not foresee the newspaper earning a
profit anytime soon. Rusbridger said, “The aim is to have
sustainable losses.” Miller defines that as getting “our losses
down to the low teens in three to five years.” But at some
point, if the Guardian does not begin to make money, the
trust’s liquid assets, currently £254 million, would be
depleted.’
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So, good luck, stay calm and read the
question carefully. You know your
stuff and you have lots of examples,
you just have to use them to answer
the question.
Whatever question you get it will have these
ideas behind it:
1. What does the Guardian need to do to compete
and survive?
2. Err… it has to attract many readers, (mostly
digital natives), and give them what they want.
3. What do these people want and how is the
Guardian giving it to them?
Simples
That’s it. Here’s an A grade
answer from a couple of years ago. Needs
updating buts it’s a good one:
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Here’s a space for some final notes: