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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: