hello and welcome to my hopefully easy-to-understand guide to industries for newspapers a level Media Studies on the educast exam boards it's important to realize that if newspapers comes up in Section B of component one for the a-level Media Studies exam it will be to do with industries and audiences that means that if for an industries and audiences question you should be considering a whole edition of the newspaper that you have studied in class or at home as well as the newspapers websites and social media pages the set covers that your main studied in class are only if newspapers comes up in Section a media language or representation it doesn't matter what day's Edition you look at as long as you have looked at an entire edition of each newspaper and how to look at their website and their social media pages as well and you should be prepared to use specific evidence from those whole newspapers and the websites and social media pages in your answers for industry and audience based questions if you get newspapers in an industry question at a level it's quite factual which means you're going to need to learn to remember lots of things which I appreciate is quite difficult for some people but it will help you to answer the questions it's lots of information about things like the circulation and readership of the newspapers and the companies that make them and how they're regulated and so on the screen right now you're gonna see a list of all the kind of things you're going to need to know for industries for newspapers at a level and I'm gonna try and go through a few of these things now just to make them a little easier to understand so I'm gonna start with the word ownership ownership is a word that freaks a lot of people out when they see it because they don't really understand about there being somebody that owns a newspaper but actually it's really just about the companies and the people that are involved need to understand the companies for both the Daily Mirror and for The Times and understand a little bit about those organizations and how that might impact upon the newspaper and their success and and various other issues Daily Mirror is made by a company called reach PLC formerly known as Trinity Mirror so you might see it referred to as Trinity Mirror in any resources that you look out online but it is now called reach PLC I would advise trying to use the words reach PLC if you are referring to the owners or production company publishers of the Daily Mirror in an example situation reach PLC is really quite a big organization they produce and publish over one hundred and fifty odd newspapers several of which are national like the Daily Mirror the Sunday Mirror the Daily Express the Sunday Express but they also have diversified and are now produced and publish a range of local newspapers as well which has helped them to make more money as a company and stay a success being very horizontally integrated like that and actually continually buying out other companies on other newspapers for example they brought out the Daily Express about two years ago means that they can maintain their position as a leader within the newspaper industry it means they can get rid of their competition they can stay powerful they can stay it as a leader within the market and they essentially are going to have a reasonable amount of power as a result it's also quite handy because they can actually share resources and facilities and journalists between their different newspapers so for example the Daily Mirror and The Daily Express are both made by reach PLC and they share journalists so if a journalist writes a story for The Daily Express then they can share that story with the Daily Mirror at no extra cost and it means that they can have a story in both of their newspapers at the cost of writing and editing just one story so it can be quite helpful to be horizontally integrated and to have a range of similar products because it can save you money and resources The Times newspaper is published by a company called Times newspapers which is owned by news UK which used to be called News International which is wholly owned by an enormous conglomerate called News Corp so actually the company that publishes The Times is a subsidiary of a giant conglomerate that operates across the globe making hundreds of newspapers magazines TV programs and is even involved in TV news and film as well so it really is a giant global conglomerate being fully vertically and horizontally integrated like this in within a giant conglomerate is very very useful for the times it means that they have got an enormous amount of money at their disposal it means that they can afford to take a few risks for example they can afford to have a paywall on their website which might actually repeal a lot of audiences but they have loads of money so at the end of the day they can afford to take risks like that so they have a lot of resources at their disposal they can share journalists and stories between their different newspapers they can distribute their paper and their material globally using any one of the subsidiary companies that are part of the news corp conglomerate it means they have a huge amount of power at their hands as well so for example when it comes to their newspapers perhaps breaking the rules bending the rules if you've read about the phone hacking scandal and the Leveson inquiry they've actually managed to escape a lot of the kind of potential sanctions punishments and fines as a result of some of those rule breakings that they have taken part in and that is potentially because of their powerin and funding and influence the man who owns think conglomerate at the top of this kind of hierarchy is Rupert Murdoch Rupert Murdoch is a global billionaire he's Australian but he lives in America now he is quite conservative most very rich people are quite conservative in terms of their political views he is also a Republican Party donor so within America he has donated money in the past to the Republican Party and to Donald Trump which you could suggest might mean that he he and his papers might have a tendency to be slightly more right-wing they it could give them a political bias but actually News Corp have tried to pride themselves on having journalists who come from a whole range of political backgrounds and their political perspective they say is a bit more neutral or what week sometimes called centralist so you will find that a lot of their stories aim to try and be a bit more neutral and centralized rather than really right-wing or really left-wing and you'll probably find this in some the articles you look at within the times and you could say about the way newspapers are owned by shareholders and stockholders is that it actually has quite a big impact on the way they operate as a company it's important that they protect the reputation of their newspapers whilst also trying to appeal as much as possible to their target audience in order to make as much money as possible so they have to tread quite a fine line between having shocking stories and being as engaging and unique as possible but not creating so much bad publicity for themselves that they rock the boat and potentially damage their reputation as a company and an example of when this has happened in the past is when News Corp was discovered to have had several of its newspapers involved in the phone hacking scandal you can google this and look up more information on it one of the newspapers it made at the time the news of the world was heavily involved although some of its other newspapers like the Sun and the Times had also been involved too and what happened was it caused a huge amount of bad publicity for the company and it started to damage the stock market and the shares of the company overall they made a business decision based entirely on money and reputation this ties in quite neatly with Curran and Seaton's profit and power theory and also hasman holds minimizing risk and maximizing profit they shut down the news of the worlds they chose to stop publishing stop printing one of their biggest newspapers to try and damage control the situation and protect the reputation and the worth of their other newspapers such as the Sun and the times in terms of regulation you need to understand that the company that regulates both The Times and the mirror is it so IPs oh there is another company called impress which is a government run organization but the times and the mirror don't belong to it the only newspaper that does really belong to it is the Guardian out of the main newspapers within the UK but the times and the mirror that any mirror belong to if so now if so is a newspaper run regulatory board and I suppose belonging to a regulatory board shows that they understand that they do need to control some of the things they put into print and on their websites in order to remain successful and within the law so for example if so might govern what language they put in their newspapers it might stop them from doing anything truly offensive or horrendous or harmful it so might prevent them from publishing libelous material which is printed material which could damage someone's reputation if it's false and so being part of a regulatory board is a good way of trying to control some of those aspects some people say that it so could be said to be a little biased it is run by the newspaper industry themselves and as a result it's kind of newspaper employees governing themselves and as such some people might say that that could lead to bias and they're not perhaps being as strict on their rule-breaking as they could be if so doesn't follow the recommendations of the Leveson inquiry unlike impress and it's quite telling that both The Times and The Daily Mirror chose to join it so despite knowing that it wasn't following the recommendations of the Leveson inquiry it might suggest that newspapers are only going to do the bare minimum necessary to regulate themselves just to stay just on the right side of the law because they know that they want freedom of speech they want to be able to a free to have freedom of the press and be able to write the stories they want to write but they also want to try and be sometimes a bit controversial or a bit shocking with their stories without fear of prosecution or punishment or sanctions because that is what sells newspapers you also need to kind of have a think about how difficult it is to regulate newspapers now apart from the fact that stories are controversial and sometimes news pictures can be quite graphic or bloody or gory if it's about a horrifying event that's happened in real life it's also incredibly difficult to regulate newspapers because of Technology if so is responsible for the regulation of newspaper websites as well as the printed paper whilst newspapers can control what they put online most newspapers also offer the audience an opportunity to contribute themselves in terms of submitting their own ideas or commenting on articles and this presents a problem in terms of regulation because audiences will often not understand what the rules are or not care what the rules are and so most newspapers including The Times in the mirror use bots and algorithms to try and moderate their website comments now one of the problems with using technology to moderate and regulate the comments is that they can't always identify context or cultural references and so sometimes they might moderate or censor things which are completely normal and inoffensive and sometimes they might fail to censor or moderate or notice things which are hugely offensive or inappropriate but that the algorithm just can't detect audiences are quite clever at doing things like messing around with the spelling of their swear words or managing to be racist or homophobic or sexist or Islamophobic without actually using a trigger word that will notify an bot or an algorithm that something offensive has been done most newspapers now employ human moderators to go through comments on their website human moderators are quite good because they can see context and they can look at whether something might have been intended to be offensive or racist sexist etc the problem with human moderators is that they are human they can't read as much content as a computer can and some some articles on websites managed to gather you know sometimes tens of thousands of comments in the space such as minutes which the human moderator just would never be able to look through so technology has made the moderation of newspapers and the effective regulation of newspapers very very challenging so technology has had quite a negative impact on the success of newspapers in general have a look at the two newspapers that you've studied The Daily Mirror and The Times The Daily Mirror's circulation has been quite rapidly declining for a number of years and that's potentially because its target audience is going online that the Daily Mirror's website is free as are many newspaper websites now because they have to be in order to compete with other websites and so their circulation of the printed paper and the readership of the printed paper are in decline but their websites online readership is really quite large it's one of the largest in the country so they do really well on line and that's potentially why newspapers have diversified into online news and they all have an online edition because it helps to maintain that digital audience and it helps to tackle their falling print circulations and therefore falling profits and they can still earn money through the digital websites and that is because it enables them to use digital advertising and offer that to brands and companies as well so it opens up an extra stream of revenue The Times circulation is actually not declining like the Daily Mirror if you look at different years depending on what statistics you look at it's either increasing or staying the same which is quite unusual in comparison to most other newspapers and you have to think about why that might be the times audience is a bit older than the Daily Mirror and they're also potentially a little bit more middle-class to upper-class a bit more educated and therefore perhaps more likely to have still got an interest in printed newspapers which are seen as quite a cultural product because they're a bit older they're less likely to use digital media as much which might explain why their readers are still sticking with printed newspapers as opposed to migrating online another reason why the times audiences haven't deserted the printed newspaper is because the times actually have a paywall on their website which restricts people from being able to access all the content unless they pay so that might stop some of their audiences from actually paying to subscribe online and then therefore might stick with the printed paper but the times can afford to take this risk because their audiences are richer they're more likely to pay for content online and sometimes paying for something makes it feel like it's higher quality and so actually it can act as an engaging factor for audiences because they are convinced that if they're paying for The Times website it must have a higher quality in terms of content both newspapers have lots of other ways of making money these alternate revenue streams are really important for newspapers to help keep their profits high so in the Daily Mirror has lots of advertising space online they also offer things like premium rate phone lines within the newspaper so that people can phone up and get their horoscopes or betting results and gambling tips they can phone up and get the national lottery results and and do all sorts of other things by these premium rate phone lines online on the daily Mira's website there are lots of other alternative revenue streams for them as well so the Daily Mirror has a betting website a betting section of their website which you have to sign up to and use card details in order to bet they also have a dating section to their website as well which again you have to pay for so opening up lots of other digital revenue streams is important for newspapers to maintain their profits the importance of the websites for the newspapers might reflect Clay Shirky ideas and also Henry Jenkins ideas about the audience becoming much more active because of Technology wanting to speak back to producers create their own content in the forms of comments and stories and chatting with other people online and so online editions of newspapers their apps and things like that as well their social media pages are a good way of showing that audiences for newspapers really are intrigued and engaged by the technology that they use Daily Mirror has had to try and engage those target audiences who like interaction using its website and using the printed paper as well so for example offering lots of interactive elements competitions phonons text ins the ability to comment like and share is a really important part of the newspaper industry and keeping it relevant and current for audiences it is quite important to look at the advertising as well both in a whole edition and on the website T the adverts are often very much tailored towards the target audience so in a copy of The Daily Mirror you are much more likely to see adverse for shops like Tesco's little Aldi McDonald's for example and in The Times you're much more likely to see adverts for shops like Waitrose Marks & Spencer's Harrods that is because they're targeting different demographics in class and financial situations so using the adverts to engage a very particular audience is quite important with both newspapers the target audience for the Daily Mirror is predominantly working-class they are probably mostly male over the age of 35 left-wing in terms of their political views and in terms of their sort of social demographic they probably fall into the C to D and E categories which if you're not sure what that means you can look it up online so it's important with the audience section for newspapers to be able to look through a whole issue with the newspaper not set covers for section a and to be able to identify parts of that newspaper and also parts of the website that's specifically designed to engage those audiences for example on the website what would predominantly engage the audiences who are working-class for example or have lower incomes are those opportunities to earn more money so things like lottery results gambling at the ability to enter competitions and win holidays all of these are things that are either on the website or in the printed paper on a reasonably regular basis that would help to engage those people on a lower income the Daily Mirror features quite a lot of left-wing articles so there are articles that feature labor or the Lib Dems in a much more positive light and they are articles which perhaps are going to represent the Conservative Party or you Kip Nigel Farage and anyone from the Republican Party or Donald Trump in a reasonably negative fashion and so seeing and identifying some of these articles from either a whole edition of the newspaper and you can choose whatever additional or you know day's paper that you want or from their website is quite important in being able to explain how they appeal to those left-wing audiences daily mirror readers have a slightly lower reading age than the old readers for the times and so because of that they tend to be engaged more by soft news so that is entertainment based news celebrities sports etc not politically hard-hitting or financial news and so what happens is in the Daily Mirror you will see a lot of articles that feature very large pictures smaller amounts of writing and tend to focus on softer news stories by contrast the times these readers are slightly higher educated and have a slightly higher reading age and so the stories tend to be much more in-depth with a lot more writing much more complex language and jargon and smaller pictures and you will see this on their website as well and that is a good way of engaging those readers who perhaps want something more academic or complex to read the target audience for the times is slightly more conservative than the daily mirror but it's worth having a look at both the printed paper and the online version to see how they've managed to target people with that political standpoint because of the paywall people who visit the Times website are offered the chance to sign up for for free and receive two article views a week they do this to act as almost like a little taster so that audiences get to view a little bit of an article and see what it's like and that will hopefully encourage them to sign up for a paid subscription if you don't return to The Times website once you've signed up The Times will send you regular weekly emails reminding you to come back to the website and telling you some of the articles they think that you might particularly like based on the preferences that you ticked when you first subscribed you can also complete the infamous Times crossword online if you subscribe as a paid member and if you have complete the crossword it will regularly send you emails reminding you that you have an incomplete crossword The Times website offers a variety of competitions that would appeal to its target audience with prizes ranging from tickets to the Royal Shakespeare Company wine-tasting events and even events to listen to previous Prime Minister's speak in public these are clear indicators of the both class and income of the target audience for the times it's important with newspapers to be able to explain and understand how audiences might use newspapers in different ways so think about the uses and gratification theory you can look this up online if you don't know it already and many audiences will read newspapers for information and education that was primarily a newspapers purpose when they first started being printed so many audiences will look for information at education on current affairs political events and things that are happening both in Britain and around the world but actually a number of newspapers are now being read for entertainment value they're being read for the funny stories the silly things the shocking stories so actually trying to make news seem quite exciting and dramatic is quite a key part of engaging audiences lots of audiences will like to be able to identify or relate to stories so for example in the Daily Mirror they'll often feature stories about people who are struggling to live in poverty or on benefits because they know that many of their readers come from lower income backgrounds so giving them stories that they can relate to is a good way of engaging them and making them feel like the newspaper really understands them and their life and offering audiences social interaction is also really good whether that's letting them interact within the newspaper by texting or phoning in or whether it is encouraging social interaction online via comments or chat forums some newspapers even offer opportunities for the audience to escape into a better life or the idea of a fantasy world so for example in The Daily Mirror they often run competitions where you can win tens of thousands pounds or exotic holidays and so this idea would particularly appeal to those working-class readers who would dream of having this quite middle-class aspirational lifestyle if you haven't think about Stuart Hall's reception theory there are many reasons why nordian smight take a prefer to negotiated an oppositional reading to the two papers and it entirely depends on who it is that's reading it so for example a left-wing audience is more likely to take a preferred reading of The Daily Mirror whereas they would be more likely to take an oppositional reading of The Times because the newspapers either do or don't reflect their political viewpoints if somebody is much younger say for example a 16 17 year old might take an oppositional reading to both newspapers because they might feel that both of them are too complex or hard to understand or boring some younger readers might find the idea of printing newspaper quite dull and be more used to spending time online so they might take an oppositional reading to the printed version of either newspaper so it's important to have a think about that all the different reasons why somebody might react differently to newspapers and their websites don't forget if you want to learn more about media language and representation for newspapers then check out my other videos about The Times and The Daily Mirror