News/OSP Flashcards
Galtung & Ruge’s 12 News Values (extra info, doesn’t need to be memorised)
1) frequency
- short term events (like murder) are preferred over long term events (like famine)
2) threshold
- the size of an event indicates importance
3) unambiguity
- events that can be simplified by the media and made easier for readers to understand
4) meaningfulness
- what an event means to us in terms of our culture (cultural proximity and impact on home culture)
5) consonance
- when an event is/feels familiar to us (plays on feelings of everydayness)
6) unexpectedness
- an events that is a rare occurrence and surprises us
7) continuity
- an ongoing narrative
8) composition
- events need a sense of balance (bad vs good, domestic vs foreign; Strauss & Gilroy can be applied)
9) reference to elite nations
- events most likely to be reported on if they happen in the developed world
10) reference to elite people
- famous and powerful people who are more newsworthy than the ordinary person
11) personalisation
- events are personalised to focus on individuals
12) negativity
- bad news is better than good news
What are the conventions of a broadsheet?
- sentence case headline
- “hard” news; informative and educational usually about politics, economy, current affairs
- high text:image ratio (more copy than images)
- formal language register; uses sophisticated language
- large “broadsheet” size
- traditional serif mastheads
- addresses an upmarket audience (ABC1)
What are the conventions of a mid-market tabloid?
- upper case headline
- more formal language than red-top tabloids but more opinionated than broadsheets
- a mix of soft and hard news
- traditional serif masthead
- front pages dominated by images, but more copy than a red-top tabloid
- offers news as entertainment and education
- compact size
- addresses a midmarket audience (BC1C2)
What are the conventions of a red-top tabloid?
- upper case headlines
- informal language register; uses puns, colloquial language, jokes, irony & play on words
- “soft” news; purely for entertainment purposes such as sensational celebrity drama, making fun of politicians, human interest stories
- modern sans-serif masthead (white text on red background)
- high image:text ratio (lots of images and barely any copy)
- compact size
- addresses a downmarket audience (C2DE)
Who is the regulator for newspapers?
IPSO (Independent Press Standards Organisation)
What is the socio-economic demographic for broadsheets?
ABC1
What is the socio-economic demographic for mid-market tabloids?
BC1C2D
What is the socio-economic demographic for red top tabloids?
C2DE
What genre of newspaper is The Guardian?
campaigning newspaper
What genre of newspaper is The Daily Mail?
populist newspaper
How have the daily print circulation figures of The Guardian declined?
From around 200,000 in 2012 to around 100,000 in 2021 (50% decrease)
The publishers now have stopped making the circulated data public
How have the daily print circulation figures of The Daily Mail declined?
around 1.1million in 2020 to around 700,000 in 2024 (around 36% decrease)
Who owns The Guardian?
Guardian Media Group owned by Scott Trust, a diverse board of people who oversee The Guardian
Who owns The Daily Mail?
DMGT (Daily Mail and General Trust) owned by Lord Rothermere AKA Jonathan Harmsworth
Who is The Guardian’s target demographic?
An educated, middle-class, left-leaning, 18+ audience
Who is The Daily Mail’s target demographic?
Lower-middle class, older (40s and 50s) women
How is The Guardian regulated?
Self-regulated by The Scott Trust
How is The Daily Mail regulated?
By IPSO (Independent Press Standards Organisation)
When did The Guardian rebrand?
January 2018
What did The Guardian’s rebrand consist of?
The process of tabloidization
Downsizing the paper from a large broadsheet size to a compact tabloid size
Implementing more soft, sensational, celebrity gossip and lifestyle content alongside hard news topics
Why did The Guardian rebrand?
To appeal to the modern, new generation who prefers smaller, compact ways to consume media and enjoy reading sensational stories alongside hard news
To save costs, it costs less to print in a small tabloid size
To remain fresh and appealing to new readers (Neale’s Genre theory, repetition and difference)
What is the effect of the use of a “tricolon” ? (list of 3)
Used to make a memorable quote
When was The Guardian founded?
1821
When was The Scott Trust founded?
1936
Why was the Scott Trust created to take ownership of the Guardian?
to secure the paper’s independence and ensure that no single owner could buy and own it
to safeguard the paper from commercial and political interference
to protect the paper’s news values of honest, fair, liberal investigative journalism
Do shareholders make profit from The Guardian?
No, all profit is put back into the organisation to improve journalism
Who is The Guardian’s editor in chief?
Katherine Viner
Which political parties have the Guardian supported in the past?
Labour and Lib Dem
When was the Daily Mail founded?
1896
What type of model does the Daily Mail run under?
a proprietor model (relating to an owner/ownership)
When did DMGT buy the i newspaper?
November 2019
