This provides an excellent contrast with the Daily Mirror. The Times is a right-wing broadsheet newspaper aimed at a more educated, older audience. Remember, this is an in-depth CSP and needs to be studied with reference to all four key concepts: Language, Representation, Industries and Audience.
Notes from the lessons
Media Industries: Why have print newspapers declined?
ACCESSIBILITY / DIGITAL AGE: The growth of the Internet as a major source of news (since the 1990s). This has particularly impacted on advertising revenue for newspapers as we use the Internet (often free) for services. Television news is also available 24 hours a day so no need to make ‘appointment to view’ or buy a daily newspaper as updates on-line are more up to date.
COST: People are accessing news freely through social media and other online outlets. Newspapers cannot compete with the speed and cost-free nature of this. Twitter has no printing costs, printing factories, distribution costs and journalist wages.
CHOICE & VARIETY: Previously we would go to small number of outlets for our news (BBC and other national broadcasters, national and some local newspapers). Now there are so many places we can access news (numerous TV channels, websites, social media accounts, blogs).
IMMEDIACY: Critics of the newspaper as a medium also argue that newspapers haven’t moved with the times. The technology revolution has meant that readers accustomed to waiting for a daily newspaper can now receive up-to-the-minute updates from Web portals, bloggers and new services such as Twitter.
News values
Media theorists Galtung and Ruge defined a set of news values to explain how journalists and editors decided that certain stories and photographs were accepted as newsworthy, while others were not. The following list is adapted from their work:
- Immediacy: has it happened recently?
- Familiarity: is it culturally close to us in Britain?
- Amplitude: is it a big event or one which involves large numbers of people?
- Frequency: does the event happen fairly regularly?
- Unambiguity: is it clear and definite?
- Predictability: did we expect it to happen?
- Surprise: is it a rare or unexpected event?
- Continuity: has this story already been defined as news?
- Elite nations and people: which country has the event happened in? Does the story concern well-known people?
- Negativity: Is it bad news? Bad news tends to get more focus as it’s more sensational/ attention grabbing.
- Balance: the story may be selected to balance other news, such as a human survival story to balance a number of stories concerning death.
Newspaper regulation
How and why are UK newspapers regulated? The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) was a voluntary regulatory body for British printed newspapers and magazines. The PCC closed on Monday 8 September 2014 after criticism following the phone hacking affair.
It was replaced by the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO).
The role of IPSO is to:
- Regulate 1500 print and 1100 online titles.
- Listen to complaints about press behaviour.
- Help with unwanted press attention.
- Advise publication editors .
- Provide information to the public.
- Provide a journalist whistleblowing hotline.
The Times: notes
Language
Examine the use of language and the narrative in the right-leaning Times newspaper:
- “Vote allows in women golfers”
- “members voted overwhelmingly to end their 273-year tradition”
- “a narrow majority of members…voted against allowing women to join”
Look at the tone of the article. The headline and the quotes used suggest that it is good that the ban has been overturned as it means that they will be allowed to hold major golf tournaments again; not that is good for gender equality (although this does get mentioned at the end):
- “Muirfield welcomed back to Open”
- “The R&A confirmed that Muirfield was back on the list of courses they consider suitable”
- “bowed to pressure to admit women”
- “Our members…don’t want an artificial female presence… It might be two or three years”
Audience & Language
Language: The Times tends to attract an audience that it older and more traditional (Conservative politics), so the stories are targeted towards these values and beliefs to target their specific audience.
Mode of address: The Times employs a formal style with advanced language to reflect the needs/education level of the audience.
Construction: The Times uses some layout design techniques to attract its audience (sell lines, cover lines). There are not as many as The Mirror, though. Why?
Technical Codes: Whilst The Times employs colour, it is much more understated than the tabloid Mirror. More traditional fonts styles and sizes reinforces this traditional symbolism.
Conventions: The Times observes more traditional codes and conventions than the Daily Mirror, with less direct address and a more formal, authoritative tone as if giving the reader less active participation and more passive access to information.
The Times target audience is older with over half the audience aged 55+. In terms of social class, they are overwhelmingly in the ABC1 social classes - and largely the A or B groups within that group. This means Times readers are likely to be professionals, managers or company owners. They are likely to be in the Succeeder psychographic group.
Audience pleasures and representation
Surveillance: the main reason we read newspapers is to find out what is going on in the world around us. News, different opinions, information about current affairs.
Information about corporations (Google and Channel 4); information about sports clubs, information about British politics (Scottish people wishing to remain part of Britain)
Entertainment: One of the main reasons we read newspapers is for entertainment. Whether it’s enjoying reading the opinions of others, reading the cartoons or completing crosswords. In the Times, we can see information about celebrity (Angelina Jolie) and also access to cultural ‘hotspots’ for leisure and good holidays. This targets people with disposable income and an interest in culture.
Personal Identity: the newspaper you read what type of person are. A Daily Mirror reader will probably think very differently from a Times reader. Even if a reader does not always agree with a viewpoint the newspaper puts forward, they may still be agreeing with the values being shared and thus reinforcing their own values.
The Times paper seems to endorse traditional ideals, focusing on Scotland not wanting to change. The references to the ‘top’ companies shows an interest in keeping conglomerates such as Google and Channel 4 as important leaders in their fields. Transgender (different to norms) is treated with suspicion and reported on negatively. The change to the golf club is also much more cautious about change being a good thing.
Becoming an active participant: increasingly newspapers, especially online editions, encourage audience input through comments and email. In the Times, the audience are not targeted with informal language or direct address as often, leading to a distance between journalist and reader. This encourages less dissent and comment and therefore more passive audience members.
The Times generally supports the Conservative Party and is against the leftwing Labour Party. Generally, the newspaper will act as a voice for the establishment (the wealthy and powerful) and will not support anything that threatens major changes to the status quo.
Industries
The Times is owned by News UK (a subsidiary of News Corporation). News Corporation is a conglomerate mostly owned by Rupert Murdoch, an Australian media mogul with many business interests such as the Fox network in the USA and Sky Television in the UK.
In July 2009 News Corporation had to pay large sums of compensation for the phone hacking scandal, where their journalists were accused of using illegal methods to obtain information.
The Times circulation in 2018 was 430,000, down from over 800,000 in the 1990s.
- Moved towards a multi-platform landscape. This means that it publishes and synchronises across its print, desktop and mobile platforms. Some newspapers (e.g. The Times) have a paywall on their online content. The Times has had a hard paywall since 2010, but it often experiments with making content available for free. Last summer, it began free registrations and has been adding around 30,000 a week.
- Created a social media strategy in collaboration with the digital team to drive growth of their Twitter and Facebook profiles.
- In 2018, Times and Sunday Times hit 500,000 subscribers as digital outnumbers print for first time at a cost of £1 per week [at least] for a digital subscription.
Work through the following questions to make sure you are fully prepared for questions on the Times and the newspaper industry.
Language
1) What are the main stories on the front cover of the Times CSP edition (15 March 2017)?
2) What are the main stories on the inside page of the Times CSP edition (15 March 2017)?
3) What is the balance on the Times front page between images, headlines and text?
4) How do we know that the Times is aimed at a wealthy, educated, middle class audience?
5) What does a close analysis of the news stories in the Times CSP edition suggest about the Times political beliefs?
Audience
1) What is the target audience for the Times?
2) Why do the Times front page stories/features appeal to the Times audience?
3) Why might the Muirfield golf story be of interest to Times readers?
5) Times readers are mostly over 55 years old. Why is this?
Representation
1) What representation of Great Britain can be found on the front page of the Times?
2) How does the Times represent the gender in the Muirfield golf feature?
3) How does the Times represent big companies like Google or Channel 4?
4) How does the Times present the story of the transgender runner jailed for stabbing an official? What does this suggest about the Times's attitude towards LGBT issues?
5) What clues can you find in the CSP pages that suggest that Times readers are more likely to support the Conservative Party?
Industries
1) Who owns the Times?
2) What is the The Times's circulation in 2018? How many papers did the Times used to sell back in the 1990s?
3) How has the Times reacted to the decline in print sales and the growth of the internet?
4) Using Galtung and Ruge's News Values theory, choose three factors that make a news story more likely to be placed on the front page of the newspaper.
5) Why have newspapers seen such a steep decline in sales over the last 20 years?
Grade 8/9 extension tasks
Read this Guardian column on IPSO, the press regulator. Why does Polly Toynbee suggest IPSO has been a "total failure"?
Read this short Press Gazette feature on the Times's paywall. Why does the Times head of digital describe the paywall as a success?
Read this Guardian column on the pleasures of print newspapers and the dangers of the digital age. Do you think newspapers will continue to exist in the future? Why?
You will get some lesson time to work on this case study but will need to complete most of this at home - due Thursday 7 February.
