This provides an excellent contrast with the Daily Mirror. The Times is a right-wing broadsheet newspaper aimed at a more educated, middle-class 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
The Times: context 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.
There is currently a heated debate in the media regarding whether the newspaper industry requires stronger regulation.
The Times: notes
Language
- “Corbyn fails election test”
- “Royal appointment” (picture story)
Look at the tone and angle of the article. The headline and the quotes present Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party as failures and highlight his own MPs and supporters blaming Corbyn for the election defeat. They choose to use a quote from an unnamed Labour MP describing Corbyn as an "amateur". The article quotes Labour MP Jess Phillips, a prominent critic of Corbyn - which shows The Times's political bias in favour of the Conservatives. The front-page story also promotes Boris Johnson's opinion on the election rather than the Prime Minister Theresa May, suggesting the newspaper wants Johnson to take over as PM (which he later did).
The picture story of Sir Paul McCartney at Buckingham Palace reinforces the paper's support for tradition, the British monarchy and its appeal to older readers.
Look at the kicker stories advertised at the top of the page (and the pug):
- "40 best country house hotels"
- "Eat recipe pullout"
- "Time to fire up the grill"
Audience & Language
Language: The Times tends to attract an audience that is 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, kickers, pugs). There are usually not as many as The Mirror, though.
Technical Codes: Whilst The Times employs colour, it is much more understated than the tabloid Mirror. More traditional fonts, styles and sizes reinforce 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 elections ("Results show that voters want hard Brexit, ministers tell May"); information about establishment figures such as Sir Paul McCartney; information about country house hotels and barbecue recipes.
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 a celebrity (Sir Paul McCartney) and also access to holidays and leisure activities ("country house hotels" and "fire up the grill"). This targets people with disposable income and leisure time - older, wealthy or retired people.
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 criticising the Labour Party and favouring the Conservative Party. Labour "scandals" are referenced ("Birmingham remains red despite scandals") and a very right-wing "hard-Brexit" perspective is offered. This will appeal to older, largely male Conservative voters.
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 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. Here, multiple articles criticise Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party and promote Conservative viewpoints.
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 worldwide such as the Fox network in the USA.
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 2019 was 376,000, down 12% in a year and much lower than the high point of 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 outnumbered print for first time at an initial cost of £1 per week 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 is the main story on the front cover of the Times CSP edition (5 May 2018) and why does it appeal to Times readers?
2) What are the main stories on the inside pages of the Times CSP edition (5 May 2018)? List the headlines here.
3) What is the balance on the Times front page between images, headlines and text? How does this contrast with The Mirror?
4) Which of Galtung and Ruge's News Values apply to the Times's front page stories? Write about both the politics main story and the Sir Paul McCartney picture story.
5) What does a close analysis of the news stories in the Times CSP edition suggest about the Times's political beliefs?
Audience
1) What is the main readership demographic for The Times newspaper?
2) Why do the Times front page stories/features appeal to the Times audience?
3) Why might the election coverage be enjoyable to Times readers?
5) Times readers are mostly over 55 years old. Why is this and how is this reflected in the CSP edition?
Representation
1) What representation of the Labour Party can be found on the front page of the Times?
2) What representation of the Conservative Party can be found in The Times newspaper. Give examples from the CSP.
3) What representations of gender can be found in The Times CSP pages?
4) How does the Times reinforce British social and cultural values in their front page? Look at the kicker, pug and sidebar stories to give you a clue here.
5) How are the pages constructed to encourage the audience to take a negative view of the Labour Party?
Industries
1) Who owns the Times?
2) What was the The Times's circulation in 2019? 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) What does IPSO stand for and what is IPSO's job?
5) Why do some people want stronger regulation of British newspapers?
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 may also want to watch this video from another Media teacher explaining The Times and the Daily Mirror for A Level students:
You will get lesson time to work on this case study but will need to complete some of this at home - due Thursday 6 February.
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