The 21st Century Journalism Handbook

Essential Skills for the Modern Journalist

Tim Holmes, Sara Hadwin, Glyn Mottershead, Sarah Hadwin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781405846325
• eBook ISBN: 9781317864769
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Set against the background of the fundamental issues facing the industry today, The 21st Century Journalism Handbook is a comprehensive guide to the core principles and practices essential to the modern journalist. Convergence, online, the growth of magazine formats, challenges presented by technology and new demands in news and feature writing are all covered from conceptual and practical perspectives. A thorough grounding in the key debates and techniques is provided; while clear, no-nonsense practical advice helps you develop your journalism skills and make a success of your studies and career.

Key Features:

• A combination of professional insight, academic study and practical exercises allows you to develop at your own pace
• Thinking it through activities at the end of each chapter allow you to think over the topics discussed and to think about how you could apply these skills
• Case studies and Closer Look boxes explore real-life examples in more depth
• Key points to remember and chapter summaries highlight the essential things you need to know
• Comprehensive but digestible coverage of the key elements of ethics, regulation and law ensures you are fully equipped with the essential frameworks for informed practice

With an emphasis on developing the 'whole journalist', a creative and visual reporter who can think across different platforms, this text is ideal for all for journalism students training in newspapers, magazines and online reporting.

CHAPTER ONE
STRUCTURE OF THE INDUSTRY

This chapter will cover:

● The development of print media

● Business structures of print media companies

● An overview of regulatory and legal frameworks governing print media companies

● Current problems facing print media

● Journalism training and education

Case study 1.1

ON 2 February 2011 News Corporation and Apple Computer launched a collaborative venture. Rupert Murdoch, the foremost media mogul of the late 20th century, and Steve Jobs, boss of the coolest tech company on the planet, mounted the stage at New York’s Guggenheim museum to announce The Daily, an iPad-only news app.

Reaction varied from ‘It could easily become a best friend to commuters, airline travelers, even people out for a stroll’ (Tim Molloy in The Wrap¹), through ‘While the initial results are impressive enough to justify the hype, they fall short of what Steve Jobs has called “redefining the news experience”’ (Paul Burkey for McPheters & Co²), to ‘The Daily represents a complete failure of imagination’ (Shane Richmond in the Daily Telegraph³).

Clearly, whatever The Daily was, it was neither the saviour of the newspaper industry nor the future of what had been print journalism (not that anyone was making those exact claims). This was unfortunate as by February 2011 print journalism generally and the newspaper industry in particular desperately needed both a saviour and a secure future.

The reasons for such desperation were easy to find. Anyone looking at the first page of a research paper published in 2008 by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) – a body whose mission it is to promote policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world – would have found the following:

● After very profitable years, newspaper publishers in most OECD countries face declining advertising revenues, titles and circulation. The economic crisis has amplified this downward development.

● About 20 out of 30 OECD countries face declining newspaper readership, with significant decreases in some OECD countries. Newspaper readership is usually lower among younger people who tend to attribute less importance to print media.

● The regional and local press are particularly affected and 2009 is the worst year for OECD newspapers, with the largest declines in the United States, the United Kingdom, Greece, Italy, Canada and Spain.

● Employment losses in the newspaper industry have intensified since 2008 particularly in countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Spain.⁴

Depressing as this may have been (for newspapers in Western economies at least; elsewhere in the world they were still thriving), it was not exactly unexpected since in 2007 a National Readership Survey (NRS) report commissioned by the House of Lords communications committee⁵ found that newspaper readership had declined by 5 million over 15 years.

What was shocking about this catalogue of decline was the speed with which it had happened. After all, newspapers had been in existence for over 500 years, had been commercially successful for 300 years and had been a significantly profitable industrial sector for 150 years. Almost overnight, it seemed, print newspapers were toast.

Toast still capable of generating billions of dollars in turnover, it is true, but much less thickly buttered with profit. One indication of how good the good times had been can be found in traditional profit margins. For much of the 20th century the newspaper industry was expected to return over 20 per cent, and routinely did so, year after year. By comparison, a highly efficient volume car manufacturer such as Nissan or Toyota might achieve between 8 per cent and 10 per cent in a good year; in 2010 Sony – the giant Japanese electronics and entertainment conglomerate – achieved minus 1.38 per cent.⁶

A double shock then, comprised of a rapid slump and the confounding of expectations. How had print media reached this point?

INTRODUCTION

Karl Marx suggested (in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852) that history repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce. To understand where the print media industries are going and which of those two options the destination will be, it is necessary to understand where they have come from. This is best done with a brief look at the aspects of their history and evolution that will allow informed discussion of their likely future development – and perhaps even survival.

We should also remember that print itself was once a highly controversial and massively disruptive new technology, with significant parallels to the ways digital media are seen today. Because print is so absolutely taken for granted now it is difficult to imagine it as something that threatened to turn the world upside down, but the analysis found in Elizabeth Eisenstein’s classic The Printing Press as an Agent of Change is well worth reading for anyone who wants to be reminded of just how powerfully print has changed the world we live in:

• Political power – kings, emperors, despots, popes, archbishops, generals, all have feared the power of the press to influence the people they rule over (a power that was symbolically transferred first to television and now to the internet). One result of this has been the imposition of systems of regulation, to govern who is allowed to own what media and what they can and cannot show or tell. In many countries around the world there are still very strict restrictions – covert, overt or both – on the ownership and operation of print media but a glance at the history of newspapers and magazines in the UK shows that our monarchs, clergy and politicians have not been shy about interfering with and exercising influence over the press.

• Financial power – with great power comes great responsibility, of course, and also the opportunity to make great fortunes. The history of print media is littered with examples of people who have profited greatly from their ownership – Lord Beaverbrook, Lord Northcliffe, Lord Rothermere, Robert Maxwell, Rupert Murdoch, Felix Dennis – but how did newspapers and magazines come to be such cash cows? And has this record of success actually damaged their ability to survive in the future?

• Social and cultural power – the shortlist of press magnates above contains three peers of the realm as well as a man who is courted by politicians of all persuasions who hope to gain his – and his newspapers’ – approbation. Clearly this indicates a link between social power and the print media, but owners and their organisations also exercise significant cultural power, with the ability to affect, at least marginally, the attitudes of their readers. How is this governed? How should it be governed?

This chapter will show how historical development, financial structures and regulatory powers have defined and shaped the print media, what this might mean for their future and how best to prepare for a career in print media today.

KEY DEVELOPMENTS IN THE PRINT MEDIA

The print journalism industry in the UK has a history that stretches back to at least 1620, when the first English language ‘coranto’ was published (in Amsterdam). The ‘coranto’ was an early form of newspaper that contained summaries of stories about battles and other events of greater or lesser immediacy; the example mentioned was published in Holland because the laws of England were very restrictive about what could be printed in the country. Indeed, in 1632 the Star Chamber (which was essentially the king’s private law court) outlawed the production of any kind of news publication.

The first milestone on the route to press freedom came a few years later when the government allowed news to be published under licence (1638) and then in 1641 King Charles I abolished the Star Chamber and ended the licensing of publications.

In 1665 the government of the day adopted the power of the press for its own ends by publishing the Oxford Gazette, widely recognised as the first proper newspaper in England. It soon changed its name to the London Gazette and is still published as an official record of government events.

Early in the 18th century the first daily newspaper arrived, the Daily Courant. Other ‘firsts’ include

• the first provincial daily (Norwich Post, 1701);

• the first evening paper (Evening Post, 1706);

• the first Sunday paper (E. Johnson’s British Gazette, and Sunday Monitor, circa 1780).

Some familiar newspaper titles also have long histories. The Times first appeared in 1785 as the Universal Daily Register but changed its name after three years. The Observer appeared in 1791, the Manchester Guardian in 1821, the Sunday Times in 1822, the News of the World in 1843, the Daily Telegraph in 1855, the Evening Standard (London) in 1860, the People in 1881, the Daily Mail in 1896, the Daily Express in 1900 and the Daily Mirror in 1903.

Print magazines also go back a long way. Some scholars claim that Gynasceum, a collection of pictures of contemporary fashions published by Josse Amman in 1586, was the first fashion magazine – and thus the first specialist publication – while many others nominate the Journal des Sçavans, published by Dennis de Sallo in 1665, as the first science magazine. In the UK, the Athenian Mercury of 1690 provided a clear prototype for the type of magazine that answers readers’ questions, while the Ladies Mercury of 1693 holds a good claim to be the first British women’s magazine. The Tatler (1709) and Spectator (1711) added to the variety of magazines but the first product to actually use that word in its title was the Gentleman’s Magazine, published from 1731 to 1914.

After that the number of magazines expanded as social and cultural changes brought more leisure, more hobbies, more clearly defined trades and professions and a richer, better educated population. Today there are over 8,000 magazines published in the UK, most of which are business-to-business (B2B) rather than consumer titles – this is the main division of types of magazine.

In the newspaper world there has historically been a clear division between local or regional papers and nationals. The Newspaper Society, which represents the interests of local/regional publishers, was founded in 1836, 70 years before the Newspaper Publishers Association was formed (1906) to represent the owners of national papers.

Although several newspaper businesses own both national and regional titles (for example, DMGT and Trinity Mirror) there is still a strong and distinct regional press sector (including companies such as Archant and Johnston Press) and there are still a number of very small publishers that produce a single paper for a single town.

Magazines and newspapers have co-existed within the same companies but the trend in the latter part of the 20th century was for companies to specialise in one print platform or the other. Recent developments in bringing the two forms back together again have had mixed results. News International, publisher of the Sun, set up a magazine division in 2007 and closed it again in 2008, while the Guardian Media Group (jointly with venture capitalist Apax Partners) acquired Emap’s B2B magazines in 2008.

All forms of print journalism, whether magazines or newspapers, have been affected in various ways and to various degrees by the rise of the internet, and not just because of a generalised drift of display advertising to online platforms. The decline is easiest to diagnose in the local and regional press, where classified advertising, once the never-ending stream of gold that ran through the inner pages, has begun to dry up alarmingly.

Why? In the USA it is widely attributed to the rise of craigslist.org, which is easier to search and free, but craigslist.co.uk is a shadow of its American counterpart. It could be because eBay.co.uk is more fun and has an automated charging system or because FreeCycle is greener, free and is based on an ostensibly beneficial soci...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Acknowledgements
• Publisher’s acknowledgements
• Chapter 1 Structure of the industry
• Chapter 2 Researching
• Chapter 3 News writing
• Chapter 4 Feature writing
• Chapter 5 Production
• Chapter 6 Sub-editing
• Chapter 7 Specialist journalists
• Chapter 8 Convergence
• Chapter 9 Law, regulation and ethics
• Chapter 10 Working as a journalist
• Index