Story #75

http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/fcb-brazil-created-a-calculator-to-show-newspaper-readers-the-cost-of-government-corruption/

Story #75 "FCB Brazil Created a Calculator to Show Newspaper Readers the Cost of Government Corruption"

As the article states, the tool, which appears on the paper’s website, converts the amount of money each corruption scandal reported by the paper costs Brazilians, in terms of water, school lunches and vaccines. It lets readers calculate the benefits and services that could have been provided with the funds had they not been diverted because of corruption. As major U.S. media outlets like the New York Times, the Atlantic and Vanity Fair boost their marketing efforts to highlight the importance of journalism in turbulent political times, FCB Brazil is working with one newspaper in Brazil to help it do the same. The Brazilian media is hard at work exposing government corruption, as public services in the country are in a state of collapse. So, FCB Brazil created a tool for Brazilian newspaper O Estadão de São Paulo to show the cost of government corruption, in real-life terms.

Story #74

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/05/when-politicians-buy-the-newspaper-front-pages-fake-news-is-born/#

Story #74 "When politicians buy the newspaper front pages, they create fake news"

As the article states, newspapers everywhere are in trouble, with advertising revenues down about 20 per cent a year. Local newspapers are worst hit and many are on the brink of collapse, sacking staff and pages. But there can be no more depressing sign of their distress than to see newspaper owners selling front pages to political parties. The collapse of the print advertising market means that papers (especially local ones, who derive most of their income from advertising) have had to to go to ever-greater lengths to secure funding. Using the front page as advertising space is, in a way, a return to the days when every newspaper had small adverts on their front page. But now, a single client can pay for a front-page takeover. Usually, it’s glaringly obvious that it’s an advert: it will be for a car, perfume or somesuch.

Story #73

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-18/crinkling-news-saved-as-crowdfunding-target-reached/8536646

Story #73 "Crinkling News, Australia's only kids' newspaper, saved as $200k crowdfunding target reached"

As the article states, Australia's only kids' newspaper has raised enough funds to ensure its survival, at a time when print publications are struggling as advertising migrates online. Crinkling News reached its $200,000 crowdfunding target today, with just eight hours to go in the two-week campaign. Crinkling News has since seen growth in subscribers, and is posted out weekly to 800 schools with a readership of 30,000 people. However, the print publication was struggling to survive after running out of seed funding. On the crowdfunding page, the team said the paper was close to becoming a self-sustaining publication and just needed a boost to "take that final step".

Story #72

#Story 72 "Newspaper decline continues to weigh on AP earnings"

As the article states, NEW YORK (AP) — Earnings at The Associated Press shrank substantially last year compared with 2015, when the news organization enjoyed a large tax benefit that skewed its results. Revenue also edged downward, reflecting continued contraction in the newspaper industry and a stronger U.S. dollar that reduced the value of overseas sales. Net income last year shrank to $1.6 million from $183.6 million in 2015, a 99 percent decline. The 2015 profit figure was bolstered by a one-time, $165 million tax benefit. AP's 2014 net income of $140.9 million was also boosted by a large non-recurring gain from the sale of a stake in a sports data company. In 2013, net income at the AP — a not-for-profit news cooperative — was $3.3 million. 

• New York AP's net income last year shrank to $1.6 million from $183.6 million in 2015, a 99 percent decline

Story #71

Story #71 "Newspaper ad spend takes hit in April, dropping 26.3%"

As the article states, Australia’s media agency market is reporting a 6.8% decline in advertising expenditure in April 2017 to $501.9 million, with newspapers taking the biggest hit. According to preliminary figures from Standard Media Index (SMI), newspapers saw ad spend drop by 26.3% in April compared to the same period in 2016. The dramatic drop in revenue is a major driver of the cost-cutting initiatives currently underway at News Corp and Fairfax, with Fairfax recently axing 125 jobs from its editorial team. TV saw a smaller 6.6% fall year-on-year, with digital also dropping 9%, however data from the sector is usually revised later. Outdoor and radio both recorded 5.5% rises and cinema advertising climbed an impressive 32.9%.

• 6.8% decline in advertising expenditure 
• 125 jobs gone from editorial teams at News Corp and Fairfax
• 6.6% decline in TV
• Radio with 5.5% rise and cinema advertising with 32.9%

Section B essay attempt

'Does your case study suggest that new and digital media have had a positive impact by offering audiences a more diverse range of values and ideologies?'

It is without a doubt that the new and digital media has had a substantial influence in how it offers audiences a more diverse range of values and ideologies, therefore empowering them to an extent. The positive impact as a result is due to the audience demonstrating the ‘uses and gratifications’ of how they would use these particular products that new and digital media has offered them. It also means that both the media producers and audiences have a “supply and demand” relationship, as audiences may no longer remain passive but instead make use of what is being created by the media product. A prominent example is the user-generated content that enables the audience to look at the content and express their own opinions about it in social networks like Twitter for example. Other similar examples are when Apple’s music streaming service and social networks are a great combination in the sense that they support each other by spreading attraction to a particular music artist. 
User-generated content has had a positive impact as it has enabled the audience to view a “reality” of the things going around, and gives them an alternative option as opposed to consuming information from trusted news broadcasting companies such as BBC. This means that there is more freedom experienced by the audience as they have access to more diverse information that isn’t mediated and filtered usually for the public eye to see. An example includes the “#BlackLivesMatter” movement, where numerous UGC have been released on the Internet of prejudice and discriminatory cases against the black community. Footage such as Eric Garner’s death has kickstarted the ideology of #BLM as perhaps the audiences who identify as black individuals themselves have the urge to comment on this in respect to their own image. This demonstrates surveillance and a positive impact that the new and digital media has given them, as it allows the black community to speak out against police brutality and racism that still remains active in the status quo. Globalisation and the combination of the Internet has aided this spreading of #BLM’s awareness in the sense that it gives access to a wider range of audience, and as McLuhan mentions there is a “Global Village” of users across the globe who might see things from another perspective than what is conventionally believed. For example, another case of police brutality including Ian Tomlinson’s death, who was a victim to manslaughter was innocently battered as he wasn’t part of the protest that was taking place. The hegemonic view that the Metropolitan police in the UK are here to ‘Protect and Serve’ is obviously not the case as proven by the video footage, which again emphasises on how crucial UGC has on offering different ideologies than what is usually believed. In result, there is a positive impact due to the fact that there is justice being brought, as after an inquest jury returned a verdict of unlawful killing, the officer, Simon Harwood, was prosecuted for manslaughter. Without the collective participation of the audience, simply put someone could have gotten away with murder. 
However, as much as there is a positive impact in shedding light by offering more diverse values and ideologies to certain situations in the media, it can also cause a false reading and a misinformation to the audience. For example, picking another case that fueled #BLM is Alton Sterling’s death. Alton Sterling a 37-year-old black man, was shot several times at close range while held down on the ground by two white Baton Rouge Police Department officers. When observing this case from one standpoint, it is a situation of racist police brutality as evident from video footage he was seen to be held down. Since then, there have been speculations about Sterling being armed with a gun which he apparently attempted to reach in his pocket as the person recording panned away. If this was the case, then the engagement of #BLM and parties against this specific case would be a product of misinformation as some audiences might have been too quick to judge on what plain sight they see it in. This kind of false reading in the media is usually on purpose or by mistake, commonly used to manipulate and support a particular agenda, which in this case is to empower and bring justice to the black community who have been treated unfairly by the law. 

This is a similar approach a Marxist for example would agree with; that new and digital media has actually damaged values and ideologies due to the fact of their belief that institutions have power over the consumption of their audiences. New and digital media has given an alternative method of surveillance to the audience, therefore meaning that the power doesn't necessarily all rely on institutions such as BBC presenting information to the public but the public actually proactively searching and consuming information as individuals. The other negative impacts associated as a result are also false information again. With the lack of gatekeeping, the information being released in the Internet is not certified and mediated, meaning there are increased chances of false information being spread or even the common case of fake news. An example of this was when Russian online news reported of Queen Elizabeth's death, The fake stories claimed the site published but then withdrew a story that the monarch had died. The alleged report on royal.uk was headlined 'Death of Queen Elizabeth II' - but was denied by Buckingham Palace to a leading Russian media outlet. This sort of announcements causes a moral panic among the audience as there is a distortion in what to believe and what not to believe. In some sense, hard news such as death of important figures and celebrities might even become desensitized in the sense that the audience might not take reports seriously. 

On the other hand, the audience certainly have more choice when it comes to choosing what media content they wish to view. That is what a pluralist would argue as they believe audiences are free to select and reject media content which they don’t believe offers them a certain set of values and ideologies. NDM has created a new platform for audiences to select and reject news content; this comes from social media sites, blogs and News institution websites like The Daily mail and The Guardian. Even though choice of news outlets may seem like it has been expanded online, a Marxist would argue against the pluralists perspective of audiences being free as a lot of the companies online like the social media sites are not independently owned but fall under an umbrella of companies, for example Facebook own Instagram; another social media site, and with total combined users reaching over a billion what seems like a platform that offers audiences a more diverse range of values and ideologies actually has a negative impact as the content is both regulated and controlled to the specifications of the parent organisation. This can be better explained with Pareto’s Law and this states that the minority of media producers, produce content for the majority of people, therefore masking the absence of a diverse range of values and ideologies.

Story #70

https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2017/jan/19/popular-newspapers-suffer-greater-circulation-falls-than-qualities

"Popular newspapers suffer greater circulation falls than qualities"

As the article states, the latest set of ABC figures for national newsprint sales may not be too surprising in that they confirm a long-running downward trend in the popular and mid-market sectors. The article describes that The Daily Express for example went from selling an average copy of 391,226 in December 2016, down by 2.3% on the same month, and that the cut-price Daily Star (which boasts every day of being 20p cheaper than the 50p Sun), was down by 2.5% to 440,471. Of course, the online readership have offset the loss of print readers. According to a Newsworks press release, national newspapers jointly enjoyed a 16% year-on-year uplift across digital platforms, giving them a total of 31.5m unique browsers daily across the month of December 2016.

• The Daily Mirror was the largest year-on-year faller, down by 11.7% to an average daily sale of just 716,923 copies.
•  The Sun went down by 10.5% to 1,611,464. 
• The Daily Mail lost 6.7% of it's headline per year
• Daily Star Sunday: 257,790 (-13.2%); Sunday Mirror: 620,861 (-16.3%); Sunday People: 239,364 (-15.1%); Sun on Sunday: 1,383,048 (-5.83%); Sunday Express: 335,271 (-5.6%); and Mail on Sunday: 1,284,121 (-7.34%)