Newspapers: Ownership, Marketing & Distribution, Audience, Regulatory Bodies

Tabloid  - The Sun
Broadsheet - The Independent

Ownership 

• Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev took ownership of The Independent in 2010
• The Sun is owned by News UK who are part of the American mass media conglomerate called 'News Corp'. Rupert Murdoch is the executive chairman.

Marketing and distribution 

The Independent 

• The last printed edition was published March 2016 and now is only available in digital format
• Homepage of website uses pop-up adverts and sponsorship as source of revenue
• Revenue from subscription service, annual or monthly payments
• Twitter account with 2.6mil followers 

The Sun 

• Youtube channel with 77k subscribers 
• TV adverts not focusing on news element 
• Above-the-line billboards 
• Website with pop-up adverts relating to articles 
• Twitter account with 1.4mil followers

Target audience 

The Sun

• C2DE 
• Male
• 35+

The Independent 

• ABC1
• Majority of readers voting Labour 

Regulatory bodies 

IPSO

• Independent press standards organisations 
• Introduced in 2014, replacing the Press Complaints Commission (PCC)
• Regulator of all press (newspaper) and magazine copy 

Decoding papers

Stuart Hall:

• Preferred reading - When the audience responds to the product the way in which media producers want / expect them to.

• Negotiated reading - When a member of the audience partly agrees with part of the product. 

• Oppositional reading - When the audience are in complete disagreement with the products message or setting.

Exam practice 

Explain what the term 'readership' means 

The collective number of readers a publication has.

Analysing the data about 'The Sun' and 'The Daily Mail', describe two differences in terms of their target audience 

The Daily Mail has a higher percentage of ABC1 readers (8.2%) than The Sun (5.9%). This could be due to it being a tabloid and its, thereby alining focus on gossip. 

The Sun has a much higher percentage of readers aged 15-34 (7.3%) than The Daily Mail (2.8%). This could be due to the marketing methods used such as TV adverts.

From your knowledge of demographics, describe and justify the type of content newspapers might have

The Sun would feature content such as celebrity gossip and pop culture references rather than academic writing as their target audience as are C2DE.

The Daily Telegraph features content such as economic news and current affairs as the majority of their readers are ABC1 and ages 35+.