Canada readers revolt against right-wing press

Could this be a sign of a future issue for the British press? The left-wing (relatively!) opposition have just won an election despite the Press overwhelmingly urging support for the right-wing incumbents. It's been clear that this direction has been ordered by the owners.

The public outpouring of anger and disillusionment on social media does not augur well for the prospects of the printed press.

First past the post may frustrate the prospects of Corbyn's more socialist Labour and potential allies such as the Greens who (like UKIP, and the Lib Dems to a degree) gained millions of votes but minimal seats, but there certainly seems a surge of radicalism amongst the young at least - a readership that the press are failing to attract.

Whether we see anything like this in the UK or not, the article is an interesting, clear summary of how another major press (mal)functions.

Election deals blow to Canada’s dominant press group.

DIGITISATION OWNERSHIP Preston on online polls opposing non-dom owners

In short, [there] is no single, ideal model of press ownership anywhere in the world, particularly in an era of profound flux. Any prospective government policy is going to be out of date before it’s sealed: see the way Leveson couldn’t cope with online.

Preston raises an opinion poll that shows overwhelming support for tougher media regulation, specifically restricting the right of non-doms to own British media. Whilst acknowledging the principle behind this, he questions whether this sentiment has any meaning given the globalisation that digitisation has brought about.

He starts:

PRESS + DIGITISATION Thomas Jefferson quote

Great article on a photojournalist's chronicling of the stark decline of journalism as a profession; the focus is on the US (Philadelphia Enquirer) but there is sadly common ground with the UK. I also tackle the term 'disruption' later in this post, a useful one in the context of web 2.0, digitisation, UGC and suchlike...:

Steacy's artfully expressed study captures impact of digitisation

In the past decade, as a percentage, more print journalists have lost their jobs than workers in any other significant American industry. (That bad news is felt just as keenly in Britain where a third of editorial jobs in newspapers have been lost since 2001.)
...
The reasons for this decline are familiar – the abrupt shift from print to pixels, the exponential rise in alternative sources of information, changes in lifestyle and reading habits, and, above all, the disastrous collapse of the city paper’s lifeblood – classified advertising – with the emergence of websites such as Craigslist and Gumtree. The implications are less often noted.
Stephan Salisbury, a prize-winning culture writer at the Philadelphia Inquirer for the past 36 years, puts them like this: “Newspapers stitch people together, weaving community with threads of information, and literally standing physically on the street, reminding people where they are and what they need to know. What happens to a community when community no longer matters and when information is simply an opportunity for niche marketing and branding in virtual space? Who covers the mayor? City council? Executive agencies? Courts?… It is this unravelling of our civic fabric that is the most grievous result of the decline of our newspapers. And it is the ordinary people struggling in the city who have lost the most, knowing less and less about where they are – even as the amount of information bombarding them grows daily at an astounding rate.”

Here's the quote the post title refers to; one you could quote possibly memorise as a great way of developing the basic point that a 'free press' are the cornerstone of our democracy (or, at least, our democratic theory!) ...

DIGITISATION: Comparing print circulation with online users

We've been raising and discussing this point frequently recently, so lets pin it down with some precise figures.
The total combined circulation of UK daily national papers in Jan 2015 was just over 7m; for Sunday nationals it was 6.4m (Greenslade report). NB: these are ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulation) figures; an independent body whose figures govern what advertisers pay. Most of their content is locked behind a paywall; the Guardian maintains a microsite for ABC-related articles.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations (UK) or ABC was founded on 14 October 1931 by the ISBA (Society of British Advertisers) to provide an independent verification of circulation/data figures to facilitate the buying and selling of advertising space within UK national newspapers. [Wiki]

Table from Press Gazette. 'Bulks' means copies given away free/heavily discounted (hotels etc)

YouGov profile newspaper readerships + other media

Conal cites this in his vodcast.

With thanks to Conal (who spotted this through Twitter and Instagram accounts/feeds linked to his joint Lady Gaga production before I heard about it through reading the Guardian report the next day!), here's a really useful resource for quickly getting a grasp of the difference between newspaper readerships.

Magazine + newspaper publishers' audience profiles are more accurate (advertisers need to know who they're paying to target!), if not always so detailed as this, but the YouGov data, which takes in some major artists as well as covering a variety of media (such as newspaper readerships), is certainly worth a look.

Scottish press ... isn't Scottish?!

Interesting tale of censorship and of media ownership issues:

A controversial advert on the Glasgow underground system which attacked the Scottish media has been taken down for breaching political neutrality rules.
Strathclyde Passenger Transport said the advert for the Wings over Scotland website contravened its rules forbidding ads of a political nature and, on Tuesday night, ordered them to be removed by its advertising contractor Primesight.
The site, run from Bath by blogger Stuart Campbell, had bought 41 subway carriage poster sites for an ad claiming there were 37 "national or daily" newspapers in Scotland, with only five Scottish-owned and none of them supporting independence.
Its concluding line read: "Wouldn't you at least like to hear both sides of the story?"

Read the full story here.

PressReg revision session

The following doesn't reflect what we covered; used this as a launching pad for more detailed discussions, including on linking/comparing TV/press regulation, and touched on several recent cases/pronouncements (all covered in recent blog posts, and/or previous packs/posts) - if you can, I recommend you borrow notes from one of those who were here.
TV reg tomorrow, tho again I'll seek to make links across the two
Press Reg