power without responsibility (jn 500) the business of news case study: wapping

Power Without Responsibility (JN 500)

The Business of NewsCase study: Wapping

Lecture Outline

1. Political Economy of the Media

2. Technology, business and journalism

3. Advertising and journalism

4. Case study: Wapping


Political Economy focuses on the production, distribution, exchange and consumption of wealth and the consequences for the welfare of individuals and society.

Political Economy is the study of social relations, particularly power relations, which mutually constitute the production, distribution and consumption of resources. As the term suggests, it examines the connections between the political and the economic.


What has that got to do with journalism and the media?

“The mass media are first and foremost industrial and commercial organizations which produce and distribute commodities” (Golding and Murdock).


Media and cultural industries are similar to and different from other industries. They are similar because they sell commodities – they write news stories, make programmes that constitute a product which they sell to us, the audience. However, and more importantly, they also sell us, they sell audiences to advertisers. Alternatively, they are also different from other industries because their products have such important democratic ramifications.


“Of course, it almost goes without saying that the world view of the large, highly diversified media institutions and that of big business are sufficiently equivalent that it is pointless to accuse the media of bias towards business: they are business” (Turner 1994, p. 29, author’s italics).

Economic forces impact on journalism in two ways: 1. the production of journalism is largely the business of an industry; and 2. journalism is also a commodity (McNair).


Newspapers are material commodities made out of raw materials (paper and ink) using technology and labour, and distributed by a massive transport operation (Bonney & Wilson 1983, p. 96).

News as commodity: the practice of gathering and packaging information as a product for distribution to readers and viewers, whose attention (and patronage) is then sold to advertisers for profit (Bettig and Hall).

News services are ‘branded’ entities.


The business of journalism has always been linked to use and exploitation of technologies: the printing press was integral to the early capitalist economy and nation-states.

19th C and early 20th C journalism influenced by telegraph (timeliness, short and standardised, inverted pyramid story structure) and photography (visual appeal for emerging consumer/audience).

Now, convergent journalism and globalization of world economy linked to digitalisation.


Introduction of commercial competition into television in 1955 not only enabled realisation of the potential of the medium of television but it also prompted newspaper innovation to remain competitive – e.g.: introduction of free colour magazines in broadsheet Sunday newspapers in early 1960s. Although Picture Post and national daily newspapers such as News Chronicle and Daily Herald closed down partly because they were unable to attract sufficient advertising.


Contradictory influences of technology in the news media industry, uneven experiences at workplace level:

Technology has improved the physical presentation of news – e.g.: computer graphics.

Technology also makes redundant whole classes of activities: e.g.: loss of typesetters. New technologies can also allow greater control of management over newsroom workforce and exploit journalistic labour: e.g. multi-skilling associated with convergent journalism.


Fairfax company in Australia recently announced it was getting rid of its sub-editors and requiring journalists to do sub-editors work:

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/oct/16/fairfax-media-to-get-rid-of-subeditors-and-photographers-at-regional-papers

In the United States: ‘daily papers cut their newsrooms by 11% in 2008, the biggest one-year drop since 1978 … [and] nearly 10,000 journalists were laid-off or took buyouts in the first five months of 2009 alone’ (Kirchoff 2011, 32).






NUJ Commission on multi-skilling found that 75% of respondents felt that cross-media integration led to increased workloads with 37% claiming that journalists were now working longer hours. Less than 25% of NUJ branches responded that their members had received additional pay for integrated working (Freedman 2010, p. 41).

Greater levels of ‘churnalism’ – rapid repackaging of unchecked material, largely from PR and news agency sources.


Influence of technology on labour and output is not to advocate a position of technological determinism that maintains a ‘straightforward link between technical possibilities and their implementation’. Other factors such as politics, institutional structures, cultural values, etc. also determine influence of technology.


The news media derive significant revenues from advertising. Thus the sources from which we gain much of our knowledge about the world around us are beholden to companies with a vested interest in how that world is (or is not) represented (Bettig and Hall).

Advertisers determine the structure of media industries simply by choosing where to spend their money. They support media outlets that reach the right demographic groups, audiences that consumer the most.


Advertisers exert direct (cancellation of contracts, advertorials) and indirect (promotion of softer, lifestyle news) influence over news media content.

Most business reportage, while sometimes critical of individual companies, is fundamentally ‘pro-business’.


2013 UK advertising expenditure:

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/jul/09/advertising-spend-increase-2013-4bn





Pre Wapping:

Post-war restrictions on paper continued until 1955 – keeping printing and paper costs low and advertising space at a premium. Journalism, as a labour intensive industry, also had high production costs. Introduction of new printing technologies and cuts in staffing levels was initially held back by print unions (Conboy 2011, p 93).

The daily print process meant printing trade unions had a lot of power over management who were unwilling to risk losing the sales and advertising revenue caused by missing an edition (Temple 2008, p. 74).


In 1978 Thomson newspapers took on unions over perceived overmanning, restrictive practices, and refusal to accept introduction of new technologies. Thomson suspended publication of The Times and Sunday Times, but unionists held out and refused to accept change. The papers were closed for 11 months at a cost to the company of £40 million (Temple 2008, p.74).

This prompted Thomson to sell newspapers to Murdoch in 1981.


Wapping move facilitated by anti-trade union political climate fostered by Thatcher government – 1984 Trade Union Act restricted picketing to own place of work, limited numbers, and no secondary strikes allowed.


In January 1986 Murdoch moved production and distribution operations for his newspapers from site off Fleet Street to new purpose-built facility in Docklands area of East London. Relocation occurred without consultation with printers, journalists or unions. The main union in the dispute was the Society of Graphic and Allied Trades (SOGAT). Murdoch drafted in members of the more moderate Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union (EEPTU) to man the new presses. Most of Murdoch’s journalists ignored the plea of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) not to relocate to Wapping.


The move to Wapping prompted a protracted strike involving thousands of unionists. An average 1000 police officers were on duty for each of the first 300 days of the picketing of what became known as “Fortress Wapping” (Temple 2008, p. 78).


The strike ended in February 1987 after strikers endured a year without work or pay.


Move allowed journalists to input copy directly onto a computer screen and allow subeditors and page editors to compose pages on screen (Conboy 2011, p. 93).

“Computer-based typesetting replaced the linotype production which had necessitated skilled and experienced printers, and allowed for the immediate dismissal of 5,000 of them, which lowered costs, promised less interference in production, increased profits and quickly led to a more supine workforce of journalists on what were often referred to as individually negotiated contracts” (Conboy 2011, p.94).


Wapping revolution paved way for extra pagination, additional sections and inserts and easier incorporation of colour printing.

Combined with more buoyant advertising markets, it also allowed for more lifestyle and consumer sections and greater cross-fertilisation with entertainment industries (e.g. sport, fashion and motoring) (Conboy 2011, p. 95).


End of era occurred in 2012 when News International sold the Wapping site:

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/may/30/news-international-sells-wapping-site-150m




References

Bettig, R.V. and Hall, J.L 2003, Big Media, Big Money: Cultural Texts and Political Economics, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham.

Bonney, B & Wilson, H 1983, Australia’s Commercial Media, Macmillan, South Melbourne.

Conboy, M 2011, ‘Technology and Journalism’, Journalism in Britain: a historical introduction, Sage, Los Angeles.

Freedman, D 2010, ‘The Political Economy of the ‘New’ News Environment’, in N Fenton (ed.), New Media, Old News: Journalism & Democracy in the Digital Age, Sage, London.

Golding, P. & Murdoch, G 1991, ‘Culture, Communications and Political Economy’ in Curran, J & Gurevitch, M (eds.) Mass Media and Society, Edward Arnold, London.

Kirchoff, S. M. 2011, ‘The U.S. Newspaper Industry in Transition’, Journal of Current Issues in Media and Telecommunications, vol. 2, issue 1, pp. 27-51.

McNair, B 1998, The Sociology of Journalism, Arnold, London.

Temple, M 1996, ‘New technology: Wapping and beyond’, The British Press, Open University Press, Maidenhead.

Turner, G. 1994, Making it National, Allen & Unwin, Sydney.

power without responsibility (jn 500) the business of news case study: wapping

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