Newspapers: The Guardian newspaper and website CSP

 The Guardian CSP: Blog tasks

Work through the following tasks to complete your case study on the Guardian newspaper and website. 

The Guardian newspaper and website analysis

Use your own purchased copy plus the notable front pages above to answer the following questions - bullet points/note form is fine. 

1) What are the most significant front page headlines seen in the Guardian in recent years?

2) Ideology and audience: What ideologies are present in the Guardian? Is the audience positioned to respond to stories in a certain way?

3) How do the Guardian editions/stories you have studied reflect British culture and society?

Now visit the Guardian newspaper website and look at a few stories before answering these questions:

1) What are the top stories? Are they examples of soft news or hard news? 

2) To what extent do the stories you have found on the website reflect the values and ideologies of the Guardian?

3) Think about audience appeal and gratifications: what would an audience enjoy about the Guardian newspaper website?

The Guardian newspaper Factsheet

Read Media Factsheet #257 The Guardian Newspaper. You can access it from our Media Factsheet archive on the Media Shared drive or download it here via Google using your school login details. Answer the following questions:

1) Who owns the Guardian and what is their ownership designed to achieve? 

2) How is the Guardian regulated? Note its very unusual regulatory approach and give examples where you can. 

3) Pick out some key statistics on the Guardian's audience (see beginning of page 2).

4) What are the institutional values of the Guardian? What does it stand for?   

5) How is the Guardian's international audience described? See the end of page 2 and pick out some more useful statistics here about their audience .

6) Now look at page 3 of the factsheet and the Guardian online. Select a few examples of the different sections of the website and copy them here. 

7) What different international editions of the Guardian's website are available and what example stories are provided as examples of this?

8) What is the Guardian's funding model? Do you think it is sustainable? 

9) What is the Cotton Capital Commission and how does it link to the Guardian's values and ideologies?

10) What audience and industry theories could be applied to the Guardian? How? 

Media Magazine articles

Media Magazine has two excellent features on our newspaper CSPs - a focus on Guardian front pages and a comparison of how the Guardian and Daily Mail cover the same story in different ways. You need to read both articles - MM78 (page 12) and MM87 (page 20) - our Media Magazine archive is here. Answer the following questions:

MM78 - The Guardian

1) What are the Pandora Papers and how does the story fit with the Guardian's ethos, values and ideologies?  

2) Pick out all the key statistics and quotes from the section on the Guardian's funding model. In particular, the fall in paper readership, the rise in digital readership and the number of contributors  paying to support the journalism. 

3) What does it mean when it says the Guardian frames regular payments from readers as a "philanthropic act". 

4) What is the Scott Trust and do you think it is a sustainable model for newspaper ownership in the future? 

5) Why is the Guardian criticised as hypocritical? Give some specific examples here.

MM87 - The Daily Mail and the Guardian front page analysis

1) What are the stories featured on the Guardian and Daily Mail on November 10, 2023? 

2) How do they reflect the values and ideologies of the two newspapers?

3) Why does the writer suggest the front-page images on both papers might be exploitative? Do you agree? 

4) What else does the writer suggest regarding the Daily Mail's front-page image of murdered teacher Ashling Murphy? 

5) How does the rest of the Guardian's front page (features on Yoko Ono and Todd Haynes) reflect the values and ideologies of Guardian readers?    

A/A* extension tasks

Look at the Guardian Media Kit in more detail. What do you notice about the Guardian's audience compared to other newspaper brands? What is a 'typical Guardian reader'? 

Take on the tasks at the end of the Guardian factsheet, including the exam question: “Media audiences do not simply consume media content anymore.” Focusing on the newspapers you have studied, to

what extent do you agree with this statement?

You could also read this column from the Conversation website. It's a few years old but covers the ideological differences between the Guardian and Daily Mail very well.