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Print and digital operations are largely integrated, where previously they were physically separate. He also pointed out that as well as regular
recent redundancies at the print centre made headlines as
industrial action was narrowly averted, showing us that the downturn in the newspaper industry is having a serious effect upon The Guardian. Kings Place has been home to The Guardian
since December 2008, and such a recent move means that The Guardian now has an office space ideally suited to the new media environment. Editor Alan Rusbridger, writing at the time of the move, gave an insight into the changes it had brought:
desks with computers ‘there are seven state-of- the-art recording studios and 24 editing desks.’ The Guardian is an online provider of news for a global audience and their new headquarters reflect a new convergence of technology as stories are written simultaneously for print and the website. Podcasts and video reports are also produced for broadcast, and live feed coverage of key events is now common. The way the agenda is set is changing too: morning news conferences can be attended via video- conferencing for Guardian employees not physically present at Kings Place.
Innovation and integration In terms of innovation, The Guardian has
been groundbreaking in many respects. It was the first UK national newspaper to use blogging software, the first to produce podcasts, and, perhaps more radically, the first British newspaper to produce web-first stories (i.e. on the web before being seen in print). It has a reputation for enthusiastically adopting new technologies, which was played upon in its 2009 April Fool article:
Consolidating its position at the cutting edge of new media technology, the Guardian today announces that it will become the first newspaper in the world to be published exclusively via Twitter, the sensationally popular social networking service that has transformed online communication. As production of The Guardian website
and print versions is seamlessly integrated, it becomes difficult to establish where production of one ends and the other begins. And given the wealth of extra content on the website, it is now hard not to see the website as being of primary importance and the print version as a brand-strengthening advert for online services.
The impact of the recession Finding up-to-date figures for the total
number of journalists and editors employed by The Guardian is difficult, though a recent report suggested that this year the editorial staff at Guardian News and Media is shrinking from around 850 to 800 through redundancies. One fear consistently voiced by commentators on the newspaper industry is that the quality of journalism will suffer as production costs are cut and reader-generated content becomes more popular. The rise of citizen journalism has been well documented elsewhere (see page 56), but we can’t ignore their impact on The Guardian and the ambivalent relationship which must now exist between professional journalists and accidental eyewitness reporters. A key story one might explore in this respect is The Guardian’s campaigning investigative coverage of 2009’s G20 protests in London and the death of Ian Tomlinson. The quality of news produced by Guardian
journalists has been examined in Nick Davies’ Flat Earth News. He employed specialist researchers from Cardiff University to analyse stories printed in The Guardian and three other national dailies during two one-week periods. The result? A staggering 60% of these quality-print stories consisted wholly or mainly of wire copy and/or PR material. In other words, press releases or unchecked
stories from agency journalists were forming the bulk of the domestic ‘news’ in print. Of the four papers analysed, The Guardian had the lowest percentage, but it was still more than 50%.9
Davies refers to this ‘copy and paste’
reporting style as churnalism. Is there any wonder that many readers would trust Joe or Joanna Public’s account of an event, over a ‘report’ filed by an overworked and underpaid ‘churnalist’? By the way, there are no hard feelings at The Guardian over Davies’ analysis – The Guardian news desk helped with the research, and Davies continues to be employed as a journalist by The Guardian.
8 MediaMagazine | December 2009 | english and media centre
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