Yr 11 OBSERVER: OPINION & LEADER WRITING

Susannah Rustin, Leader writer, explains the difference between opinion / leader writing and other news content. Pupils should distinguish between different types of content by looking at 'the grammar of newspapers', that is, the who, what why, where.

The LEADER / EDITORIAL 
The Editorial used to be written by the editor but now there is a team of leader writers whose voice tends to follow 'newspaper policy / the party line'. For instance, in The Sun, this will be flagged as "The Sun says" = the Editor's opinion.
Sometimes, the writer of a column is named. There may be several regular columnists, each with a distinct voice and particular interests.
Mary Kenny writes informatively in her advice on how to write a newspaper column. 
She explains why columnists are valued by readers:
"Columnists have increased and proliferated, and today a newspaper like The Times will have three or four regular columnists each day. In one sense, the competition is much greater – the Internet and blogging have opened the floodgates of so much more writing, information and opinion-mongering – and yet, there are also many more opportunities because of all these outlets. I also believe that because there is so much data and information available to us all, there is a constant need for trustworthy analysis. This week, for example, I’d like to read a really well-informed column about what is exactly going on at Davos – not just describing it, but interpreting it intelligently for me, too, from someone who knows their stuff and can analyse the content."

The article contains gems such as this: 
"Yeats’s advice to writers was that that they should learn to “put pictures in their prose”: and I would add to that, that it’s often engaging to tell a story when writing a column. Edward Lucas, who often writes about serious matters touching on Russia and Eastern Europe, was writing recently about the fact that a fifth of the British population is “often” or “always” lonely: he didn’t write a preachy column about this, but he told a poignant little story about an Estonian correspondent who used to write to him regularly. When the letters stopped coming, Lucas learned that his pen-pal had died, and that no one attended his cremation: how he regretted he hadn’t made more of an effort to befriend the older man, whose life had been intertwined with the bleak history of his country."

Yr 11 THE OBSERVER: OPEN JOURNALISM

Introduction to The Guardian / Observer's Open Journalism
What is 'open journalism'?

Watch the video and decide what you think it is saying about 'open journalism'.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/video/2012/feb/29/open-journalism-three-little-pigs-advert

Many of the 'focus' articles investigate important issues at greater length than a news article can do. For example, The Guardian / Observer writes regularly on modern slavery, as in this article about children being exploited. Look at the article and decide if you think it is important for journalists to tell us about this.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/video/2012/feb/29/open-journalism-three-little-pigs-advert

Yr 11 OBSERVER: FEATURES

The Observer: features https://www.theguardian.com/observer

The arts editor of The Guardian, Sarah Donaldson, tells us the difference between features and news in a newspaper.

• Features differ from news in content, length and style. Features are longer, more reflective and analytical. They often analyse trends.
• Feature writers are 'more stylish' as they have more room to consider style, whereas news articles bunch all information into the first paragraph.
• Feature writers can reveal more personality, for instance, Carole Cadwalladr breaking the Cambridge Analytica scandal in an interview with whistleblower Christopher Wylie. 
• Features and news work side by side, with a feature writer able to investigate in more depth, such as Shahmir Sanni revealing the law-breaking in the Vote Leave campaign.
• Features are the ‘brains’ of the newspaper. They are wide-ranging and their subject matter can be politics, arts, culture, fashion, film, entertainment, beauty. The magazine is the ‘heart’ of the newspaper and its style is more visual, with more photographs.
• The Observer’s FOCUS section on Sunday mixes light and dark. It offers the chance to ‘reflect’ and mixes in lighter reading matter, such as on leisure and lifestyle with politics and crime. 
• Comparing news stories and features - try these on the solar eclipse in north America - here’s a news story and a feature on the same subject.

PREP Open the link to Carole Cadwalladr's Cambridge Analytica article that is linked above. In a post entitled OBSERVER: FUNDING explain what you found at the base of the article and what The Guardian /Observer invites you to do, and why. Link it to what you learned in your last prep. 

For your second paragraph, research other ways that the newspaper is funded by reading page 5 of the green guide - the section on funding - and describe them in your own words.

(10 marks).

Yr 11 OBSERVER: OWNERSHIP & CONTROL

The following lessons come straight from The Guardian / Observer newspaper itself, with thanks to the Education Centre who let us learn from its team of editors, reporters, opinion and leader writers and analysts.

INDUSTRY BACKGROUND Newspapers are a means of gaining political and social influence through what they tell their readers. Unlike most other newspapers which are controlled by rich individuals, The Guardian and The Observer are now owned by The Scott Trust which was set up in 1936. Therefore they are guaranteed freedom and independence. The Observer was bought by The Guardian Media Group in 1993 and operates out of the same building in King's Cross, London, but is only published on Sundays and is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.

Before this, various people owned The Observer and it was a successful publication with a reputation for independence. However, it faced competition in an already crowded Sunday marketplace when The Independent was launched and this eventually led to its joining a natural ally in The Guardian.

Thus The Observer has been able to maintain its editorial independence, ensuring the continuation of the paper’s long-standing tradition of liberal politics and independent journalism.

The Observer has continued its reputation for setting, rather than following the news agenda, breaking stories including exposing the cash-for-access scandal dubbed Lobbygate, and leading the way in covering of issues like GM foods and cloning.

Roger Alton, editor 1998-2007, defined the paper’s stance in the context of a long and varied history: “The Observer is Britain’s oldest Sunday newspaper and it has been making mischief, poking its nose where it shouldn’t and reporting the best in arts, culture, politics, sport, business and skulduggery for over two hundred years. We aim to keep it that way and maintain its position as Britain’s most exciting Sunday newspaper.”

On 8 January 2006 The Observer relaunched in a Berliner format becoming the UK’s only full colour Sunday newspaper, and in 2007 The Observer was named national newspaper of the year at the British Press Awards.

Following a series of discussions concerning the role of a Sunday paper in an age when newspapers have radically changed, a redesigned Observer was launched in February 2010. The paper is now published as a four-section paper - News, Sport, the Observer Magazine and our New Review section, plus our monthly Observer Food magazine.

In June 2011 Guardian News & Media (GNM), publisher of the Guardian and Observer newspapers, announced plans to become a digital-first organisation, placing open journalism on the web at the heart of its strategy. Since the launch of the strategy The Observer has been made available on a range of new digital platforms including the iPad and Kindle.

In January 2018, a redesigned Observer website was launched to tie in with the new tabloid Guardian. The first tabloid Observer was published on 21 January. In the same month Paul Webster succeeded John Mulholland as editor.

PREP Re-read both this post and the section in the green guide on INDUSTRY (pages 6 and 7).
Read the OCR guide here - open the pdf link
Write a blog post entitled OBSERVER: OWNERSHIP & CONTROL that explains The Observer's industry background and what makes its position in the marketplace distinctive. About 6 paragraphs, worth 10 marks.