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.
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.
