Journalism

Journalism is the gathering of information related to new to an audience. Journalism can be published
in a variety of ways from newspapers to online websites and applications.
Some major journalism companies are:

Sky
BBC
ITV
The Daily Mail
The Guardian
SourceFed
BuzzFeed
DeFranco Inc.

Vertical Integration
Vertical Integration is where the supply chain of a company is owned by that company. Vertical
Integration is a great method of avoiding hold-up. It is a highly important strategy but can be difficult
to pull off successfully and when it fails, costly to repair.
Example of a corporation that does this is: http://www.britannica.com/topic/Thomson-Corporation

Horizontal Integration
Horizontal Integration is a business strategy where a company creates or gets production units for
outputs which are either complementary or competitive. Horizontal alliances is related to Horizontal
integration however alliances set up contracts but remain independent.

Conglomerate
A conglomerate is a combination of two or more corporations usually of different businesses. This
normally involves a parent company. It is often a multi-industry company and they tend to be large
and multinational. For example the BBC owns a lot of media in the UK and control a lot of news.
This is also an example of cross media ownership.

Multinationals
Most journalism companies have offices across the world. This means the company can get the latest
news from across the globe without having to send out individuals to a potential story. However some
smaller, mostly online only companies such as SourceFed only have one office in a central hub city,
such as LA. This is because they do not earn enough money themselves to have multinational offices
and rely a lot on other journalism companies to get their news. Multinationals in journalism are
important when you want the news before anybody else because as explained before it allows you to
get to the news anywhere of Earth first.

Private Ownership
Otherwise known as a privately held company or close corporation, they are small businesses owned
by either a non-governmental organization or by a small number of shareholders / company members.
You cannot buy stock in these companies.

Not many large journalism companies are owned privately however The Guardian (Guardian Media
Group) are. Most small online companies however are such as SourceFed and DeFranco Inc.

Independents
Most journalism companies are not independent. This is because other companies tend to buy up other
small ones to increase profits. Only small journalism companies are independent. The Wokingham
paper was independent but is no longer after being bought recently. Local newsletters that are posted
are great examples of independents.

Cross-media Regulation
The regulation regulates how much control companies have over different sectors. In the UK, the
media ownership is capped at 20% of total circulation. If a company owned more that 20% then
businesses owned by that company would use a similar view which equals less diversity and higher
chance of biased views.
Cross-media marketing is a type of cross-promotion where promotional companies use extra
appealing techniques of advertisement. This method is usually extremely successful because the
marketing increases the adverts profits. In journalism this can be promoting their website or
newspaper online or on television adverts. (http://www.data-dynamix.com/cross-media-marketing)

Share of ownership
Share of ownership is simply companies shared by others. A great example is www.localworld.co.uk
who have companies such as Nottingham Post, Bristol Post Online and Leicester Mercury. This form
of ownership is growing as companies tend to be more competitive, successful and profitable under
this type of ownership. Due to the fact these businesses run openly, the business tends to be more
involved and liked by communities they run in. On average in the UK 8 out of 10 FTSE companies
are shared ownership companies. (http://www.esopcentre.com/employee-share-ownership-anintroduction/)

Mergers and takeovers

A takeover is simply the purchase of one targeted company by another acquiring or bidding company.
In the United Kingdom it refers to a public company who have shares listed on a stock exchange.
There are four types of takeovers, Backflip takeovers, hostile takeovers, reverse takeovers and
friendly takeovers.
Backflip takeovers is when the acquiring company turns into a daughter/subsidiary company. This
type of takeover can occur when a larger but less well-known company buys a struggling company
with a well-known brand. An example of this happening is NationsBank takeover of the Bank of
America but adopting Bank of Americas name. In journalism this type of takeover is almost nonexistent.
Reverse takeovers is where a private company buys a public company done at the investigation of a
large private company. In the United Kingdom a reverse take-over is a twelve month period where the
company changes fundamentally in its board, business and voting and in case of an invested company,
their departure. This form of takeover rarely happens is journalism.
Hostile takeovers allow for bidding of the company by target companies. It is considered hostile once
the original bid is rejected and more bids are still received. These types of takeovers are often done
privately and the public are not normally able to see the failed bids and other business, only the final
bid once it is accepted and sometimes even then it is not released to the public.

Friendly takeovers are approved by the companys management before a bidder makes an offer for
another company. Usually the companies are closely connected to each other in some way. In the UK
the concept of takeovers always involve the acquisition of a public company. An example a friendly
takeover in journalism is The Trinity Mirrors takeover of Local world for about 73million.
(www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/05/mergervstakeover.asp)
Merges are different from a takeover, however similar. Merges combine itself with another. These
require a mutual decision from both companies. A takeover is different because this is normally
through the purchase of a smaller or larger company where the two companies are unequal.
(http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/05/mergervstakeover.asp)
An example of a takeover is when Google took over YouTube. What this did was allow Google to
expand from their original word searches to word and video searches through YouTube. Merges and
takeovers give external growth towards the original company because they money earnt is not within
the original company.

Cross-media regulation
This is the ownership of multiple media businesses by either a person or a corporation. This includes
broadcast, cable television, film, radio, newspaper, magazine, book publishing, video games and
online entities around the world. Rupert Murdock owns Fox network which is also a contributor to
The Sun newspaper. This is an example of cross-media regulation in journalism because the forms of
journalism are across different medias. (Television and newspaper)
(www.stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/consultations.morr/summary)

Sources of Income
Journalism takes income from advertisements, especially newspapers, online media and television
shows. The money paid for the newspaper for example if any at all is usually to cover the printing
cost. The profits are from the advertisements from companies in the newspaper. The adverts are more
expensive the larger the advertisement size. (http://www.journalism.org/2014/03/26/revenue-sourcesa-heavy-dependence-on-advertising/)

Product diversity
Product diversity is the process of expanding opportunities in business by doing additional market
potential of existing products. Diversification can be achieved by going into additional markets or/and
pricing strategies. In journalism diversity is very apparent for example there are different types of
newspapers; tabloids and informative for example.
(www.businessdictionary.com/definition.product-diversifcation.html)

Profitability of Product Range

A lot of journalism companies are owned by other companies. Sky own numerous other profitable
subdivisions such as sky sports, sky news and etc. These channels and divisions are a lot more
profitable than things such as newspapers. Companies try to make their product range as wide as
possible so they can earn more profits. Examples of this are merchandise, games and shows. The
profitability of the product range is how much money the range will make. An example is that big
franchises will be profitable with smaller newspaper companies whilst also earning money from their
bigger newspapers. Newspapers earn their product range most through advertisements in their
newspapers. Normally the purchase of a newspaper covers the printing cost and most profits are
earned through advertising. Therefore newspapers are reliant of companies needing to advertise their
products in their newspapers otherwise income stops generating for that newspaper.

Organisational objectives
The objectives of organisations differ per organisation. Usually it is to earn money and to continue to
grow their organisation. However lower companies who are not as big may do it because they actually
have a passion for spreading news but without money their company cannot continue to grow.
Therefore in the end the main objective is to earn money. Journalistic companies always want to grow
their audience in that area. For example if you are The Wokingham Paper you want to be the most
popular paper in Wokingham or the most popular paper about Wokingham news. This is also an
example of competition between papers and companies.

Competitors
Competition in journalism is very apparent. Different news sources, papers, television shows and
channels all fight for the latest news and the most viewership constantly. This is why the largest
organisations tend to have reporting offices across the globe, so they can get to the news as soon as
possible before any other company. This makes sense because whoever has the news first is most
likely to get the most viewers as it would be the only source online where the information can be
found.

Customers
People who consume journalism come in all ages and genders. Almost everybody consumes some
form of journalism. Humans as a species crave information
(https://ww.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-brain-work/200910/hunger-certainty) and to be up to date
with what is happening. Some people have a preference obviously to what they wish to know about,
be that gaming, world news, politics or music however there is a news source for almost everything
and therefore an extremely larger audience for journalism

National and global competition and trends

Journalism lacks trends as it is what reports on trends. It does however follow a similar business
model to other companies which as explained above is that if you are a large organisation who are
trying to get news as fast as possible you must have reporters and investigators all across the world so
you can get the news first and report on it before competitors. This is global competition, from BBC
to FOX news all are in competition to get the news out first and have exclusive information before
anybody else.

Licenses and Franchises

Licensing and Franchising is a big thing in the journalism industry. Especially with big companies
like The Guardian. Licensing and Franchising are two ways which a small company can grow and
make their business bigger. Franchising gives permission to use things in a licence but also systems

and campaigns by franchisors. An example of this is The

Guardians logo. Licencing is a contract that allows once
company to grant another permission to use what is
licensed. The Syndication to the left shows the contract
needed to be signed and submitted to use an article written
by the guardian.