1) Research News Corporation’s response to the growth of new and digital media by listing each of the institution’s brands (Sky News, Times etc.) Have any closed, changed or been in the news in the last 10 years for any reason?
The Sun
The Times
Sunday Times
Sky News
Press Association
Foxtel
New York Post
Wall Street Journal
The Sun has probably had the most news coverage due to abolishing their paywall. As they weren't gaining enough revenue from the paywall, The Sun came to a decision to scrap the paywall.
2) Develop examples of the impact that new and digital media has had on News Corp’s brands (paywalls, readership figures, audience share etc.)
New and digital media has had a massive impact on News Corp's brands with the most prominent being the impact it has had on the Sun. Rupert Murdoch instated the paywall as he had a strong belief that the public would be willing to pay a subscription fee to access their news. However, as many other news institutions found alternative ways to generate money such as using adverts on their sites, these institutions were able to provide free news, which is much more appealing to the audience. Although the Sun initially had great readership figures, these figures drastically dropped as the audience changed to free news providers. This has caused the Sun to follow in their footsteps by choosing to get rid of their paywall and rely on advertisement revenue. By being reintroduced as a free news provider, the Sun is now contemplating on how to change in order to be more appealing to the audience.
3) Why and with what success are traditional media institutions adapting to the challenge posed by new/digital media?
With the great success of new/digital media, traditional news institutions are required to adapt and alter their conventional means of distributing news if they would want any chance of remaining in the news industry. Especially as more an more people choosing to access their news on convenient platforms such as the internet which can be accessed easily on smart phones, less people embrace the TV, radio and print forms of the news. By making their content accessible on the more popular platform of e-media, the audience will be more inclined to view these traditional media institution's content online. Especially as many of the traditional media institutions having prominent branding, it would not be too difficult to gain an audience online.
However, with sites such as Google, monopolizing many of the advertising opportunities, it can be still rather difficult for traditional media institutions to generate a substantial revenue in order to keep them running and it may be better to remain as a traditional media institution in order to provide for the proportion of people who are part of the digital divide. As they don't have access to new and digital media, they rely on traditional media to keep them informed on what is happening around the world.
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