1 . On January 15^th, the Guardian showed off its new, smaller look, shifting from its distinctive “Berliner” format to a tabloid(娱乐小报) shape with a redesigned logo in black type. But the more dramatic makeover is of the financial books of Guardian Media Group (GMG), publisher of the Sunday Observer and the daily Guardian, which may find its new operation in the black next financial year. A newspaper business that two years ago was threatened with existentially worrying losses appears on the edge of breaking even.

The turnaround is partly due to steep cost-cutting, which is a dog-bites-man story in journalism. But the Guardian would manage the achievement while still giving away news free online, and that is a story worth telling.

In January 2016 David Pemsel, the new chief executive of GMG, and Katharine Viner, the new editor-in-chief of the Guardian, informed staff that GMG’s endowment fund, meant to ensure the financial security of the paper in the long run, had lost £100m ($140m) in just half a year, taking it to £740m. Mr Pemsel was advised by industry peers to cut costs and put online news behind a paywall. He and Ms Viner cut costs by 20%, or more than £50m. Alan Rusbridger, Ms Viner’s predecessor(前任), had led the newspaper to global relevance with a large online readership. But he spent without thinking of the consequences. In two years GMG has reduced its employees by 400, to about 1,500.

Yet unlike a growing number of newspapers, the Guardian has not put up a paywall. Instead it has pursued a membership model, asking online readers to contribute whatever they like. About 600,000 now do, with annual payments or one-off amounts. American readers tend to choose the latter option, Ms Viner says. GMG says the total figure amounts to tens of millions of pounds per year. Ms Viner says revenue from readers (including 200,000 print subscribers) is now greater than revenue from advertisers.

The result is steadily declining operating losses: from £69m two years ago to £45m last financial year and, Mr Pemsel says, less than £25m in the year that ends on April 1^st. He predicts breaking even next year. Giving up its own printing presses and going tabloid will help, saving several million pounds a year. The Guardian may now physically look more like its peers, but its turnaround story remains distinctive.

2 . The culture of newspaper reading in the United Kingdom started in the19th century. The number of the newspapers circulated daily peaked during the early 21st century. Here are four well-known ones.

The Sun

The Sun is a popular newspaper, which was established in 1964 and bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News International Company in 1969. It is filled with the jokes about heads of state and major events both inside and outside Britain such as mayor’s trousers not being tied properly, politicians sleeping during conferences and so on. Its lively and popular style just meets the taste of the lower classes. The majority of The Sun’s readers are in the age group of 15-34 years. Now its annual circulation has reached 23,100,000 copies.

Metro

Metro is a free tabloid (小报) newspaper distributed from Monday to Friday, which was established in 1999. Metro is published by NMG group and is distributed throughout the United Kingdom. It has gained popularity over time and also has a digital platform. The features section covers a variety of articles including lifestyle, home, science, and health. This variety of content attracts readers from various walks of life.

Daily Mail

Daily Mail, compared to The Sun, is a little more serious. It was established in 1896. Reading Daily Mail can not only understand major political and economic events, but also read some relaxing and helpful contents. Well-known for female favorite topics, it is extremely popular with middle-class housewives.

The Guardian

The Guardian is a British daily newspaper that was founded in 1821 in London, UK. The Guardian receives average daily readers of about 1.03 million with 126,879 in daily newspapers circulated. The paper focuses on politics, policy, business, and international relations. Their coverage includes News and Opinion, Sports, Culture, Lifestyle, Podcasts, and more.

3 . Mass communication is a very broad field which includes advertising, mass promotion, political campaigns, public relations, mass education and even the way you interact with other people. It covers just about everything you do in your daily life. Some characteristics of mass communication are: communication, information overload, group effort and feedback. There are some more that are less often mentioned but are just as important as the ones that have been listed above.

The most basic feature of communication is interaction. Interaction takes the form of communication where you can interpret what someone is trying to say. For example, when a person says “How are you?” and you respond in a loud voice or in a concerned manner, it’s considered interaction.

Another characteristic of mass communication that you’ll come across is a large number of receivers. When communicating with a group of people, it is important to keep in mind that each receiver will bring different characteristics to the table when communicating. Different receivers will take up different topics and bring a different set of characteristics to the table. In some cases, you will need to communicate with many different types of receiver in order for your communication ideas to be fully expressed and taken into full effect. You should therefore consider the characteristics of your receivers when planning your communication strategies.

New media is also impacting communication. Each type of new medium has diverse different ways in which it can deliver messages. You can make use of several types of communication in many cases and reach a wide range of target audiences. For example, you can use the Internet in order to communicate with your audience. As a result, the amount of information also in turn becomes too much for the human mind to process in a timely and effective manner. This overload is not only unsound, but it also tends to make people impatient, which finally takes the form of arguments and other types of exchanges that are based on facts, assumptions or personal experiences. However, although you may have to deal with some constraints, the Internet is still a very powerful tool that should not be ignored.

5 . Readers have never had it so good. But publishers need to adapt better to the digital world.

During the next few weeks publishers will release a great number of books, pile them onto delivery lorries and fight to get them on the display tables of bookshops in the run-up to Christmas. It is an impressive display of competitive commercial activity. It is also increasingly pointless.

More quickly than almost anyone predicted, e-books are becoming popular quickly. Amazon, the biggest e-book retailer( 零售商), has lowered the price of its Kindle — e-readers to the point where people do not fear to take them to the beach. In America, the most advanced market, about one-fifth of the largest publishers’ sales are of e-books.

For readers, this is excellent. Amazon has successfully shortened distance by bringing a huge range of books to out-of-the-way places, and it is now fighting against time, by enabling readers to download books instantly. Moreover, huge choice and low prices are helping books hold their own on digital devices. For publishers, though, it is a dangerous time. Some of the publishers’ functions—packaging books and promoting them to shops—are becoming out of date.

Yet there are still important jobs for publishers.

The music and film industries have started to pack electronic with physical versions of their products—by, for instance, providing those who buy a DVD of a movie with a code to download it from the Internet. Publishers, similarly, should combine e-books with paper books.

They also need to become more efficient. In the digital age it is stupid to take months or even years to get a book to market. And if they are to distinguish their products from self-published dross( 糟粕), they must get better at choosing books, sharpening ideas and polishing copy. If publishers are to hold readers’ attention, they must tell a better story—and edit out all the spelling mistakes as well.

8 . What is the future of newspapers as the industry has faced increasing newsprint prices, falling sales and the great drops in circulation (发行量)? In recent years the number of newspapers being closed down has risen, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom. Income has dropped while competition from the Internet has pressed older print publishers a lot.

To live on, newspapers are considering uniting and other choices though the result hasn’t been agreed.

Since the beginning of 2009, the United Sates has seen a number of major newspapers closed after no buyers appeared, including The Rocky Mountain News, closed in February, and The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, reduced to a complete Internet operation. In Detroit, both newspapers, The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News, cut down home delivery to three days a week, while inviting readers to visit the newspapers’ Internet sites on other days. In Tucson, Arizona, the state’s oldest newspaper, The Tucson Citizen, would stop publishing on March 21, 2009, when parent Gannett Company failed to find a buyer.

A number of other large, financially troubled newspapers are trying to get buyers. One of the few large dailies finding a buyer is The San Diego Union-tribune. It agreed to be sold to a private firm for what The Wall Street Journal called the rock-bottom price over of less than $50 million considered to have been worth about $1 billion in 2004.

In the United Kingdom, newspaper publishers have been similarly hit. In late 2008 The Independent announced job cuts. In January the chain Associated Newspapers sold a controlling stake (股金) in the London Evening Standard as it announced a 24% decline in 2008 as income. In March 2009 parent company Daily Mail and General Trust said job cuts would be deeper than expected.

9 . In this digital age, information is increasingly digitized through the wide use of technology. Newspapers, magazines and even textbooks are becoming or expected to be digital soon. However, despite the sharp increase of such technology in daily life, print media is far from becoming unnecessary. I don’t think that reading in print is a dying mode.

Firstly, print offers a super reading experience. The feeling of holding a book in our hands, feeling its weight and turning over its pages, helps us to be immersed in and engaged fully with the material. The act of turning over pages also helps to direct ourselves in the concepts and structure of the text. In contrast, reading through a number of pages on a device is unsatisfying, and we can lose track of how much we have read. In addition, the artificial glow of digital screens tires one’s eyes out, and can even affect one’s sleep.

Moreover, physical copies express greater aesthetic (审美的) beauty than digital ones. The designs that beautify book covers and spines make the ideas complete and add beauty to our homes as well. The wrinkles that have accumulated over time leave us with an emotional attachment to the books themselves. Furthermore, the presentation of content in print also allows for greater appreciation of imagery (意象). In contrast to the restrictions of digital screens, the tangible (可触摸的) nature of print allows for clear imagery that is clear and impactful in its presence.

Advocates of digital print support the convenience of the medium. Indeed, e-readers   provide a convenient solution to storage and transportation. However, this carries its own weaknesses as well. For one, the use of digital media requires the investment in a smart device. For another, taking notes on the printed text is easier.

In conclusion, despite the conveniences afforded by digital media, physical print still remains a popular mode of reading today. The “less is more” nature of print media remains its strongest selling point today.