NEWS 15

Make or break for the Sun and more consolidation

SUMMARY

This year it’s all about the Sun. The return of Rebekah Brooks as News UK’s chief executive, a year after she was cleared of all charges related to the phone-hacking scandal, has seen a reinvigoration, not to mention a total strategic volte face, at the publisher. With the Sun’s paywall recently dismantled, new editor Tony Gallagher now has the task of playing digital catchup and building an online giant to match the paper’s status as the UK’s biggest-selling daily newspaper.

FACTS:

Making a bid for global digital domination will be no mean feat: the Sun reported just under 25 million monthly browsers in November, 

same level as in mid-2009 and about 10% of the equivalent figure for world leader Mail Online.

Some New Year resolutions for the Guardian

SUMMARY 

It’s inspiring to read in the New Year’s honours list (31 December) about the individuals who have made such a valuable contribution to their local communities, such as by supporting women subjected to domestic abuse and girls caught up in gang culture, or by providing a free, healthy breakfast to thousands of schoolchildren. Collectively these community stalwarts and other charity figures account for over three-quarters of the New Year’s honours list. Yet the constructive work undertaken by millions of volunteers and tens of thousands of charities goes largely unreported or ignored for most of the year. As the US author of How to Change the World, David Bornstein, writes, our news media should not just focus on “people doing terrible things that are hidden from view”, but on “people doing remarkable things that are hidden from view”.

FACTS 

One of the two major political parties suffers from a historically tiny, stagnating and elderly membership, and faces a year in which an issue on which it is deeply divided will be prominent.

The other party has seen a great resurgence of membership, including many enthusiastic young people, elected a new leader with a landslide vote, and is rethinking its structure to make it genuinely democratic