"Britney Spears ate my crocodile": an analysis of online content down under

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"Britney Spears ate my crocodile": an analysis of
online content down under
Oakham, Katrina Mandy; Barnes, Renee
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Oakham, K. M., & Barnes, R. (2009). “Britney Spears ate my crocodile”: an analysis of online content down
under. 1–8.
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Oakham-Barnes.doc                       -1-

       "BRITNEY SPEARS ATE MY CROCODILE”
       an analysis of online content down under

       © Katrina Mandy Oakham and Renee Barnes

       By monitoring the online sites of two major broadsheet mastheads and two tabloid
       mastheads in Australia this paper will set out to explore the current news values
       operating in the Australian market. Australian print media, in common with other
       Western countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States, has been
       undergoing what many have described as the “perfect storm” of the biggest
       structural change ever to journalistic practice. This change has seen an increased
       speed and intensity to the nature of the journalistic form now delivered over multiple
       platforms, with the role of news consumers and news producers becoming
       increasingly blurred. Allegations have been made that Australian online sites have
       been greatly impacted by the twin forces of cost cutting and a desperate bid for
       revenue which have resulted in a plunge down market and a consequent “dumbing
       down” of content. Specifically this has led to a rise in tabloid type content on online
       sites. If online is now the driver of modern news production, then this paper will
       explore the implications of a tabloid trend in online content for the broader terrain of
       news gathering and news production in Australia.

       KEYWORDS        Australia; news gathering; news values; online; tabloid

       Introduction: online journalism down under

         Australia’s first ever newspaper the Sydney Gazette 1803-42 was described as
being a mixture of “fulsome flattery of Government officials and … inane twaddle on other
matters”(Mayer, 1968 p. 10). In 2009 most of the newspapers in that former convict colony
are in the process of migrating their masthead content to online platforms. Some critics
have suggested that the “inane twaddle” of those Gazette days continues as a dominant
theme of current content.
         At the outset before looking specifically at Australian online journalism, we must
look at the broader context of Australian journalism and unfortunately this country retains
its title as having one of the most concentrated media ownership structures in the Western
world. This feature of the Australian journalistic context of course has explicit implications
for the nature of journalism produced in this country. It could be said that the convict press
has replaced it colonial and political chains with the new and more resilient restraints of
ownership and commercialism. Simons sums it up, “As the dominant player in
newspapers, News Limited incorporates some of the best and worst of Australian
journalism.” (2007, p.336)
         Three of the mastheads in this study, that is, The Australian, the Northern Territory
News and The Cairns Post are owned by Murdoch’s News Corporation.
         Like the rest of the world, Australian newspapers have suffered from the shift of
advertising dollars to online or non-news sources. This has resulted in the loss of

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journalism jobs and an intense debate about who will undertake the traditional newspaper
role of investigative journalism (MEAA, 2008). On the bright side, the MEAA reports
Hitwise figures as showing Australia has one of the highest percentages of online news
visitors with 6.75 per cent of internet visits in 2008 used to gather news. This is compared
to 3.97 per cent in the US and 4.63 per cent in the UK (2008, p.11).
        Key changes in modern journalism practice identified by Bradshaw ( 2008) include
his contention that the nature of journalism as a form of communication has changed from
being a lecture format to a conversation format with more efforts to engage audience in the
news generation and news production process. Other changes identified by Bradshaw
include the notion that everything in journalism, including its many targeted audiences are
now just a click away. Another key factor identified by Bradshaw includes the rise and rise
of the hyperlocal as an irresistible force in modern journalism. In this preliminary study of
four online news sites we will be particularly interested in the way these sites are
attempting to engage their audiences in conversation and one of the issues to be
discussed is whether the focus on tabloid type content, what some may dismiss as “inane
twaddle”, is actually about reinforcing the news value of proximity and reinvigorating
conversation with their readers. Engaging with the local through the lived experiences of its
audiences, we believe, is one way this form of online media is attempting to prevent that
audience from “clicking away”.
        Goc (2008) in referring to changing formats and content of “serious broadsheet
newspapers” suggests that “The once clear line between entertainment and news is
blurring. Today, stories about the war in Iraq sit on the front page beside stories of
Madonna’s bid to adopt an African child and Paris Hilton’s release from jail.”(2008, p.33) In
relation to the down under online sites monitored for this research it could be said forget
the war and in terms of content it is definitely a case of “if it bleeds it leads” with “crims”
and “crocs” emerging as favourite topics..

       Tabloid tendencies

        Deuze (2005) quotes the work of Hallin (1992) and van Zoonen (1998b) in his effort
to define the notion of tabloid for his study of Dutch journalists working in this genre. He
ultimately defines tabloid as “… a popular medium where one cannot draw a meaningful
distinction between ‘information’ and ‘entertainment’.”( 2005, p.863) Deuze goes on to
raise the issue of whether the tabloid genre is a form of journalism which exists outside the
margins of what might be considered mainstream professional journalism. For the
purposes of our study we would consider the tabloid tendencies identified on the Australian
websites as being a variant within mainstream journalism. Clearly tabloid journalism has in
the past been identified with its focus on certain subject matter, that is, scandal, sex and
sport and entertainment.
        While Australian tabloids have never really been as extreme as their wild cousins in
the United Kingdom or the United States they have certainly demonstrated a penchant for
the same topic areas, especially sex and sport.
        Turner (2005) defines tabloid as the hybridisation from news and information to
entertainment formats, in which the standard mode of reporting is now sensationalist.
(p.152) Lumby (1999) argues that shifts are underway in contemporary media wrought by
changing technologies, social structures and globalisation. Lumby’s major contention is
that critics of digital news measure quality in the context of a bygone era in which print
media dominated. Lumby offers an alternative view of what the blurring of the boundaries
of entertainment and information might mean. She finds that the ‘classic’ tabloid story is
concerned with the ordinary – either ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances or

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extraordinary people (i.e. celebrities) caught in ordinary circumstances (e.g. divorce or
romance). In this way, the tabloid story is more relevant to the domestic sphere in which
the people consume it and provides lessons in how to engage the public in democratic
discussion.
       Fiske (2000) argues that a key element of tabloid news is a cynicism with the
information provided by those in authority and therefore authority’s disapproval of the
format gives it credibility. Popular information, then, is partisan, not objective: it is
information that serves the people's interests, “not information as the servant of an
objective truth acting as a mask for domination” (Fiske 2000, p.47) Tabloidisation is often
used as a way of differentiating the high-brow and low-brow media. However, this study
seeks not to judge tabloidisation or popularisation of online media content within an élitist
framework of what the public should be seeing. Rather it is concerned with highlighting a
possible change in the media’s role in public discourse through the technological
developments wrought by the Internet.

       Methodology

        We see this study breaking into two clear stages: the first stage is the monitoring of
four identified websites, with the second stage involving interviews with the editors and
journalists of these sites. This paper will focus on the findings from the first stage of this
project. The mastheads have been chosen as comparative sites, that is, two sites bearing
the mastheads of conservative broadsheets and two sites associated with more
stereotypically tabloid mastheads.
        In the first stage we wanted to look at the nature of stories carried ‘above the fold’,
which is defined as everything visible without scrolling on an average sized screen of 800
x 600 pixels of resolution or a 15-inch monitor (Foust, 2005 p.109) on each site for a week.
In this analysis we looked at issues of placement and news values, with attention also
being paid to promotional features of the site, adjacent to the news stories. The second
stage of this research will incorporate interviews to allow the further explication of the role
of news values and will identify any mismatches between the news values on show in
these sites and the professional ideological values of the journalists involved in producing
the sites.
         The mastheads being monitored have weekday print circulations of The Age
(197,600), The Australian (136,000), The Northern Territory News ( 21, 319) and The
Cairns Post (27,148). Given that the purpose of this study is the exploration of any links
between content on online news sites and the news values operating in this genre of news
production, we have been deliberate in our selection of these four newspaper sites. Most
of these sites are updated constantly throughout the day, however for this survey we
looked to each site once a day at differing times. This allowed for a random purposive
sample.
        Weerakkody defines purposive sampling as, “Here, the researcher selects subjects
or elements that possess the specific characteristics or qualities required for the study, in
other words, the subjects serve the ‘purpose’ of the study.” (2008, p.99) While
Weerakkoddy warns that results of such sampling are not generalisable, she does suggest
that such a process can provide “valuable insights into a research question or hypothesis
under examination.” (2008, p.99) Therefore given that our ultimate aim with our research
is to identify what differing news values maybe operating in the new online news habitus it
is logical that a sampling of the suggested online news sites can provide us with areas to
explore with the online journalists in the second stage of this study.

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      Content

        “Crime, crumpet and cricket” and “women, wampum and wrongdoing” have been
used to sum up the general domains of tabloid coverage. In analyzing the stories that
appear above the fold we were conscious of applying the “norms” of copy presentation,
that is, we wanted to categorise not only the nature of the news story, but also look at
headlines, intros and leads and language use involved in the story. Hall (2008), in
analyzing the success of the London Sun operating with the Murdoch introduced Oz
tabloid style, describes it as “With its lurid headlines, cocky tone and brazen addiction to
the beat-up and the stunt, the paper seemed to be plugged into exactly what its readers
wanted” (2008, p. 297-8). “Tabloids succeed when they and their readers can bask in the
glow of having their shared prejudices confirmed.” (2008, p.299) While “confirming
prejudices” may be one way of looking at this relationship established between tabloids
and their audiences, we would argue, it can also be seen as an example of a successful
opening up of a genuine dialogue.
        Turner (2005) argues a tabloid story is not focused on traditional news values but
favours entertainment, celebrity and domestic issues. For this study the category system
was based on Turner’s assertions on what defines a tabloid story, in conjunction with the
traditional news values outlined by Granato (1991: 31-36).As such stories contained
‘above the fold’ on the websites during sampling were determined as tabloid if the central
news value concerned crime in a deliberately sensationalist fashion, celebrity, ordinary
people’s achievements and domestic issues; sport or novelty.
        The below table is a summary of the number of tabloid stories ‘above the fold’ on
each site during the sampling period. The table provides the number of stories per day as
a value of the number of stories represented.

      Table 1: Number of tabloid stories contained above the fold during sample period

                       Monday        Tuesday       Wednesday        Thursday              Friday
                27 July, 2009 28 July, 2009 29 July, 2009    30 July 2009    31            July,
                                                                             2009
       The Age         7/13          12/16         14/17            12/15                 8/15
       The             2/7           1/5           3/5              1/5                   2/6
Australian
       Northern        7/11          7/11          7/10             7/11                  7/10
Territory News
       Cairns          4/6           4/6           4/7              5/6                   5/6
Post

 NB: Multiple stories on the same issue were not counted as individual stories. This
accounted for some of the fluctuation in total story count.

       What is interesting to notice is that of websites surveyed The Australian does not
include as many stories classed as tabloid. However, it should be noted that The
Australian does not provide update its website with purpose-made online copy. In other
words it places copy which has appeared in the newspaper directly online with very little
adaptation.
       If we delve further into our sample we can get an understanding of the tabloid
subject matter which is focused on by each website.

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       Table 2: Stories classed by subject matter for each website

                        Crime        Ordinary        Celebrity./        Novelty         Sport
                              People        / Entertainment
                              Domestic
                              issues
       The Age          19/76        3/76            11/76              7/76            11/76
       The              0/28         0/28            2/28               1/28            6/28
Australian
       Northern         20/53         4/53            3/53              6/53            0/43
Territory News
       Cairns           16/31         2/31            1/31              2/31            1/31
Post

        When stories are classed by subject matter it is interesting to note that the two
websites of the traditionally ‘quality’ broadsheets, The Age and The Australian, have
higher counts of stories on sport and celebrity / entertainment than the websites of the
traditionally tabloid newspapers. The Northern Territory News and The Cairns Post tended
to focus more on crime and novelty when tackling stories classed as tabloid.
        Clearly from the above tables it is relatively easy to apply the label of tabloid to the
nature of stories presented on these sites, but it is not enough to say that because all sites
appear for example to focus on crime stories that this is clear evidence of tabloid
tendencies. It is not just a case of what stories are put up on the sites, but how the stories
are presented. With the crimes stories on these sites our analysis found that crime quickly
moved to top of the screen in terms of placement on the both the more conservative
broadsheet sites, as well as the more conventionally tabloid masthead sites. With the more
conventionally tabloid mastheads it was notable that wherever possible accident stories
were accompanied by relatively large pictures of mangled car wreckage.
        Also notable in the treatment of crime stories was the way in which the nature of the
coverage stripped back the story to the impact on the ordinary person or the victim.
Headlines were also a very important indicator of the tabloid treatment of crime stories with
the wording chosen seemingly capable of simultaneously sensationalising and trivializing
the story. Some examples included the headings “Kicked to death for phone” (The Age
29/7/09) which was a story about a violent street assault “Gran murder” (The Cairns Post
30/7/09) a story about the brutal rape and murder of an 81 year old woman and “Mum-to-
be’s train attack” (The Age 30/7/09) which was a story about a sexual assault on a
pregnant woman on a city train. It was also noted that The Age carried daily reports of the
“buck’s rape case”, a story about the alleged rape of a man at a buck’s party by a stripper
using a sex toy. The Age’s preoccupation with crime may be attributed to the Melbourne
context, with the city now known as the home of Australia’s most notorious gangland wars.
These wars were written about in a series entitled Underbelly by two of the newspaper’s
most respected crime and investigative journalists. The book was then turned into a major
award winning and top rating television drama series. This could be seen as a clear
example of a conservative masthead’s news values merging with the media organisation’s
commercial values and the wider popular culture context. The Age did try to include stories
that would be classed as 'quality' or non-tabloid, politics and political analysis, but these
positioned alongside visuals representing celebrity and entertainment stories
        As well as treatment of crime stories our analysis identified other key themes in
relation to language use, focus on celebrity and the use of pictures, in particular the good

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old tabloid stand-by of the “picture do-up”, that is use of a feel-good picture with an
extended caption, such as a sun-baking rabbit, rescued koala, or cat in the arms of a hero
rescuer.
        Language use was an important indicator with the tabloid love of alliteration on
show for example “Buffed, bronzed bloke boasts bulging biceps” (The Cairns Post 29/7/09
or “St Kilda’s stabbing: sickening scream” (The Age 31/7/09) or “Steak sanger sackings
(The Age 29/7/09). This is story is also an example of how tabloid type stories work best
when there is strong identification from the audience with some aspects of their lived
experience. This story also demonstrates how this form of tabloid treatment can work to
assist in the construction of aspects of the public sphere within people’s ordinary lives. The
story is about two council workers sacked after it was revealed that they had used some
left over pot hole mix to fix holes in a local sports club. The workers had then accepted a
steak sandwich lunch as a “thank you” from the club.
        The story is an example of tapping into the ordinariness of life for that targeted
audience. Other examples of intensifying the level of identification would include the
stories “Pensioners criticise rate rises” (The Cairns Post 31/7/09), “Man stabs girlfriend,
makes her walk to hospital” (The Northern Territory News 31/7/09). Tabloid language is at
its most rampant when The Northern Territory News gets to cover its all time favourite
subject, crocodiles. One particularly colourful example is the story with the headline
“Cucumber truck hits buff near jumping crocs” which is followed up with the intro –

       A truck driver had a lucky escape when his cucumber laden rig rolled near a
       crocodile infesting river after hitting a buffalo yesterday. (The Northern Territory
       News 30/7/2009)

       This story was however surpassed the next day when tabloid heaven happened
and crocodiles and blonde bombshells collided with the winner of a headline “5m croc
goes the chomp on Miss Universe” (The Northern Territory News 31/7/2009)
       Family values and their obvious link to the everyday lived experience are often
invoked in stories as demonstrated in the example “QC’s son sent to jail” (The Northern
Territory News 31/7/09). A picture do-up in The Age with the headline “2 Dads, 2 Bubs”
was used to transform a potentially controversial story about gay marriage rights story to a
“feel good” family story. (The Age 31/7/09) Another example of any animal will do picture
do up was the “Frog eats bird” caption only and picture which ran on The Cairns Post site
on 29/7/09.
       The focus on celebrity was used creatively across a number of sites with a running
story about a “Junior Jacko” a talented young Michael Jackson look-a-like on The Cairns
Post site throughout the monitored week. A story with the headline, “Swim star torpedoes
camp takeover plan” (The Northern Territory News 31/7/09) making using of the tabloid
technique of punning on a story about swimming star Ian Thorpe whose nickname is
Torpedo and “Lisa McCune sails north again” (The Cairns Post 31/7/09), a story about
anactor currently starring in a television drama series about the Australian navy.
       The Age ( 31/7/09) featured an example of a “get- Britney-in-there-somewhere-
someway-story” under its video special section. The headlined “Like Britney peep-show
video victim harassed by media” story turns out to be a story about a celebrity reporter
who had been secretly filmed naked in her hotel room saying she felt like Britney
Spears! Finally a big story featured to some extent on all sites during this week was the
story of two radio personalities caught up in a family/sex/rape outrage which resonated
with many of the values underlying tabloid coverage. The story centred on the fate of two

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radio personalities who had set up a 14-year-old girl and her mother in a lie detector test
during which the girl revealed she had been raped.

       Conclusions

         Fiske (2000) states that tabloid news makes no attempt to finalise the story, as
does ‘quality’ news, instead the tabloid story provokes a conversation in which the people
construct aspects of the public sphere within their own lives. At the core of online media is
its ability to offer readers an immediate forum for discussion – therefore availing itself more
to tabloid news values. Within Fiske’s argument it follows then that popular taste requires
information to have relevance and use. Relevant information to an individual’s social
situation can rarely be produced in the top-down model of ‘quality’ news. This is because
an individual is rarely able to exert influence over the system that produces the social
conditions under which they live, but they do strive to control their own immediate
conditions of existence.
         One way the tabloid news is able to use relevance of content is to rely on the
experience of ordinary people as evidenced in the examples highlighted from the four sites
monitored for this preliminary research. The Australian’s lower count of tabloid stories
could therefore be accounted for not as a deliberate editorial decision, but rather the result
of a lack adaptation for the online medium. Sparks (2003) found that the online sites of
‘quality’ newspapers in the United Kingdom were more successful than those of ‘tabloid’
newspapers. He concluded the possible reason for this was that the stories normally found
in quality newspapers were enhanced by their presentation online, whereas those found in
tabloid newspapers were often provided better online by other specialist competitors.
         Another issue to be considered in relation to these online sites is their level of
engagement with popular culture and what is clear from the four sites chosen for this study
is that the journalists and editors involved would appear to be having fun with their role as
infotainment providers and should this function of a commercialized journalistic
environment be necessarily condemned? A notion of journalistic “play” will be an issue
that can be explored in the second stage of this research when the producers of these
sites are interviewed. If these sites can be seen in the light of being public affirmations of
prevailing social concerns and attitudes amongst the targeted audience can they then be
judged as being anything less than successful as communication platforms? While the
easy conclusion is to see these online sites as examples of journalists and their product
being “dumbed down”, we argue that these sites can also be seen as demonstrating some
positive indicators for the future of journalistic practice.
         These sites could be looked at in terms of a development which is forcing
journalists to focus on the wants and needs of those who consume their news selections.
Ultimately, we argue, that news production may no longer be confined to an internal,
newsroom, dialogue about what should be “above the fold” and further that journalistic or
editorial judgement may no longer be the sole determinant of news values. This could be
seen in one sense as a rebirth of an old news culture of the afternoon dailies which ceased
production in Australia at the beginning of the 1980s. It could also be argued that
constraints of space and speed and the 24/7 news cycle could lead to a sharpening of
journalistic news gathering and news processing skills as these online news sites expand
and develop. Indeed these developments could be seen as Deuze argues as a form of
truly “dialogical journalism” (2003, p. 207). That ribald and bloody convict press may
indeed be undergoing a rebirth, but just as the early popular press was literally in physical
contact with its audience, maybe the new online tabloid can be seen as a reconnection
between content and community.

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Katrina Mandy Oakham and Renee Barnes, School of Media & Communication, Building
      6, 124a La Trobe Street, Melbourne, Australia. Email: renee.barnes@rmit.edu.au

Mandy Oakham, Phd., is a senior lecturer in the School of Media and Communication at
     RMIT University in Australia.

Renee Barnes, is a lecturer in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT
     University in Australia.