Owned by Gleaner GV media group Ltd

It was a fearlessly campaigning newspaper with a voted leadership past.

It has a very tiny team, it’s leadership has shot up since it ended up on the AQA syllabus.

The Voice newspaper is “committed to celebrating black experience” and aims to deliver “positive change” by “informing the black community on important issues”. With its news stories, in-depth interviews, opinion pieces and investigations, The Voice remains “Britain’s most successful black newspaper”.

In the voice there are no published figures but it appears that they have a tiny forming of audience. This is not a product that its reaching its target demographic.

David Hesmondhalgh believed companies involved in cultural industries were motivated by profit rather than a duty to public service broadcasting. No one was going to invest in a newspaper which targeted a niche audience unless it was going to make money. However, the social and political context of the early 1980s offered the founder of The Voice, Val McCalla, an opportunity to raise the funds needed for such a risky venture.

The shift in the publishing from print media to digital formats has been dramatic. Clay Shirky’s “Newspapers and Thinking he Unthinkable”  is a great summary of the threat the newspaper industry faced from online competition, but you probably already know Teen Vogue is no longer available as a glossy magazine and Oh Comely sold its last copy in 2021. Inevitably, The Voice moved from weekly to monthly editions.

The publishers promote their content on various social media channels: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. Most posts will direct you to the main website, but The Voice will also retweet and share posts from other institutions to increase the level of engagement with their primary audience.

Although this connection and level of interactivity is expected by digital natives, an older audience might still prefer the feel of print between their fingers.

The Voice will struggle to be heard by an audience who prefer the quick and easy comment culture of social media rather than long-form journalism.

Before the introduction of The Voice, the black press in Britain targeted first-generation immigrants. Newspapers, such as The Caribbean Times and West Africa, kept the diaspora up to date about news about the old countries. The Voice was different. It wanted to publish stories which were relevant to the second generation who were born and raised in Britain.

The Voice continues to construct a positive profile of the black community.

The homepage and category pages contain a collection of links to the news stories making the headlines. Inspired by social media feeds, such as the Instagram and Twitter interfaces, the use of cards is a very popular convention in website design. Each card includes a thumbnail signifying the key themes of the post, a category link, and a headline. These excerpts act as enigma codes which encourage the reader to find out more.

Media Language

The Voice uses codes and conventions to influence meaning. They value black people and like to make them feel superior and strong and independent. They bring racist issues and discrimination problems to the light to relate to their specific audience.

• They use images of mainly black people to get their views and values across and to attract their target audience. They also have quite a colourful site to show support for ‘coloured’ people and present it in a much more positive term. The images used are often not photoshopped and are natural which gives a real view of people which could better relate to their audience.

The Voice uses semiotics to create a narrative of constructing the world. By presenting content of mainly black people suggests that the world is becoming more diverse and it is not based on only white people in the media. Black signifies diversity. Colour signifies race and mainly black people. The title The Voice signifies the voice they give to black people.

The Voice presents its genre conventions of news website to present their news values. They use informative news but only on one feature to show what the media misses, black news.

They use the images of black people to construct a strong and independent of black people in the world and their growing success.

Media Representations

The choice of online product provides a wide range of representational issues. These include the representation of the target audience – black Britons – but also the selection and construction of news stories and their subjects. The analysis of representation will build on work done in the analysis of visual images and can be used to explore target audiences and ideological readings.

• The Voice constructs a Black British identity in The Voice and do not generalise them to only black nations.
• The media producers are encoding black news as black superiority for the audience to decode the importance of black lives and normalises them.
• By including various types of content whilst maintaining black people subverts the stereotype of black thugs and promotes black people in a more positive way.
• The stories presented show that black people are successful.

Media Industries

The Voice is a commercial media product but could also be seen as fulfilling a public service through its targeting of an ethnic minority audience. The website also demonstrates the way that news institutions have had to respond to new technology through The Voice’s bi-media presence and use of convergence.

• The Voice provides a case study for the specialised nature of media production, distribution and circulation within a regional and national context.
• The Voice doesn’t use multiple digital platforms yet it can be easily accessed on the internet through phones, computers or even ipads/tablets.

Media Audiences

The Voice provides an example of clearly targeted, primary audience through demographics of ethnicity, race and age which should encourage the study of issues of identity. Related to this would be a discussion of the changing relationship between producers and audiences – is there a need for media aimed at specialised audiences in the context of audience as producer? Shirky suggests that due to new technology everyone gets a say in the media and The Voice supports this as they attempt to give black people a voice in the world and get their specific audiences views across.

• The Voice’s specialised audience is black people, more specifically, black Britons.
• They successfully target them by producing content that they can relate to.
• They follow the cultural stereotypes yet go against all negative stereotypes that the media may have placed on black people. (Hall)
• The Voice produces quite unique and specific content which is very relatable to the audience and also gives them a voice.

Social, Political, Cultural and Economic Contexts

The Voice as an institution has historical and cultural significance in its origins as the UK’s first newspaper aimed specifically at a black British audience, dealing with relevant political and social issues. The website continues this function but is perhaps considered more mainstream and less political than in the past. The economic context can be explored through a consideration of the nature of the production and distribution and move to online content to reach a wider audience and attract advertisers.