Analysis Of The Daily Telegraph: Problems, Challenges And Recommendations

Discussion

Founded in the year 1879, The Daily Telegraph is one of Australia’s oldest and most recognized newspapers. With its headquarters in New South Wales, it is currently owned by News Corp Australia, and has a readership that spans across a large part of the country, especially in Sydney and New South Wales. It is published in the form of a tabloid, also making use of the online medium. Its dedication to present the most authentic news, shorn of any political affiliations has made it one of the most widely acknowledged tabloids in the country. It is usually available on weekdays under this name, and as The Sunday Telegraph on Sundays. However, with the growth and expansion of the organization, differences and complications arose among the past and present employees. Although one of the oldest in the industry, a number of controversies in the last few decades, along with opposition in the market from strong competitors have significantly put the organization’s reputation and business prospects on slippery grounds. Therefore, the report aims to critically analyse the problems face d by the industry and provide suitable recommendations for the same.

Problem Identification 

Although the paper has been identified as one of the most availed newspapers by the people of Sydney, the problem that The Daily Telegraph encounters at present stiff completion from a lot of other prominent newspapers like The Sydney Morning Herald, and a blow to the company’s goodwill from recent controversies, both of which has together prevented the company from doing equally good amount of business in all parts of the country (Daily Telegraph is best-performing newspaper, 2018). The various organizational problems which limits the success of this company may be identified as:-

• The free and fast availability of online news has prompted the company to make internal modifications accordingly, which has hampered its business to a certain extent.
• This gave rise to the intake of new employees, thereby resulting in differences among the new and existing employees. It has significantly affected the organizational culture of the company.
• The allegations of plagiarism and misleading information about ‘National Broadband Network’, along with many other controversies including the suicide of a NSW Liberal leader John Brogden after a criticizing article was published in The Daily Telegraph, hugely hampered the goodwill of the company (abc.net.au, 2018).
• Poor leadership to combat new problems within the organization is another major issues. Even after the controversies and allegations, the management failed to actively engage with the subordinates and bring out comprehensive solutions for combatting the problems. They often to resort to micromanagement procedures, whereby the employees felt more insulted than encouraged.
• Although the newspaper claims to be free of political colours, it is often seen to take a more right-wing conservative stance, favouring the Liberal Party and opposing the Labour Party. The article published after Brogden’s resignation from the Liberal Party can be a case in point. The recognition of this subtle favouritism facilitates the loss of a significant number of readers. Although not quite recent, still a survey conducted in the year 2006 found that The Daily Telegraphranked third on an audience poll regarding the newspaper which they believed to provide inaccurate and unfair news (Web.archive.org., 2018). In this survey report, it was also given that many people were seen to voice against the Australian media because they invaded the privacy of the people.

Lack of Collaborative Effort and Poor Organizational Culture:- 

A sense of complacency prevails among the existing companies. This has a negative influence upon the new employees. There is a lack of adequate collaboration among the two groups, chiefly due to the difference in print and digital media, which employs the old and new workers respectively. Another cause of the lack of cooperation is that the coming of the digital platform has significantly reduced the prospects of the print, within the organization itself. As a result, there was a communication gap between the older and newer employees regarding the problems, and the competent new employees were barred from engaging in managerial decisions (Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2015). Thus the absence of a positive collaborative workplace culture prevented the dedication of senior employees at work. Therefore, there is a lack of team-spirit in the attempt to solve the problems, which affected the organizational culture and hindered its growth.

Controversies:- 

The Daily Telegraph had been subject to a number of controversies over the years which had significantly affected the goodwill of the company, thereby hindering its growth. Besides the John Brogden case, as mentioned above, the newspaper had been accused of plagiarism, misleading statements about the educational standards of school students, breach of privacy in about the life of former Labour Party minister Mark Latham, opinionated articles about Sydney’s former Lord Mayor and MP Clover Moore, publishing of offensive statements about asylum seekers to name a few.

Root Causes

Poor Leadership:-  

Absence of efficient leadership qualities, which often bordered around micromanagement techniques to combat allegations and cultures, were highly demotivating for the employees, thereby putting a risk to the development of the organization (Ertureten et al., 2013).

Competition:-

The Daily Telegraph has to face a stiff competition from a number of other prominent newspapers like Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, or The Guardian to name a few. The availability of a large variety of newspapers has significantly affected the readership of The Daily Telegraph, and had limited its scope for expansion and adequate business from every part of the country.  

Organizational Culture Theory of H.L. Goodall: 

The commitment of the employees within an organization, along with their job satisfaction is largely dependent on the organizational culture of a company. According to Goodall, organizational theory takes into consideration a sense of shared interest among the employees of a particular company, just as the shared interests of people in a society leads to the formation of a social culture. The leaders within an organization are entitled to guide and supervise the work of their subordinates, at the same time, never deny their creativity and engagement in the managerial process of decision making, as there is always a chance of excellent ideas coming up from unknown quarters, which could be helpful to an organization in the long run (Sobrinho & Gl?veanu, 2017). If this accessibility is denied, newer and better talents may go unnoticed and unrecognized. However, the main problem with The Daily Telegraph was that, since the company was very old, it followed a more hierarchical structure, where development of collateral and communication was often disregarded both by the administrative body, as well as by the employees. Therefore, the presence of a highly structured and formalized working environment prevented possibility of coordination among employees based on their efficiency (Hogan, & Coote, 2014).

Lewin’s Change Management Model and Resistance to Organizational Change within The Daily Telegraph: 

Although The Daily Telegraph has made deft use of the online medium, it had to face problems due to its ambiguous organizational culture in balancing between the two mediums – print and online. Lewin’s model of Change Management talks about three specific steps that must be followed in order to successfully make changes towards organizational development. The three steps are – Unfreeze, Change and Refreeze (Cummings, Bridgman, & Brown, 2016). In the first step, the administration of an organization should pro-actively communicate with the employees and stakeholders about the purpose, scope, cause and benefits of the intended changes before implementing the change. Due to its hierarchical work-culture, The Daily Telegraph, does not make use of such engaging communication. Due to its inability to break the status-quo within the organization, confusion arise at the time of changes. Lewin’s model claims that this first step is of utmost importance to move to the next stage (Bartunek, & Woodman, 2015). Therefore, The Daily Telegraph‘s incompetence in this very first stage prevents any further progress towards conformation of this model. Hence, the possibility of any positive ‘Change’ is reduced which can lead to the progress of the company through the establishment of new policies in the stage of ‘Refreeze’.

Strength:- 

• Covers fairly large amount of news from all across the country.
• Its merger with The Daily Mirroron October 1990 proved to be beneficial for the company.
• Strong network of distribution in and around Sydney and New South Wales.

Weakness:- 

• Involved in a number of controversies related to plagiarism and political bias.
• Probes into the privacy of famous people.
• Follows strict hierarchical structure in the internal working system.
• Poor and outdated leadership communication techniques are used.
• The tagline of its online platform “We're for Sydney” is limiting for its pan-Australian approach (Daily Telegraph | We're for Sydney, 2018).

Opportunities:- 

• Has enough man-power and financial capital, which, if channelized in the right direction by improving the organizational culture, can be extremely beneficial in the long run.
• Can attract more readership by providing unbiased news by using innovative features, which would give rise to discussion and not criticism.
• Equal distribution in all parts of the country.
• Exploring the online platform more for revenue generation, possibly by working in collaboration with other websites and social networking sites.

Threats:- 

• Increased competition from a large number of other newspapers all across the country.
• The controversies have a severe impact on the reputation and goodwill of the newspaper.
• It is prone to legal actions for publishing misleading and erroneous articles.  

Firstly, The Daily Telegraph should replace its essentially hierarchical organizational culture with a clan culture where there is more unity within the organization. In that case, it will be easier for senior managers to supervise the activities and the performance of their subordinates and offer adequate guidance wherever required. The engaging working environment would also bring out the best from the new and talented employees, where they could freely recommend beneficial actions to the company. However, this change in organization culture may face resistance from the employees. Therefore, the company should properly explain to them how it would benefit everyone and lead to organizational development.  Benefits like autonomy and decision-making power at work, along with less pressure on the leaders can be cited through interactive discussions over a period of time. Implementation of Transformational Leadership style may promote participation and engagement of the employees. Collaborative work should be given adequate importance in all the discussions. The leaders may reduce the employees’ reluctance to collaborative work by organizing team outings and office-parties, which would strengthen the bond between the employees.

Conclusion

Therefore, we may conclude by saying that since The Daily Telegraph is one of the oldest and most widely recognized newspaper in Australia, it has immense responsibility of providing unbiased and authentic news. Failure to do so, and the presence of many competitors in the market has already affected its prospects to a certain extent. Therefore, the key change in the leadership style and organizational culture through strategic planning would help in both the development of the company as well as the career growth of the individual employees.

Reference List 

abc.net.au (2018). The Tele's sordid shame. [online] Media Watch. Available at: https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/the-teles-sordid-shame/9976266 [Accessed 17 Aug. 2018].

Alvesson, M., & Sveningsson, S. (2015). Changing organizational culture: Cultural change work in progress. Routledge.

Bartunek, J. M., & Woodman, R. W. (2015). Beyond Lewin: Toward a temporal approximation of organization development and change.

Cummings, S., Bridgman, T., & Brown, K. G. (2016). Unfreezing change as three steps: Rethinking Kurt Lewin’s legacy for change management. human relations, 69(1), 33-60.

Daily Telegraph | We're for Sydney. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/

Daily Telegraph is best-performing newspaper. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/emma-readership-august-2017-daily-telegraph-is-bestperforming-major-newspaper-in-australia/news-story/373e7d0a30d48ff47c43c5602a2c3ca5

Ertureten, A., Cemalcilar, Z., & Aycan, Z. (2013). The relationship of downward mobbing with leadership style and organizational attitudes. Journal of Business Ethics, 116(1), 205-216.

Hogan, S. J., & Coote, L. V. (2014). Organizational culture, innovation, and performance: A test of Schein's model. Journal of Business Research, 67(8), 1609-1621.

Sobrinho, A. B. F., & Gl?veanu, V. P. (2017). Creativity, Communicability and Organizational Culture: an Introduction to the Study of Hierarchy as Both a Facilitator and Constraint in Organizational Change. Creativity. Theories–Research-Applications, 4(2), 178-197.

Web.archive.org. (2018). Wayback Machine. [online] Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20061022050423/https://www.roymorgan.com/resources/pdf/papers/20040903.pdf [Accessed 16 Aug. 2018].