Hello and welcome to my BlogSpot. In the following posts I shall be providing you with the research stage of my A2 media coursework of creating a new local newspaper. In order to create this I will need to do some research into other local newspapers to find out what is featured, what is standard to a local newspaper and how I can manipulate my newspaper to make it unique and suited to my own local area.
Please feel free to quickly jump to a page using the blog archive to the right and click on the name of the designated page you wish to visit.
The first thing I shall be doing is looking at other local newspapers and what they feature. I shall be looking at the first 3 pages of the newspaper as this is what is required for me to make in the project briefing. Okay, so onto the good stuff. The first local newspaper that I shall be looking at is the Reading Evening Post. Reading Evening Post: • Use of a traditional Newspaper Header • Weekly edition rather than everyday • Picture and Headline • Main story on front page with part of the story, much like a global newspaper e.g. the times • Advertisement of Local football team news
Henley Standard: • Use of a traditional Newspaper Header • Picture headline set up standard • Gothic styled header, suggests age of town or suggests a mature audience • Black and White texts rather than colour
Reading Chronicle: • Modernised header • Much larger size, generally landscaped rather than portrait • Same use of a large image and story, but with more of the story on the front page • Advertises other sections in the paper e.g. Jobs, Classifieds • Advertisement of local football team and sport news
Okay, now that we have looked at three slightly different local newspapers we have established some similarities between them such as the use of a picture and part of a story on the front cover. Also we have noticed the use of advertisement to attract readers such as classifieds, sports news, and jobs. A key difference between the three has been the paper logo, with the two Reading papers taking a modernised approach with the use of colour, compared to the Henley newspaper which used a gothic styled font and is kept black and white. This works nicely in the case of this newspaper as it has a tagline of “Delivering the news from Henley-on-Thames and South Oxfordshire for over 100 years”.
Moving swiftly on, I shall now be creating and sending out some questionnaires to be filled out by 10 people from the age range of 15+ in order to gather results on what should be in a local newspaper and what can be improved to make the newspaper a hit within a local society.
Hello and thank you for showing interest and participating in helping to create the ideal local newspaper for your local community. Please answer the following questions with a tick.
(1)How often do you prefer your local newspaper?
Daily?
Weekly?
Monthly?
(2)What attracts you to reading your local newspaper?
Sports?
Jobs?
News?
(3)In your newspaper which of the following would you prefer to be added? (choose one)
Music column?
Political Column?
Free ads?
Sports Column?
(4)What is your age range?
10-15?
16-18?
19-21?
22+?
(5)Which of the following newspaper names do you prefer? (choose one)
The Reading Herald?
The Reading Telegraph?
The Oracle?
Reading Times?
Reading Standard?
Reading Guardian?
Please return via post. Thank you for participating.
Having being provided with results from my questionnaire I have been able to turn that information into graphs. The use of the graphs has helped me come to the conclusion of how my newspaper shall look and the features it shall bare. The graphs can be seen below;
To conclude, by sending out these questionnaires in order to find out about newspapers i have gathered information from a vast set of age groups, from age 10 years to 22years +, it has allowed me to find features in which they want to find in common with my local newspaper, the request for news, music and sports columns. The public also helped to be sure on the name of my newspaper, most voting for The Reading News. I decided to take this information rather than scrap it because the newspaper is set to cater for people of all ages and the name provides a simple edge and competition against other manufactured newspapers, even with its simplicity.
For my newspaper I had to create hand drawn designs. This would be the foundations of what I would want my newspaper to looks like as it would give me a chance to note down colours or things such as background and fonts, font type and size and positioning of text and images when used. Below you can see the four different hand drawn designs I made, with two of them representing different design ideas of the front cover and the other two for the music and sports page;
I decided to use a focus group in order to gain feedback on my what I had created. By doing this it would help me to makeany improvements which would make it more professional and look like a newspaper. Below are some of the comments that I receieved;
"Personally it doesn't look like a newspaper, but more of a fanzine. I would make the newspaper title bigger on the main page and i would fill the space correctly with the story. I would also change the entire layout of the music page. The newspaper doesn't look right and needs a few changes." Nick Rickford
"I would change the size of the newspapers title to make it stand out more." Nick Beard
"I like the images but i would again change the layout of things in order to make it look like a newspaper" Jonathon Mahon-Daly
Okay, so the feedback wasn't directly positive however, it has led me to make a few changes in order to make it look like a magazine. The newspaper I had to start with was in A4 size, i decided to change this into A3 in order to make it realistically newspaper size. I then decided to completely change the layout and add more stories to the music page. By doing this it has allowed me make it more like a newspaper but for the local community. Please see this in the post listed as "The Final Newspaper".
The second main task in which was required was to create a poster which would be used within a magazine to advertise my magazine. the first thing i would have to do is look at other examples of newspapers being advertised and see what is common and what is different. By doing this it will help to make a poster which has the necessities of a trademark poster but also the original local twist to make it particularly unique to my own set of media products. To start i shall show you a few different styles of newspaper posters;
This is an example of a newspaper poster. This is a type of poster that would appear outside a shop or on a newspaper stand, where it would literally be used to advertise the main story headline to a passer-by. this is an effective type of advertisement as it would gain readers on a day whereas my poster is to attract long term buyers of my newspaper. This newspaper poster above would again appear on the street. It again follows the general rule of advertising the main headline from the newspaper which would attract custom to a newspaper stand. It uses colours which I would imagine are relevant to the newspaper and bares it on a plain white background in order to keep the general focus on the text in the middle. The main difference between this poster and the other is the location of the newspaper's title, which is now located at the bottom. This is good because it attracts people to read the whole of the poster to find what paper it is from but also it can be an eye-sore for people who are quickly glancing in order to grab a paper.
What I Discovered. From looking and deconstructing the two newspaper posters above I have found out that they like to use clear cut simplicity in order to gain the audiences attention. They use minimal colour, and if used it is relevent to the colour scheme of the newspaper. The text that has been used has been abrupt and placed in the centre making it clearly visible to gain attention. The only clear cut difference between the two is location of the newspaper logo. From looking at these two posters it has influenced me into doing a few things. I have decided to put my title at the top rather than in the middle, and fill the space in the middle with text, this way it will focus attention into what is being sold and also grab the readers attention. I have also decided because it is for use within a magazine that I will put an image of the front cover of my designed newspaper. I will do this so that the audience knows directly what is being advertised and it will also make it unique from other posters.
Before I created my final logo I had to create a hand drawn design of what I wanted my poster to look like. The idea of using a hand drawn design is to make sure that I plan what is going on it and where it will be positioned. It also gives me a chance to note down font which will be used and the size of it and finally any colours of background or text. By doing this it will allow me to keep to my deadlines. The hand drawn design can be seen below;
Here is my created poster. You can see here how It is similar to my handrawn designs which i created as a guidline of how things would be layed out. Please click on the image to see it in full scale.
The final segment of the jigsaw in me completing my A2 media coursework required me to create a radio advert. The purpose of this advert is simple, to advertise and promote my new local newspaper. To do this it required me to listen to radio adverts either through a radio system of via the internet. I listened to different styles of radio advert and gathered a few simple features about them;
Varied from 10-30 seconds long
Usually came via a group of adverts rather than being a stand alone advertisement
Local companies advertised on local radio, and national radio had an array of National companies and movies which would be global
The stations that I listened to where Reading 107-fm, BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio Berkshire. From this I decided to produce a script which would give me instructions on how long a clip would be, any sounds or music that would be used, any sound effects and the script of what would of course actually be said. A copy of this can be seen below;
In what ways does your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
My media product, a new local newspaper to an extent does challenge forms and conventions of a real local newspaper. My newspaper firstly directly challenges local newspaper which I’ve looked at by basing its story on page 2 towards music. This is generally rare within a newspaper as it would generally focus on the “big issue” of the time. I decided to challenge this as I feel local newspapers are a good means of advertisement around a community. Another reason I decided to use this as a main page is because music within the Reading community is a big feature, with festivals such as Reading Festival.
My newspapers layout challenged the conventions of a local newspaper. The main page looks more like a page from a national or global newspaper such as The Sun. This is evidential by the use of a columnist which is displayed on page with a bright blue background with white font over it to make it stand out from headlines. The layout also uses more than one story on a page. Within a local newspaper there is usually 1-3 stories per page, however my newspaper has 5. I decided to use this many as I thought it would fill the space more necessarily. I also did it this way so that there would be less pages in total making my newspaper much greener, if it was real.
The newspaper does follow some conventions of a real newspaper, the A3 sizing and the use of a large image on the front with large, bold text to stand out as a headline. It also follows the conventions of not using a barcode on the front; barcodes are usually found on the back however they can sometimes be placed on the front. The reason for me to do this is so that I had more room for a column to advertise a part of a story in order to provide an interest for people who would see it at a glance.
The poster in which I made is very different from conventional newspaper posters. During my research the posters I saw where generally black and white with bold text advertising the main headline of a newspaper. My poster doesn’t do this. It uses the headline of the newspaper in a similar fashion, being at the top but only being made large enough to fill the page rather than be seen on the newspaper where it was seen to advertise the newspapers name. The poster then uses an image which would be the main focus of my newspaper, which has been accustomed with suitable text advertising both the headline story and the newspaper page.
I decided to do it this way instead of following the basic conventions because it wouldn’t be suitable for the criteria, being suitable for use within a magazine. I also thought that by making it this way it would be more eye catching an exciting to see in a magazine. I also thought that the use of the stories on the poster would be suitable in advertising the whole of the newspaper rather than just an individual story on the newspapers name.
[Qualification]
The radio advert is very simple and yet follows the features and conventions of a real advert. Adverts have to be simple and short in order to be used within a short break on air. It follows the traditions of a real radio advert because it is between 20-30 seconds long but also uses a song in the background in order to keep a flow about it. I secondly decided to make it as one of three radio adverts as this would make it seem as if it was from a real radio show. By doing the above it made it very realistic but also within a set purpose advertising it well.
[Qualification]
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary task?
I personally think that my media product as a whole works very well, especially well after the changes in which was prescribed by my focus group feedback. I think the use of colour and font which links together throughout products makes it look as a collection of work rather than individual products. I think the way also that images between the paper based products work well together.
To an extent individually I think the products are probably more effective as they are used to advertise different things, the newspaper advertising and containing the story and the poster and radio advertising the newspaper as a whole. However hand in hand each of the products does work well with a fluent colour scheme, a fluent theme between radio, poster and newspaper e.g. stories.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Audience feedback has been a big help throughout the A2 sector of my coursework. By using my audience feedback in an array of different methods e.g. use of questionnaire and use of a focus group along with feedback through speech.
By using my audience feedback I have learnt there are certain things people wish to see within a local newspaper e.g. community news, sports, jobs and free ads. I also learnt that from the people who completed a questionnaire that they wanted to see the inclusion of a music column or page in order to promote the involvement of music within a community and local gigs as they felt this wasn’t advertised enough within a local newspaper and only in magazines.
I also learnt from their feedback that from my first draft of my products that people felt it needed a few changes such as, the change from A4 paper size to A3. The reason for them wanting me to do this is so that it would be similar to existing products and also that I could fit more information on it.
A final thing which audience feedback gave me was that the layout on the pages needed to have a few bolts tightened as such. They felt that on the front page that I needed to change a few things, they recommended that I used a barcode in which I decided against because I felt it would be more acceptable on the back of the newspaper. They also recommended that I move around my columns making them fit the page better. I decided to change this and with their feedback it made my newspaper feel more complete and look professional.
[Qualification]
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Media technologies were needed throughout the use of my media product. I used an array of different mediums in order to create my products. I used professional software’s such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe In-design and later I used Microsoft Publisher. By using this professional grade software it meant that I could create my products to the best of my ability, even when there was problems in gaining access to software and getting images which would be suited for my media piece.
During my planning I had to use both paper based and electronic means of media in order to gain knowledge on products and also how to note them down. Using such mediums as a BlogSpot it has allowed people, such as you to follow the story of how I planned and researched into creating my products.
Other technologies which were used throughout the use of my A2 coursework was the use of Camera (Digital SLR) and computer equipment and software.
