My Website

Website Research

In my research for my website I discovered that must local newspaper sites like to section off their news into sections such as Weather, News, Top Story, sport and education. In keeping with this I too have decided to use this and have sectioned my website accordingly.

The Times uses colour coding to make the different content sections easier to read and navigate, I have used this convention on my website for the same effect.

My Poster

I decided to make my poster in the style of the popular iPad adverts that many newspapers have been using to show that their newspapers are viewable on iPad and Kindle.

I took a photo of my iPad and edited the screen out, I placed in on a blue background










I decided to put an article on the newspaper to show that you can read it on the iPad and how it would look









With the text in columns I added a slogan using synthetic personalisation with the personal pronoun "you" to encourage the reader to read my newspaper.






My poster would be displayed on small billboards in trains and on the side of vending machines I have made the text large enough to be able to read so that people do not think I am advertising an iPad.

In my research I found that the image takes up most of the space with very little text. I have attempted to mimic this although I still have the a lot of text. The iPad advert is iconic and can be seen everywhere, most newspapers have had an iPad advert.

My Newspaper

My local newspaper is aimed at the middle class to upper class citizens of the Dengie it is important that the newspaper represents its target audience. My newspaper is unconventional in the sense that it is a broadsheet local newspaper which is uncommon as usually all local newspapers are tabloid in style and genre for example The Metro and The Echo.

As my newspaper is a local newspaper the cultural codes and conventions are only relevant to the people of the Dengie as it is representing these people.

The writer reader relationship or use synthetic personalisation is important as the reader must believe that the writer has knowledge of the local area and understands what is important to the people of the area. This is especially true for a local newspaper as the audience will buy this newspaper as they want to know about the local area and what is happening in it. Newspapers need to appeal to a large audience some newspapers however appeal more to males than females such as, The Sun which uses gendered speech, has page 3 and has a large sports pull out every Monday that takes up most of the newspaper. My local newspaper I feel appeals to both sexes equally I have used neutral colours combined with black and white to ensure it is aesthetically pleasing to both genders.

On evaluation, If I was to do this project again I think I would create sections of the paper for men and women. The Sun and The Times both have sections for women, including style fashion and diet.

Representation of an audience is a difficult process for producers and editors. Many companies are taken to court over the way they represent people in the media. The chomsky propaganda model argues that five filters affect the way media is represented

1. Finance
2. Ownership
3. Flak
4. Anti-ideologies
   
5. Sources

All the content in my newspaper has not passed through any filters which is similar to all local newspapers as they do not have the budget that national newspapers have that they achieve through their advertising. Local newspapers have to source all the content themselves they cannot afford Reuters to provide them with the information needed for stories. This means that the news has gone through less filters than national newspapers.

Todorov theorizes that all narrative structures have an equilibrium which has a disruption which then resolves back to an equilibrium or a new equilibrium, however newspaper stories are usually open ended in narrative. For example in my newspaper the story concerning the nuclear power plant is an ongoing open ended narrative so this theory does not apply always to newspapers

Todorov – equilibrium through a disruption to a new equilibrium, however newspaper does not always have an ending as it’s an open ended narrative.

My masthead

My newspaper is a local newspaper however I have decided to use conventions of a national newspaper namely The Daily Telegraph. I think that the font works well with the image that the newspaper and its audience produces and expects. The blue behind the font is symbolic as Burnham is a sailing town where most of the population has connections with the river.

The masthead was created in photoshop

Example mastheads

Mastheads are very similar both in national and local newspapers they seem to follow the same pattern of white on red or black on white text to make the mastheads pronounced and stand out.

The former are called red tops which are generally the tabloids. The broadsheets tend to use the black on white. As my newspaper is a local broadsheet newspaper I will be using the black text on a white background convention. The masthead is the first part of a newspaper the customer will see so it is important that it is recognizable. A logo can also be included but I have decided not to include one as I feel it makes the paper look less of a broadsheet.

Example Layouts of newspapers

Newspaper font pages

Newspaper pages are put together with a set layout. Some newspapers keep to it on a day to day basis but most varies each day. The metro usually has a set three piece layout with a headline a large picture and the rest are columns of text.

The metro however is more of a tabloid local newspaper and I am aiming for a broadsheet local newspaper. For this I will include more text and a smaller sized picture.