Evaluation

We were given the brief to design a local newspaper for a local area of our choice, I decided to produce a local newspaper for the Dengie Peninsula. There is already a tabloid styled local newspaper so I decided to make a broadsheet local newspaper to fill the gap in the market.

My newspaper follows the conventions of the Maldon and Burnham Standard, The Times and The Echo in style especially with the websites. My audience is both male and female middle to upper class citizens of the Dengie who would be interested in the news in their local area.

My front cover was based on the layout of a metro newspaper. I believe that this local newspaper's layout is clear, concise and aesthetically pleasing with a balance of images and text. However, my local newspaper features one large image to draw the reader in. In this sense my local newspaper has more text than other local newspapers on the front page so I am breaking the convention. I included one image and one advert to make the newspaper appear as a broadsheet. If I had made my front page again I would have made the headline for my main article differently as at the moment it does not look particulary good on the background of the main image of the harbour.

I made the advert in an art programme called sai which is a Japanese programme that has many preset shapes, I made it with a graphics tablet. I believe the colour and design suits the newspaper and the venue very well.

My articles are entirely focused on the local area and what matters to the people in them, my target audience. One of the articles on the front cover continues into the newspaper, this would encourage the customer to buy my newspaper over a competitor to find out what happens. All of my articles use size 8 Times New Roman font for the main body text of the newspaper because this is the font used by broadsheet newspapers such as, The Times. This font looks professional being a serif font means that is appeals more to an intelluctual audience than a sans serif font such as, Arial.

My second page of my local newspaper follows the same conventions and style as my front page. I used again mostly text with only a few images following the convention of a broadsheet newspaper rather than a tabloid local newspaper. I added a coupon for a local small zoo in the dengie which is a way of recording customer loyalty. I used cutting lines to show that the coupon is meant to be cut out. I am pleased with my second page as it features many articles with few images like the newspapers that I based it off, I believe that it looks professional and the content will clearly appeal to its target audience. If I had done the page again I would have rearranged the columns so that the coupon could be at the bottom of the page.

My idea for a poster came from seeing similiar style iPad posters on the side of vending machines in many train stations, as well as on the side of phone boxes and bus shelters. My poster is a photo of my iPad Photoshopped so that the screen would display an article of my newspaper. This advert would be successful as it would make the newspaper appealing to people who want to read the news on a device such as an iPad or the AmazonKindle. The slogan "Local News That Matters To You" would draw the reader in because of the person pronoun "you".

My website followed the conventions of the echo and maldon and burnhams newspaper websites they both had the same layout and on further research it appeared that most local websites follow the same layout. Using this I used similar content areas for my website, with an area for news and education on the front page. Being a local newspaper I noticed that there was always a section for local jobs on the website so I added this and a weather report which is equally important to a local newspaper website. These can be viewed on any page of the website.
My articles include the top story from the newspaper and featured similar narratives to the articles in my newspaper. I used matching colours in my link bar in a similar way to The Times does which featured roll overs changing the colour of the link to show what you had highlighted. This was made using a simple colour changed image rolling over the previous one. I made my website in dreamweaver which enabled easy linking and alignment of images. I sliced my pages into 3 sections which made it easier to edit the link bar. I am pleased with the finished product and I have developed my skills with dreamweaver a programme I have never used before.

If I were to do the project again I would have spent more time on the website to produce a more aesthetically pleasing finished product that better represented the community. I used Photoshop to create my masthead, my website pages and my poster. The layer tool is very useful being able to section out areas making them easily able to be edited with stroke and other image effects. InDesign was used to make the newspaper which is useful for easy column linking which was important for my newspaper as it featured mainly text, the layout suited my genre of newspaper. Both these programmes made me able to represent the community positively. I believe I have given the local community a newspaper that represents their needs.

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.