Evaluation (Script)

Question 1:

As my newspaper was intended for a local audience it was better for it to be a broadsheet rather than a tabloid style because the new stories in local newspapers needed to be grounded in reality so that the audience can connect with them rather than the more ‘sensational’ stories that are found in the tabloids that populate the national press. This can be seen in my product with the main story being about more tedious things such as where the police decide to park their cars and other smaller stories being about local schools, new housing estates, cinemas and sports teams which are more easily applicable to a local audience.

In terms of a newspaper a masthead is the title of the newspaper which is on the first page of the newspaper and is usually located in the top left hand corner of the page, for example the masthead of my newspaper is ‘Bristol Chronicle’. The main requirement for a newspaper masthead is that it news to be eye-catching in order to get the attention of potential readers and conventionally most mastheads are usually in a different font compared to other writing in the newspaper and some others are even different colours. An example of this is the ‘North Somerset Times’ and the ‘Bristol Post’ which are predominately blue rather than black, which is considered to be the norm, and my newspaper follows this convention as my masthead, ‘Bristol Chronicle’ is also predominately blue. The masthead of my newspaper is also conventional because it is emboldened and not in Times New Roman font like the rest of the writing on the page. It is also common that mastheads are very large and are usually on the largest items on the page and this is so that the masthead sticks out so that it can grab the attention of the readers and thus make it a more recognisable brand.

Headlines are commonly one of the largest aspects of the front page and are slightly smaller than the masthead, however unlike the masthead they are normally in the same font as the writing in the news stories and this is commonly Times New Roman. Headlines can be used in a variety of ways, for example these exemplar headlines from the North Somerset Times which read, “Villagers take to polls over ‘unacceptable’ housing” and “’Fury’ spurs on campaigners”. In these two headlines, emphasis is placed on the words unacceptable and fury and this done through placing apostrophes on the individual words and this draws the reader’s attention to each respective word as they have been separated from the rest of the sentence. Some headlines are all capitalised which places more emphasis on the headline as the capitalised letters make the headline standout more to potential readers. This is generally used in order to provoke a reaction from the reader and make them want to read on. Other headlines consist of rhetorical questions such as “Weston’s best ever?” and this urges readers to read on and make a judgement for themselves regarding the headline. This can also been seen in my product both the headlines of my lead stories on each page are both rhetorical questions; “Portishead Police Parking Controversy?” and “Potential Road Blockages nearby Gordano School?”, and this usage of a rhetorical question urges to read on and make a judgement for themselves. Also, one  of the headlines on the second page of my newspaper which is “Trump’s win creates uncertainty for Bristol businesses” is also similar to the exemplar headlines.

It was of paramount importance that the news stories I used were ‘simplified’ for a local audience so that it could be considered a broadsheet and not a tabloid. I believed this was achieved because the news stories that were in full and not snippets of stories that would theoretically appear later in the newspaper and this is a more common occurrence in a broadsheet rather than a tabloid. Case in point, my lead story was about how local residents of Portishead who were displeased with the police blocking the roads and this type of news story would be less likely to appear in a national newspaper such as the Guardian or the Sun and is more likely to appear in a local newspaper due to how tedious they are. Another example of this is the first large story on page two which is about how the results of the US presidential election have effected local businesses in Bristol and the emphasis is on the reactions of those living in a local area, such as Bristol, rather than on a national scale. 

Other conventions that my product used are the more general conventions that are mainstays in newspapers and this includes things such as the masthead, the main headline, the main image and advertisements. The front page of my newspaper is a very conventional to the norms of newspapers with the lead story being near the centre of the page and it is accompanied by an image which has a caption linking it to the lead story and above these is an emboldened headline ‘Portishead Police Parking Controversy’ which would grab the attention of potential readers. The more prominent parts; such as the main and lead story, of the front page are in the centre of the page, with the exception of the masthead, which emphasises their importance which the other less important things, such as adverts and short previews for later news stories, being the periphery of the page.

On the other hand, page two is quite unconventional in comparison to its front page counterpart and this is because there are two main stories and only one of which had an image to accompany it and the other two stories on the page were only previews for news stories that would theoretically reappear later in the newspaper. In this regard, the page two of the newspaper could be considered to be more reminiscent of a magazine rather than a newspaper. The only other images present on my page two are the main image linked with the lead story of page two and both of the adverts on this page have accompany images to better help advertise their products. In comparison to other more conventional local newspapers where on page two there is more of a focus on images rather than the actual stories which was the opposite to what I did. Whilst my product is broadsheet newspaper it does take some elements of a tabloid newspaper, case in point how my newspaper frequently refers to things that could be considered to be not for a ‘local’ audience such as famous actors, TV shows and sports teams that are intended for a national audience and even the effects of the US presidential election. Despite this, there are still news stories on page two that are aimed at a local audience, for example there is a news story about what’s on at a local cinema, the Curzon, and a story about new housing estates being built in Portishead nearby Gordano School. However, from what I learned in my research and planning this can be relatively common trope in local newspapers for example, local newspapers such as the Bristol Post and North Somerset at times have films reviews and sports reports that could be aimed at a more national audience and this is not too dissimilar to my finished product. 

Question 2:
  How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

In my research for the ancillary task which was radio adverts I had to identify the conventions of radio adverts that are in conjunction with newspapers and specifically local newspapers, as mentioned before in the above paragraph. The research and planning determined that conventional adverts found with newspapers are between 30 seconds to a minute and this means that in this aspect my radio advert is conventional because it just under 45 seconds long.

The length of the radio advert means that it has to brief and straight to the point so that it does not bore the viewer if it goes on for too long but if the advert is too short then the viewer would not get enough information to become interested in the newspaper so the advert has make the newspaper stand out to the potential readers and viewers. Radio adverts would be more appealing to a local audience because it is extremely common that people in more rural and local areas are more likely to the local radio rather the national radio on their way somewhere most likely on their way to work because, for example, they wish to know the state of traffic on their way to work.

From my research and planning of radio adverts I concluded that the type of radio advert that would be best suited for a local newspaper would be a testimonial advertisement which contains endorsements from ‘ordinary citizens’ in order the benefit the product and this would be better for a local audience because the target audience which is made up of local and ordinary people would better apply themselves to the people in the advert and want to read the newspaper. Testimonial adverts are a type of ‘soft sell’ method of advertising that places more emphasis on a more subtle and friendly sales message as shown by how testimonial adverts have endorsements from ‘ordinary citizens’ in order to better apply themselves to the target audience.

It is especially common that radio adverts end with an endorsement that urges viewers to go to an external source and specifically a website to learn the benefits of reading their newspapers and this is more of a ‘hard sell’ method of advertising as it more overt and direct sales messages to get people to buy the product and my radio advertisement does this as well as it ends with the same type of message that urges viewers to go to the Bristol Chronicle website in order to learn more about the newspaper meaning that in this regard my radio advert is more conventional.

The other ancillary task I had to complete was the billboard advertisement, this is a type of advertising that would be located outdoors, usually on large buildings and walls, that are found in high-traffic areas so that passersby that include pedestrians and drivers can easily view them. Conventionally, these billboard advertisements are very large and contain witty slogans and distinctive visuals. National newspapers are more likely to have these billboards outside in the open where they are more easily viewed and this is because they can more easily afford them, whilst on the other hand local newspapers are more likely to have billboards on ‘sandwich boards’ which are composed of two boards on each side and are usually set up in a triangular shape nearby local stores on a high street.

The use of synergy that links the ancillary tasks to the actual newspaper is crucial in making it a more believable and realistic newspaper and my ancillaries do this because it refers to ‘film previews’ and ‘sports report’ which are things that referred to in the second page of my newspaper and these references are both brief stories that previews news stories that would theoretically appear later on in the newspaper. Another example of this is that my ancillary tasks, both the radio advert and the billboard advert, both refer to a website link that is found on the second page of my newspaper. This synergy in my ancillaries and the newspaper creates a better sense of continuity between the main product and its ancillaries, which makes it more conventional, and more like a proper newspaper, which in turn makes a better final product. 

Question 3:
What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The audience survey I did for my researching and planning was one of the important things I did in my research and planning as it formed the basis for what would be in my newspaper. Using my research and planning I had already identified what the common conventions of local newspapers are and which ones I would use in my product but the audience survey assisted in determining how I would write the actual news stories in the product. The entire point of the audience survey was to see what the target audience, in this case a local audience, would think would be in a newspaper.

I used a website called SurveyMonkey to find the data for my audience survey and it contained 10 questions which ranged from how long it took for people to read newspapers to what type of newspapers they tended to read. From the results of my audience survey I concluded that my target audience would be people who were male and between the ages of 25 to 35 and this was because they were more likely to get hard copies of the newspaper through a subscription rather than the alternative which is an online subscription using the newspaper’s online website.

The results of my audience survey also told me that my target audience took between 11 to 20 minutes to read their newspapers and this meant that my newspaper would have a variety of news stories in order to keep people interested in the newspapers and that these news stories also had to stand out in order for my audience to read them. This variation in stories would cause members of the target audience to seek out certain stories in order to satisfy their needs, as theorised by the uses and gratification model of audience feedback.

From these results I was also able to conclude that it was better to use a broadsheet for my newspaper because a newspaper format which had more serious but less ‘sensational’ stories would be more beneficial to my product and I felt that this would be better for a localised audience because the more serious news stories would better apply to them rather than the more sensationalist stories that are commonly found in national newspapers. Also, the results of the audience survey told me that my newspaper would have to contain elements of both tabloids and broadsheets so that my target audience would be more interested in reading my newspaper and that the audience of my product would find it entertaining.

From the results of my media survey I was able to conclude that much of my target preferred national newspapers over local newspaper which give credence to why I chose to have elements of a tabloids in my broadsheet newspaper in order to them interested in my newspaper because it’s possible that the more serious type of news stories commonly found in local newspapers may have been more menial and tedious to them. This could mean that if, theoretically, my product were to be sold in stores then it is possible that my target audience would find my newspaper to be not very interesting and possibly even boring, so the usage of more tabloid elements in my newspaper was to make it more entertaining to the audience.

Although the results of my audience survey determined that my target audience would be more interested in tabloids rather than broadsheets, the data from the local newspapers that I found in my research and planning suggested that it was more conventional for my local newspaper to be a broadsheet as local people would be able to easier apply themselves to the less sensational stories that are found in broadsheets so it was because of the information I found in my research and planning that determined that my local newspaper should be a broadsheet because it makes it more conventional and therefore more realistic to what a real local newspaper would be like.

Question 4:
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

I used various media technologies in order to create my media product and the research and planning that went into it.  The main part of my research and planning was done on Blogger which is unsurprisingly a blogging site and my personal blog contained 27 blogs which were frequently added over the time in which I completed my coursework. Even though my blog from A2 coursework contained slightly less blogs compared to my AS coursework the amount of detail that went into them makes up for that small flaw. Multiple media technologies were used on this blog in order to make it more interesting and display my understanding of these media technologies. For example some of the technologies that were used most repeatedly used on my blog were Prezi and SlideShare with my blog containing 8 blogs that contained either a prezi or a slideshare and this is around a third of the blogs on my Blogger account. The function of SlideShare is that it is basically an online PowerPoint presentation that is derived from the PowerPoint’s I made on Microsoft PowerPoint and on the other hand, Prezi is another online presentation format that contains elements from a mind map. I also frequently used websites, such as Google, to find information that was relevant to my research and planning and later I used the aforementioned SurveyMonkey in order to create my audience survey. 

The result of this was that it made my newspaper look more professional and more like a real-life newspaper as the usage on layers on InDesign meant that my newspaper pages were formatted properly. The size of these layers could also vary in size and this meant that it didn’t look as if all the elements of my newspaper were all crammed into one single page. Also, the layers also had different colours associated with them so that it was easier to organise what was on the pages of my product. InDesign was very effective in creating a realistic newspaper which was crucial in making the best possible final product and the usage of InDesign meant that the newspaper pages were better organised and formatted which made the newspaper appear more professional as my newspaper pages were all formatted properly and didn’t make it appear as if all the features of my newspaper were all crammed onto one page.