Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
In all stages of the coursework I have tried to portray the conventions of newspapers in my own media product. Although I tried to create a sense of originality to my work it still had to fit in with the conventions of Newspapers to become clear as to what it was I was introducing and promoting. As my newspaper shows the same text layout as other local newspapers like the ones I analyzed such as The Newshopper and The South London Press. This layout would consist of the text being in columns and aligned to the left to use most of the space that is available. Another similar example of a newspaper convention is the logo and Masthead at the top of the page. These are examples of how my newspaper is similar to other local newspapers that currently exist in the industry.
My newspaper also uses different forms and conventions of real media products as it uses much brighter colours than existing local newspapers. I had chosen to use brighter colours for the newspaper as we are targeting a new audience and had to draw attention to the reader to create a fan base and not blend in with other local newspapers. The brighter colours are also very attractive to a younger audience and this can broaden the audience originally targeted. The advertisements that are along the right hand side of the page are very associated to do with the community and is a very good prospect to small local companies in the area as on a new local newspaper, the audience are more likely to take and interest in the first issue than any other just to cast their views on it and purely for the nosiness factor. Another difference of forms and conventions to existing local newspapers is the newspapers Title/Masthead as although it is a continuous style of font and uses the same colour, it actually stands out more and makes a big impact on the page, this is down to the techniques I have used of Italics and different font of “Imprint MT Shadow” unlike the usual suspect fonts used in newspapers. The different sized fonts for “Kent” and “Flash” also looks unusual but is eye-catching as the word Flash is quite a strong word and the font is quite bold and the use of words and style in which it is written makes a big impression that looks like more of a symbolisation of the newspaper and not just a title. The title also doesn’t follow ordinary Black and easy to print conventions of a masthead as it is a bright blue and it makes more of an impact as it can’t be compared to any other newspaper as it looks that much livelier and therefore is typically more stylish and appealing to attracting young people as long as the correct criteria is also put in the newspaper which on this issue it does as one of the main articles is about a local Sixth Form college decorating their school. Although the conventions helped me in getting all 'settings' for a Newspaper, I needed to add my own and other original ideas from the audience so as to have an edge over the other many newspapers that are published in the area as in the first issue it is desperatly important to earn respect of readers and win the readers from other competitors in the Print Market.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
From my research I felt that the combination of products for the newspaper that promoted the main product had to be reflected in all the ancilliary texts with blended elements used on each of the ancillary tasks to make the newspaper as familiar to its new found audience as possible.
Also from the research I selected General Newspaper conventions and also Local knowledge to apply these conventions to creating my own Newspaper so as to meet the audiences criteria of what a local newspaper should do and I have followed this well as it meets all these targets and succeeds in capturing the readers attention and imagination along side the advertised ancillary texts and looking very attractive to the eye.
The effectiveness of my local newspaper achieves it expectations in respect that the audience feedback was good mainly throughout all the Newspaper
drafts and particaulrly in the final draft which I asked the questions to my audience,
"In this draft of a local newspaper, how well would you rate its appearance?"
"Do you think this would be a good enough issue to sell to a local community, despite the decline in local newspapers and the economical climate at the moment?"
"Would you be interested in reading this local newspaper and what is it that would draw you into reading?"
For the poster I had many different idea's all of which was manipulated and had different backgrounds and elements to them which represented different things, one of the drafts for example was "Kent Flash" on a background of a coloured barcode, the idea of barcode came from a "Sales" Perspective and the colours originated from the analysis of the guardian newspaper which I analysed and percieved the idea of colours to attract a larger audience that doesn't specifically apply to a certain group of people and is particularly effective in attracting young people.
However after evaluating my own draft I felt other than the representation of these elements the product didn't signify any real meaning as to what Kent Flash was and I wasn't able to add any more elements without the poster looking overcrowded and bombarbed with information unlike the basic poster yet energetic one by the Guardian which I based the original thought on.
My end version of the poster was an original idea, using the idea that "less is more" which I also found from the analysis of other newpaper posters. I tried to stick to this when designing but making it effective all the same when producing the poster. I think that overall the image makes the biggest statement on the photo with the text supporting the image. It is a very simple image but very appealing, the photo brings together a sense of community which is what the newspaper stands for and also is advertising for the local community, it also gives the audience the feeling and sense of home and British Traditions which today is admired by Society in Britain.
For the website I created alongside the poster, I took my time on it and after creating the Newspaper it was quite easy to add all the content as it was quite a lot of the same information I was using as it was all relevant and tied in with the newspaper format. I felt that Piczo, the programme used to design my website I was able to give the website a good format and portray an organised but effective and similar style to the newspaper, I had to add some extra content as I only created the first two pages of my Newspaper and therefore didnt include any articles of News updates which included Sport/Jobs/Property etc and there was a lot more pages and spaces to fill on the newspaper website but with the information I knew it was easy to create articles and use images on sport and leisure within my local area being that I am already part of the local community and can find out these things from most existing local newspapers anyway and using them again in basing conventions on. These extra pages also provide a larger balance of interests available for the audience so this ancillary text was probably the best in obtaining a larger audience that appeals to more people.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?
The audience feedback I have received has been very useful in selecting and viewing from the opinion of another reader how well each product is in terms of is it good enough for production, what could be enhanced and from this it has made me become more critical of my own work due to having discussions about the positive and negatives and finding out explanations as to why this was of their judgement, the positive feedback was very uplifting and very appreciated especially the detailed honest opinions of some. I am a highly critical person anyway of any tasks that I take on and so when receiving positive feedback I was pleased and it gave me a clear perspective on the product alone but when analysing afterwards I always looked at the product with an open mind and debated whether the positive feedback was accurate. I found that the views I did receive were quite unique and one persons view could differentiate from another quite substantially so my own personal feeling towards the products I had completed was the deciding cast on any amendments were needed. I found this was particularly the case with the poster as I had many unclear reviews which wasn’t beneficial to me as I had spent a lot of time on each however personally I couldn’t construct the poster in a media context to the way I wanted to and therefore used the initial conventions to work around it and see what I came up with. At the end of the day however I knew my opinion could bias feedback and so I tried to get as much feedback as possible so as the more I got, the more I could play around with the layout. The feedback from my teacher was good and also friends gave valid opinions. Any negative feedback I received I looked upon as constructive as there was always room for improvement, in most of the products. So for me Audience feedback was vital in producing something that I was completely satisfied and happy with that was successful in achieving its goal. On many occasions when the drafting of my newspaper and ancillary tasks were not fitting in with the standards I wanted them to be at and due to feedback, I started the task from scratch meant I felt huge disappointment however this only spurred me on to do better and I learnt from previous mistakes and could try many more idea’s and use different inspirations. In the long run scrapping of work was a good thing as it meant I had a lot more work to show and evaluate. I have included a copy of Audience feedback document under my blog which you will also find to back up this evaluation.
I recieved Audience feedback in many useful ways, including Social Networking sites such as Facebook, I thought this was a good way of asking friends. I also used questionnaires and also just by walking around and asking differnent people what their initial thought of the work was provided me with instantaneous honest and spontaneous reviews.
Afterwards I thought of a really good and useful way in which I could have asked for feedback. After emailing many editors of local newspapers from the Kent region regarding feedback I should have shown them the final product and asked for thier opinion, this would have benefited me in a major way because they have the background knowledge and this would have given me an insight into the Print Industry.

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
To achieve high standards in my media work, it is highly important to use media technologies for all processes.
For all sections of this work I have had to use technological devices
Programmes of media technology I used were was:
Internet (Blogger/Piczo/Google for finding sites useful for research)
Adobe Photoshop
Microsoft Publisher
Microsoft Word
Paint
To show use of different Media Technological Devices I also used for the first time, Apple Mac Computers and used the programme Adobe Idesign on them. However as I was a beginner in using it I found it a struggle to get used to it so decided not to waste any more time and so I reverted back to the original computer I was using.
For the research stage of the coursework, I was looking for designs and previous ideas of Local Newspapers as a starting point to base mine on and to find out the conventions of local Newspapers and to find out their values which I did using the Internet.
Also within the research stage I completed a questionnaire which enabled me to find out what readers wanted to see in Local Newspapers and I found that the overall concept was “It has to be local so therefore the information must be finds from the area however it must benefit the local community and they must be interested so aim everything towards them and involve them”.
The next stage was planning and designing a local newspaper so as I could carry out a basic layout and to add elements later, this included rough drawings and then uploading it to computer and creating the basic concept of it on the computer.
For the main part of creating the newspaper I used Microsoft publisher, this allowed me to work with both text and images easily and style in the perfect format I wanted. When getting together all my elements I used some of my own of which I took specifically for the Articles used both for the local Newspaper and Newspaper website, I then edited some of the images using Photoshop which enabled me to manipulate the pictures so they looked better in my production and was sized up well. It was quite difficult to use as it is quite a complicated programme but I had used it before so I knew all the basic skills to correct any imperfections on my photos.
In designing both the newspaper and poster was where I tried to use IDesign but switched back to Publisher which I found much easier to do, the only time any changes needed to be made was after audience feedback.
When creating my website, I started using Dreamweaver as I had previous experience of web designing before and using this particular programme but the problem I encountered here was loading it live on to the Web and it was hassle trying to use the one computer each time I needed to build on my website because only the one computer had the programme uploaded onto it and this proved difficult during school holidays as I couldn’t work on this part of the project which proved to be the most difficult for myself. There were a lot of limits also to the programme as it was an old version of Dreamweaver that was installed onto the computer and it was very difficult to do certain things on it. After some thought I used the Piczo website which is a website builder which allows you to build on for free and although it also had some limitations as I had wanted to upload a Search Bar onto my website, Piczo wouldn’t allow it so I had to overcome this but eventually I finished the website.
I was also knew to using Blogging and the account was set up and the more I used Blogger.com the more naturally it come to posting posts, and it actually is quite a simple and convenient way of sharing information and I prefer this way a lot more than handing in coursework in a paper format. The only problem I found with Blogger at the start was uploading documents to Google Docs as if I had a lot of elements on the page such as the Newspaper, it would loose its format so I just stuck to uploading most of my documents as pictures.
The Evaluation stage was no problem to me either, I can quite happily put my thoughts into writing and it was much easier for me to do that than to use any other methods of evaulating my coursework like the other two options of a video review or interview process although this would have been good and showed an array of "technological media" I felt more comforatble in using this process.

Final Piece

Newspaper

The Front Cover of my newspaper is based on the research of other local newspapers that I have analyzed from my area and from each one I have taken certain elements that I thought would be good to fit in to my layout. Although the newpaper looks quite colourful, I have only used basic primary colours as the format of my newpaper elements because in Print I don't want to create a sense of overcrowding and having the colour scheme simple means the printing of the newspaper would be easy, if the issue was to be printed in mass production then as most newspapers, the quality of paper and colours printed wouldn't be as bright and of poorer quality than the high resolution seen on the computer screen when in design stages. Although I think that as this a new newspaper that is being marketed and advertsied it needs to stand out from the other local newspapers, and on a shelf display the array of colour (used mainly on adverts and pictures) would certainly do that as it is eye-catching. The front cover as it stand is very eye catching more predominantly towards the Masthead which shows that it looks effective on the paper and eyecatching and hopefully will become recognisable. The audience will also become very drawn to the main articles images which are positioned in line to catch the eye of the reader, both of these images are very bold and bright, due to the quality of the photo's. On both pagesof the newspaper I have kept the Style the same, similar layouts of articles, same font used (Arial) which is clear and precise and easily readable even from a distance. Overall I am most pleased with the masthaead as although it didnt take me a long time to create I think it makes an big impact, its clear and bold but also lively. In comparison to other newspapers I have analysed such as The Newshopper, it is more unique.

Theories

The social responsibility model come into play in the article for support of the local election, the media of this article shows that the audience has their own moral obligation to society to provide adequate information for themselves and other citizens to make their own informed decisions. This theory used with my example also opposes the Marxist approach of the political economy theory as it is left overt with no manipulation, emphasis or propaganda on the audience to cast an opinion due to the spreading of news which bias different people’s views.
The Narrative theory plays a role in my work because the theory is based on the concept of storytelling and although it focuses essentially on fictional narrative, the narrative theory appears to have been the most important form of communication, now with all media outlets doing that job of informing and sharing information my work is affected as it is a media outlet shared locally but with the opportunity to be shared globally via the internet, the articles inform individuals to act within this narrative framework.
The concept of hegemony is used within my work as from the beginning in the research stages of the work I needed to identify the target audience in the local area and in doing this I had to assume the social domination by looking into the interests of a target market, it determines social class and status in not only ideologies but all realms of culture. Hegemony also looks into political ideology but the idea was disregarded under my work.
John B. Thompson’s theory of mass communication and modernity are related with newspaper and magazine publishing and the theory links well with my work, the nature of some of the articles I have written about features the personal involvement of many people such as the article I have used for the Dartford Power Cut, the term ‘communication’ within the theory
Therefore, the term 'communication' in this context masks the individual’s social involvement within the media industry but promotes interpersonal communication.
The term mass within the theory refers to the products available for recipients and under the brief for the work I have done, as well as a newspaper, a website and a poster are specifically required and this is down to the modern advancement in media technology and the ways in which due to this, communication methods are made easy.

Poster

Final

This is the final Draft of my poster, I think that it looks quite basic but the photo is effective in believing that the newspaper is genuine and is portrays a representation of how newspapers serve their purpose and the other attraction is the advertisment of drink and ai in future the reader makes a cup of tea they could associate it with Kent Flash. The Text is particulary effective also, written in the same follow on font and the slogan "What Kents waking up to" means that the audience can rely on it and expect the newspaper in the morning, just before work or to sit and read whilst having breakfast.

Newspaper Drafts

This Newspaper Draft was one of the last Newspaper Drafts I created which I based on the idea of the Poster by the Guardian which I analysed and found the use of colours significany in appealing to a larger base of audience even though I had focused on targeting a particular audience of 18 +, I had hoped that I could broaden this with the use of eye catching elements. However I felt that this poster didnt look like much of a poster, it didnt specify its relevance as to what Kent Flash stood for and portrayed and after trying to add other elements the poster looked to busy and the poster wasn't being carried through with its use of predominant elements into this ancillary task.

This was another draft I made, the newspaper ransom effect cuttings are a very good idea but the quality is quite bad as teh newspaper cuttings were photographed then uploaded and edited and to me doesn't look entirely proffesional or meet the target audience's perception of the newspaper as the newspaper looks to be so much better. If I was to use a poster like this once the newspaper was established it might work as this idea is quite a good concept however as it is a New local newspaper, the audience won't know what Kent Flash is, it doesn't serve good advertising purposes and so overall this kind of material wouldn't be effective in associating the two products together and not suitable for a final poster.

Website

http://www.kentflash.piczo.com/

Online Journalism has become extremely popular in the last decade and it is probably just as important for large Print Companies to focus on updating the online newspaper version as it is the Newspapers themselves.

This is the Homepage for my Kent Flash Website, I had to do quite a lot of research into the conventions of journalism websites and I think I have demonstrated this well on the Homepage, this is where most of the criteria is on as it is the first page the reader will see and the first page in which they will cast their judge on. I have Included text to welcome readers to the website, Clear and Easy links, Title to reinforce each pages, Advertisments which is key to most media nowadays, Pictures (Including Newspaper picture) To capture the readers attention and also to make them aware of the Newspaper and the appearance of it so when it is in shops they can recognise it. Also I have a box down the left hand side of the page which is supposed to be links to your area's news however there were limitations to this and I could do that and I didnt have all the information to link as a news page for that large number of towns listed on the left hand side even though I'd have liked to have completed this aswell as more pictures, links, and News Articles if I'd have had more time and then I could have created the a full website that could actually be considered and ready for publishing.

I would say the part I struggled with most was the hyperlinks, although we only needed Two Hyperlinked Pages, I did do a few more just so as the website could flow better, and hold more information and overall impress and appeal to more people. For the first 2 pages (Home and News) I had most of the content which I used on the Newspaper. But alot more of the content was needed for the Newspaper as most newspapers cover Sport/Leisure/Gossip Topics for thier audience and I definitly needed to do this on my local Newspaper to ensure I can call out to a range of people. So I then had to find more content on the net and also Primarily Use research to go out and find events/activities making place and then make up the Articles.

Poster Research

The Sun is definitely the leader of the newspaper market, having sold no less than 7860,000 copies per day over the last year, which is almost twice the number of the copies sold by its closest contender, The Daily Mail who's sale are at 4846,000according to the National Readership Survey.
The First Posters/Advertisement for The Sun is a very clever way of advertising the paper, it is just one basic image used but creates a powerful and eyecatching feel to it. The 3 men on the image are Terry Venables, Ian Wright and Harry Redknapp. They are instantly recognisable faces and very influentual to English football which is a very popular sport within the U.K and also famous outside of the U.K. They are also part of the "Celebrity Culture" of today which has become a fascination and obsession to alot of people in the U.K within the past 5-10 years. Of which The Sun Newspaper has played a very important role in as this tabloid report on scandalous stories of celebrities all the time and nowadays it is what the audience want to read.
The angle of which the photo has been taken is a very close up shot of the sports stars faces, immediatly the reader is drawn in by the eyes of the 3 men staring of which looks to be directly at the reader to get the reader gripped and involved.
The shading of the image emphasises the photo more to make the men look even more powerful. In my opinion this poster/advert is directed towards men as I personally think that The Sun does have more of a male fanbase of readers, after researching this I found my statement to be true as the frequent use of incentive images and stories seem to convince a higher number of men to read it in comparison to women (4356,000 – 3504,000), even though the difference is not that obvious.
The 3 men in the image probably would have been carefully picked out to star in this photograph to get the correct mixture of people who are involved with The Sun and also to target certain readers such as people from different ages. I.E - (Terry Venables is older and he is a footballing Legend), Race (Ian Wright who has been a successful player for many years although born in this country is from a different nationality) and Backgrounds (Unlike the other two men, Harry Redknapps career is Famous Football Mangager). The only unclear reader it doesnt specifically target to is typically women.

This poster seems to focus on Value for money rather than the stories included in the newspaper. The till reciept is especially effective as people are interested in value for money especially as it is a recent poster and it makes its own statement in Britains Financial Climate currently. This image shows readers exactly what they can get for 30p. And it has reading material for people of all ages and all genders.
The colours are quite dull and neutral which works well because that it most effective and it makes The Sun logo stand out in its recognisable Red Colouring.

This promotional poster showing the top half of a woman with ten-pence coins covering each of her breasts—released by Rupert Murdoch‘s The Sun newspaper was advertised on the side of buses, once released it was quite a controversial advert and recieved 56 complaints.
The Objections related to women being portrayed as sexual objects, the ads appearing on buses where children could view them, and also that the image was pornographic.
However the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled the poster as not offensive or pornographic and said: “whilst distasteful to some, was not overtly sexual in nature and the amount of flesh revealed was no different to that in a bikini ad and could not reasonably be argued to be pornographic or likely to cause serious or widespread offence.”
Personally I think that this poster is a good representation of popular features in The Sun and it is cultural to todays society and can be viewed humourous. Although I think the poster being showed in a very public place can always offend some.



The Guardian

This poster image is a very creative design that is very eye-catching and bold, the poster has a retro feel to it but other than the use of many colours, the elements are very minimalistic but still outstanding. There are many conventions to the poster, it is very brigt and colourful which is attractive to the eye and instantly evident. Unlike the first poster ad I mentioned above by The Sun this ad doesn't come across as gender specific, the mixture of colours suggests the newspaper can be viewed by any gender with the use of pink and blue colours which represents men and women. The bright colours could be viewed to targetting young people and so age isn't discriminated either in this poster. The text in this poster backs these points up also as this also doesn't specifically target any one type of audience.

The fact that the poster has the newspapers web address on would instantly make you think that the website is being promoted but the instinctive bold "The Guardian" label recognises both the newspaper and website in the one poster which is a clever and manipulating way of enticing the reader to pay attention to both of these media products.

The Text next to the image says: When you're owned by no one, no one controls what you say, You're free to say whatever needs to be said, Inconvenient for some, Great for the rest of us.
This is quite a dramatic and forceful statement, it suggests power of speech which is a very respected priveledge which we have in this country and this quote particularly emphasises the importance of it by the use that this Newspaper can promote peoples opinion. The quote cleverly acknowledges the opinions of its readers by being written as an individual impression of freedom of opinion although the quote is being represented on behalf of this large global media company who can influence the majority of peoples opinions by manipulation of words to create a strong statement in a context that makes a big impact. Although unknown to us who wrote the quote, the last sentence suggests it was probably an editor from the Guardian.



These are some more posters from the Guardian, which all follows the same house style. Reason for this could be to associate the Posters with the Newspaper. Again it incoorporates much of the same elements. After looking at all 4 posters the key part seems to be the Quotes used as they are what represents what the newspaper is all about and their beliefs. Aswell as advertising for readers of the newspaper, I think that it is also advertising the Newspapers purpose to attract a new set of readers because typically the social status of the reader is people with a higher education and income.

Table of Sources - Copyright