Many newspaper companies incorporate a colour scheme into their newspaper products to help show a link between products. The newspaper, website, and billboards will all use the same colour scheme.
Product 1: The Sun (click image to enlarge)
Products dated: Jan 2nd, 2016.
Newspaper
Website
Product 2: The Daily Mail (click image to enlarge):
Products dated: Jan 2nd, 2016.
In this newspaper, I will be looking into three existing types of newspapers, and discovering the comparisons between them.
To conclude, all three different "types" of newspapers produce different content. The three different types of newspapers can voice their different opinions towards articles, to make all newspapers different. Opinions within newspapers can be seen, mainly for political reasons, which could cause different people to purchase these newspapers, meaning the different newspapers can get different audiences.
The aim of a newspaper is to inform readers about current affairs, written as ‘articles’.
An article includes the following:
Headlines summarize the article in a small sentence. This will be seen in large bold text, which could interest the reader. This can either be serious, or humorous, depending on the newspaper or article. The Sun, a tabloid, may include a joke or pun within the headline, while The Telegraph, a broadsheet, may have a serious headline. Some headlines include quotes from, or the opinion of a person. Other headlines may include alliteration. Headlines are sometimes written fully in capital letters, while others use little capital letters. This could be because they want the reader to be drawn to certain articles, which could be more informative, compared to other articles. These will be written in large, bold text.
Sub-headers, will expand on the headline in more detail, and will give a brief explanation about what is occurring. These will be below the headline, in a smaller sized font, and is sometimes underlined.
The Main body is where the main article is written. Written in paragraphs, the body opens with a sentence or two, which introduces the article for the reader. These are written in past tense, unless they are stating something that will occur in the future. The first word in the article of most articles is written in capital letters. This could be used to draw attention to the start of the article.
Photographs, which are usually included in most articles. They are relevant to the article (e.g. a person involved, a place of where an event occurred)
A Caption will be included below the photograph, to describe what is in the photograph. It may also give the reader more information about the event.
Newspaper articles are usually written in columns, which is used to structure the newspaper.
What else is included within newspapers? Mastheads are the headers of newspaper front pages. These tell the reader information such as the newspaper name, price and the issue date. Advertisements for companies and products are also included within newspapers, either taking up a section of a page, or sometimes take up a full page, allow readers to find products which they might be looking to purchase. Interactive reader features, such as reader letters, allow readers to voice their opinion or search for advice on a topic. These allow readers to contribute their voice and get involved in the newspaper.
Pages dedicated to housing, job, vehicle and theatre listings are included in newspapers, mainly local newspapers, to allow people to find items.
Audience Research:
Articles, advertisements, celebrity news, local news (e.g. fete/carnival), and large images and headline, with a taster of an article would attract the attention of people if they purchased a newspaper. Including all these conventions would follow the main features of a newspaper. Some of these features I would expect to include in a newspaper. However, I would not expect celebrity news to be featured within a local newspaper, as that type of news does not usually affect a local area.
Headlines are often short and straight to the point. They use small words in a way to make an impact to the audience to grab their attention. Strong words can be used such as 'Trolls' or 'Thugs' to help emphasis a story too. Some articles use a 'play-on-words' to help draw in the attention of a reader, or use puns to draw the attention (seen in The Sun example above). Some article headlines use alliteration, where an article uses words that begin with the same letter, or words that sound similar. Examples below include "Terror Target Sugar", and "Labour's Lost It". This means it can be memorable for readers, meaning they can then pass this information on to others.
Audience Research:
A large, short&snappy headline that is eye-catching would be what people expect in a newspaper deadline.
Examples of Headlines in Local Papers:
Local newspapers include a range of headlines that summarizes an article. Examples of current headlines that feature in the Halstead Gazette include the following:
Town's property prices rose 10% during 2015
This article focuses on property prices during the previous year, and includes a statistic to back-up the point.
Colchester Stagecoach students wow the West End
This article focuses on a group of students performing a theater event, which was positively praised. Alliteration is included with 'wow the West End', while the name of the people involved has been included, to make it focused on them.
Women assaulted in Halstead
This article focuses on an assault in a local town. The headline is short and snappy, meaning it could be easy to remember.
Hundreds turn out to see Boxing Day hunt
This article focuses on a village's Boxing Day tradition working with a horse hunt group. 'Hundreds' is written in the article to include a statistic to show how many people attended.
From this, I can conclude most of these headlines are short and snappy, while statistics are included in some. I will use this as inspiration for my headlines which I will use in my final task.
Many stories featured in local newspapers will have some kind of relation to the location or local citizens in the area that the newspaper is featured in. For example, articles in the Halstead Gazette will have stories related to places around the Halstead region.
Screenshot from Halstead Gazette website, showing multiple news stories
The website shows that there are a range of happy, upbeat stories, while others stories are more serious, and negative. The happy stories (e.g. "More than 50 entries in Halstead school's bake-off competition") can give a positive mood, which could show there is a sense of community in the area. However, negative stories (e.g. "Residents concerned over boy racer driving up and down their street") can give a serious point, which could alert people.
Examples of two contrasting stories, seen on the Halstead Gazette website
As well as main news stories, newspapers also include items such as sport articles, articles on job opportunities, upcoming events, as well as others.
Looking at a second newspaper, in comparison, the Liverpool Echo, has a large number of articles, seen on the website, which are highly negative. The articles featured are all revolving around people and places within the Liverpool area.
The two stories seen here show a weather event and a traffic incident. The story titled "Tragedy as woman dies..." is a negative event which could show grief to people who live nearby or were affected by the story. This story can also alert people. The right story ("...Upside down rainbow...) could interest local residents and readers, because it is showing something different that not many people seen. This could be seen as a story that is positive, because there is nothing negative within the story. Some news articles need to be careful with the image they include, as some images could give a negative response, or upset the audience.
To conclude, I feel newspapers print and produce a range of positive and negative stories that can alert people about current incidents and affairs. Some of these incidents could cause people to take action or cause people to become involved.
Newspapers are an informative piece that is used to inform readers about events that have occurred recently. Because of this, newspapers will usually be written formally. The majority of the articles featured within news happened in the past, so newspaper editors tend to write using the past tense.
Stories will begin with a simple opening statement, that gives readers a basic idea about what the article will be about. The story will then go into further detail, and sometimes include interviews with people who are affected by the story.
Headlines are usually short and snappy, and will be used to get the reader's attention.
A typical news article is structured out like the following:
Headline, a short and snappy sentence which summaries the article.
An introduction paragraph/sentence, in which a story will be introduced to the reader, summing up the story.
The main article, in which the article will go into detail.
This will be followed by interviews with people affected.
A conclusive sentence/paragraph, which will end the article, and may go into further detail or give the aftermath of an incident.
Local and national newspapers have a variety of names. The majority of local newspapers will be aimed at citizens from local areas, meaning news will be relevant to them. The newspaper title will have the name of the area where the news will be featured from. For example, the 'Braintree And Witham Times' will have news from the towns of Braintree and surrounding areas. Local newspapers will end the title with a comment which could refer to news or information, such as 'Times', 'Echo' or 'Post'.
Examples of local papers
Braintree and Witham Times
Suffolk Free Press
Haverhill Echo
Halstead Gazette
East Anglian Daily Times
Coventry Telegraph
Droitwich Advertiser
Express & Star
Ilford Recorder
Nottingham Evening Post
Examples of national newspapers
Daily Mail
Daily Express
The Sun
The Mirror
The Observer
The Independent
The Suffolk Free Press uses 'Free Press'. This term is short for 'Freedom of the Press', and means that newspaper editors are free to write any stories without any laws or restrictions. The Halstead Gazette uses 'Gazette' . A gazette is an example of a newspaper. The Ilford Recorder uses 'Recorder' in the title. This could show that the local newspaper is used to record news events in the Ilford area. This is showing that all local newspapers have individual identities, which shows that different papers could have different types of content featured inside.
My target audience will be people from Sible Hedingham, because this is where I am from.
Audience Research: I performed some audience research to see what members of the audience thought about newspaper names.
From my audience research, I have learned that a snappy and catchy name that can be memorable would be suitable, but would depend on the local area. Names such as Herald, Times, Mail have been suggested by the people in the interview. This shows that I could include some of these names within my newspaper title.
The first two pages of an original local newspaper (if done as a group task, each member of the group to produce an individual edition of the newspaper, following the same house style), together with two of the following three options.
