Initial Ideas

'There is no absolute judgement on creativity. All judgements are comparisons of one thing with another.' (Donald Larding).


After weeks of researching into newspaper and deciding upon my target audience, which will be teenagers (15-24 years)  since I do not feel publications in the Cornwall area successfully cater for or represent their needs, I can now move onto developing my initial ideas about the newspapers graphology and contents. The first three pages have to grab and hold the readers attention so they must be packed full of information, have a good discourse structure and use the best graphological features possible.

Since technology allows news and information to be on demand, more people are beginning to avoid newspapers that contain long articles, instead choosing to read the 'The Sun', the newly published 'I', and 'The Daily Star', who compact their stories and seem to gain a lot more young readers than other successful newspapers. This can be seen for example in The Suns rate card. The number of people aged between 15-24 who read The Sun total at 1,055,000, while 55-64 total in at 892,000. This is a dramatic drop and proves my statement. 

I have decided to follow along the same lines as the above mentioned, keeping the stories short and in 'bite size chunks'  though making sure the information is very reliable, and of course local. The images also used will vary to keep interest and use a lot of the space available. Visual stimulants are the key to success since they will draw the reader in. A shocking image along with a 'normal' headline will attract more readers than a shocking headline with a 'normal' image because visual stimulants effect more parts of the brain. By targeting my newspaper at a young audience this will hopefully lead onto them still reading the paper after they stop being students, therefore generating a large profit, and allowing for more readers in the future. Although this is a young peoples newspaper I will be aiming the stories more at sixth form/university students because they are going to be more interested in local events and news and take more of an interest in the newspaper rather than lower school students who might not be as interested. 

“By looking at how culture is used and transformed by social groups, cultural studies see people not simply as consumers, but as potential producers of new social values and cultural language” (Toby Miller 2006). New media such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Blogger etc. is a classic example of consumers becoming producers and, as Miller says, ‘potential producers of new social values and cultural language’ because any individual can reach as mass audience. 

Twitter is the fastest growing social networking site and contains thousands of members from Joe Blogs down the road to celebrities such as Stephen Fry. People can 'tweet' their thoughts and feelings in a short 150 character message while tagging other users in the process. A lot of young people use this site to keep up to date with their idols and now businesses are beginning to see the benefits of Twitter. The front page of my newspaper could possibly contain tweets from local celebrities or local attractions such as the Eden Project which will boost revenue for both my product and their venue. This could be presented in a column along the left hand side with the title being 'Top 10 Tweets From This Day/Week'.

The main story could have to be something positive to do with youth, because young people are rarely represented in the media in this light. This will attract new readers who are fed up of other news sources 'putting them down'. If I run with this I will have to be careful of not seemingly patronising my audience. 

My masthead will follow the same conventions of other newspapers; bold, large, and eye catching. I have conducted a survey about ideas for the name of the paper, though the answers did not fit with the ideologies of my newspaper. After much debate I have decided to call my newspaper 'The Cloud' because the semantic field links to The Sun and The Star, which are read a lot by youths. The editing process could 'fade' the masthead onto the paper.

The inside cover will contain a contents along the side, and a list of events around Cornwall. I will have to leave space for advertising since this creates a lot of revenue. I have little other idea about what to add on this page. The third page will contain a lot of news stories from around Cornwall, which smaller images around a main image. 

Overall I will conduct surveys regularly to keep up to date with what my target audience want and therefore when it comes to producing my product it will contain everything my audience needs making it successful.