Looking at common conventions of newspaper articles

An article from an editor

I’m sure you must have watched the television coverage of the riots last night, as I did, with increasing concern and, yes, fear.

But there was also a sense of inhabiting a parallel universe. For those of us lucky enough to be in work, the years of economic gloom have seemed like a phoney war. We may have tightened our belts somewhat, but life has remained pretty much the same.

Yes, the rioters are damaging their own communities, laying waste not only to cars and buildings, but also undermining the hopes and aspirations of their neighbours.

But for so many of them, what else is there? These are the truly disenfranchised, the people for whom the eurozone crisis and the volatile markets might as well be on a different planet.

While the children of the middle classes whinge about the lack of first time-buyer mortgages, and the cost of university fees, these children – and many of them are children – have no more chance of owning a home or earning a graduate-level salary than they have of sprouting wings.

They are the result not of the new, credit-crunch poverty, but of an older deprivation – a marginalisation that is not only economic but also racial in its origins. A volcano does not suddenly erupt without a long period of growing tension deep in the earth. In the same way, riots do not come from nowhere. That pressure has been there a long time.

There was something quite chilling about the way the fires seemed to spread. Hackney, Lewisham, Peckham, Croydon – it was difficult to suppress the suspicion that some plan was being played out.

How organised, I wonder, will the government response be? Can we expect a co-ordinated strategy that will make a real difference? And if so, what should that strategy be?

The lexis used in the  above will also appear in my own work. Even though this is a letter I have chosen to analyse this because it featured in a recent newspaper, therefore having the same style and tone as the other articles. The first sentence uses emotive language such as 'increasing concern' and 'fear' which sets the tone for the rest of the letter. It wins the reader over by using the phrase '’Im sure you must have'. This brings the readers own personal experiences into the story and makes them want to read on; to support the editor because they felt the same way, or to go against his view because they felt the opposite. Either way this small phrase works well in drawing the reader into the article. 

The next paragraph uses the same emotive language and phrases to gain the readers support even more. Starting with the word 'but' makes the letter very informal and puts the reader at ease. The letter consists of simple to compound declarative sentences with a few interrogative sentences to make the reader think, mainly found towards the end of the letter. This is done so that the reader goes away thinking about what he/she has read; the whole point of an article/letter. 

Overall the article uses language to engage the reader, and draw them into the story, something I will also use when writing my own articles.

Sections for the newspaper

When creating my website I want to have some idea of what headings and links I will place along the top. To gain some ideas into common conventions of real products I screengrabbed newspaper websites sections and analysed them below.

The first noticeable thing about this tabbed bar is the order of links. News of course comes first, and has  sub-links under it to group related stories such as 'UK' or 'People'. This allows it to meet the target audience because it keeps the audience interested but also allows them easier access to the stories they are after. The colours do not make the bar stand out from the rest of the page but this then makes sure attention is not taken away from the main story. I am surprised at the order of the tabs, with sport closer to the left than I thought it would be, and opinion second. Personally I thought 'opinion' would be better placed with 'blogs' and 'student' but this is obviously the newspaper trying to attract their target audience by showing that the readers voice is held in high regard. I think I would use student, arts and ents, sport, and news out of the tabs below for my own product as this meets my target audiences needs. 

The first tab here is 'home' which is a good idea because it allows the reader to always have the option of going back to the first page. This again has sub-tabs which link to features found in the newspaper such as horoscopes and property. It also advertises the new iPhone App, which means that more of the target audience can be hit with the product. The colour blue connotes masculinity and also is the main colour of the newspaper therefore making the blue background of the sub-tabs a good choice. News is second next to U.S and columnists is placed last. Sport becomes fourth which again is very high compared to what I was expecting to find and therefore I will also place it around the same area on my own product, following the common conventions of real products. Coffee Break is a tab by itself which is interesting but allows viewers to read news in short clips while on a lunch break, again making sure their target audience requirements is hit. Personally I will follow some conventions but not all because I feel this lacks in some professionalism even though this is a published website. 

 The last tabbed bar I was analyse is very simple and plain. The main colour is black, which comes across very as formal for a website, and there is no sub-tabs. Again 'home' is placed first therefore I will also follow this convention because I like the idea of my viewers being able to link back to the main page without hitting the back button in their browser. Sport comes straight after news showing that this is a common convention and 'blogs' is further to the left than on the first screenshot showing that this website is more interested in the viewers opinion. Finance, culture and travel all prove that the target audience for this website and newspaper is a group of people who have money, and enjoy exploring the riches of the world. Overall I enjoy how simple this is and would like to replicate the style. 

Art Story

This week Hannah Ford, who is heavily involved in the Art Department, has been selling her products such as T-Shirts and mugs to raise awareness about war in underlying messages throughout her work and giving the profit to charity. I spoke to her about why she wanted to commit to this project and what she planned on doing next. The following is my first draft on her project:
This is a good story to cover because my target audience is youth, therefore showing hard work of students in a local newspaper can only encourage other to follow suit.  This represents the target audience because the age of the interviewee and allows students to feel proud of themselves and others around them. This fits in with Halls Storm and Stress Model again. As a first draft I think this is starting to take shape because I have followed the basic rules of reporting (who, what, where, when and why) and have started to represent the needs of my target audience in terms of mode of address, language and interviewees. To improve this in my final draft I need to attain quotes from teachers who work at Bodmin College and make sure the story flows when read.

Building the Masthead

I wanted to create something unique, something that will attract young people to buy my product and I felt that the mastheads I have looked at still are too formal for my product. Therefore I used stamps and scanned them into Photoshop. I also chose to add an outline of a cloud for the text to sit in since this helps meet my target audiences needs. Below are my screen shots of building the masthead.

The first item on my to do list was to draw a simple, cartoon like cloud, which meets my target audiences needs. I felt happy with the result because the shape is simple but with the masthead inside, also eye catching. This is breaking common conventions of mastheads, and creating something new, such as what Bentley said. The colour purple will be desaturated in photoshop to create a silver cloud.

After scanning in the drawn image I placed it in a new photoshop document and rotated it around to landscape, which means I could edit the masthead easier.

I chose to make the photoshop document size A4 as I could get an overview of the size my masthead would be when printed out. This allowed me to edit it confidently without making the mistake of making it too small, and therefore it becoming blurred, or too big where it could become pixelated.

I enlarged the cloud to fill the top half of the document by holding down the shift key, making sure that the image kept the same ratio and did not become stretched etc.This is important in editing because when I add my text I did not want it to look out of line.

I then added my stamps to the document and had to edit some of the backgrounds since they were white. This was perhaps unnoticeable by printscreening the photoshop document but when placed next to each other, the backgrounds overlapped and some of the letters where missing.

I chose to place the letters really close to one another to not show any white space, but also to make them as big as possible. I personally think that by having the cloud around the text this meets my target audiences needs by creating something young, modern and innovite

The last thing I did before my final piece was to desaturate the whole document and made sure all the letters where placed properly. I then merged all layers and my masthead was completed.