Sophie LeeA2 Media Evaluation

Presentation

What I am doing:

❋ For my G324 Advanced Portfolio coursework I have selected Brief 7 to complete and I shall be working alone to complete all elements of the work.

❋❋ THE FIRST TWO PAGES OF A NEW LOCAL NEWSPAPER, TOGETHER WITH THE FOLLOWING:

❋ 1. A POSTER FOR THE NEWSPAPER❋ 2. TWO HYPERLINKED PAGES FROM THE PAPER WEBSITE

1. In what ways does media your product use, develop or challenge forms and

conventions of real media products? ❋ Due to a lot of research I learnt the conventions of from other local

newspapers; they are very simple from most aspects. Local newspapers seem to be going into decline and therefore will not be around for many more years. I took on board the simple use of photojournalism from theses papers as all the photographs used are very simple. The content is not at all that of a larger scale newspaper like The Times or The Sun, the articles are rather boring and about strictly local topics (a lot of articles on local council members and parking issues and complaints).

❋ I tried to make my local newspaper have a similar content and keep it simple and created articles about local people/issues. My photographs were not amazing and my layout and format was simple. I had advertisements for local taxi services and cafes/restaurants in the paper along with a reminder of ‘green box’ day for recycling which I added in as that is a message specifically for a

local target audience.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts

❋ My ancillary texts support my main product well. My website has the same content as my paper plus more, as there is more room and you can have links to other pages (more space for more mediums such as movies and live interviews) the main story on my paper cover is the same as my website for continuity.

❋ On my paper I also have a link advertising my website which is easy to remember, so if a member of a local area couldn’t make it to get a paper they could log on to the local website and get the monthly information from there.

❋ My poster is relevant to my product as local newspapers are becoming more and more less popular and many have been going out of business over the past few years. I went out on foot with my camera to try and find posters outside shops and news agency’s but only found two posters advertising a LOCAL newspaper. So I think it is important to advertise for these newspapers if they want to carry on being produced.

How did you use media technology in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stage?

❋ Internet: for looking at other local paper websites to which I contracted and compared them.

❋ Photoshop: I used Adobe Photoshop CS4 to create my front cover (as well as my contents and double pages). I was new to photoshop and have never needed to use it to such a great extent. At first I struggled with it and therefore my magazine looked very plain and simple due to my lack of skills and technique on Photoshop, however, I then began getting help from my teachers and peers, along with watching Photoshop tutorials on the internet. This helped me so much with the overall construction of my magazine and in the end I felt completely confident using Photoshop and learnt the majority of the tools I needed

for my magazine.

What have you learn from your audience feedback

❋ Local newspapers are not the most well-known and popular papers today, most people ages 15-20 didn’t even know they existed. I learnt that local newspapers were definitely for a much older age group and the younger generation were not interested in the paper as much.

In what ways does media your product use, develop or challenge forms and

conventions of real media products?

❋ Due to a lot of research I learnt the conventions of from other local newspapers; they are very simple from most aspects. Local newspapers seem to be going into decline and therefore will not be around for many more years. I took on board the simple use of photojournalism from theses papers as all the photographs used are very simple. The content is not at all that of a larger scale newspaper like The Times or The Sun, the articles are rather boring and about strictly local topics (a lot of articles on local council members and parking issues and complaints).

❋ I tried to make my local newspaper have a similar content and keep it simple and created articles about local people/issues. My photographs were not amazing and my layout and format was simple. I had advertisements for local taxi services and cafes/restaurants in the paper along with a reminder of ‘green box’ day for recycling which I added in as that is a message specifically for a

local target audience.