throughout the blog, every time we have inserted a new piece into our newspaper we have mentioned why we have put it in due to the conventions of newspapers that we have previously studied.
As we were making a newspaper we were limited to the amount of creativity and use of our own imaginative ideas as newspapers often stuck with the same conventions. There were obvious conventions that we had to use, which were:
- The newspaper name
- Types of pictures
- Slogan
- Logo etc...
but we were still able to design them the way that we wanted. With the logo we chose something that would compliment our headline and fit in with the theme of our magazine. As our newspaper name was the Portishead beacon, and our newspaper was about providing the people of Portishead with news we thought a logo of the lighthouse in Portishead was a good idea, as the lighthouse shines a light on people and guides them, our newspaper provides them with news and also it is a recognisable symbol in Portishead.
In our research we looked a lot at other newspapers and the types of stories that they published. We also asked the local residents of Portishead about what they were most interested in and what they like to find in their local newspapers. As the results were varied we decided to cover the main types of stories that our target audience liked and ones that were covered in other newspapers. In our newspaper we decided to insert something that had not been found in other newspapers which was the local heroes page. We decided this was going to be a weekly feature page focused on someone in the community who deserves it. This would attract more people in the local area to read the newspaper making it more successful as they may know the person. It also makes it a more of a local newspaper as people can get involved and have a chance themselves to be published on this page.
The types of photos that we chose to publish in our newspaper followed closely to the ones that were published in real newspapers. For example the dance photo ....
this was a common set up of a photo as it gave a clear picture of all of the girls faces. Also the outfits their wearing you can tell they do some sort of sport and the place where the photo is taken straight away gives a clear indication of what the story is going to be about which is, I think, a main aim when a photo is published.
In both of the local 'heroes' page we put in action photos. Here we challenged conventions of a real media product as when we conducted our research most of the photos found in the main section were posed or set up to look a certain way, the only action photos were found in the sports section at the end of the newspaper. So by putting action photos on these pages we were trying something different.
On the July front page we decided to put a panel down the side of different stories found in the newspaper as we found this was a common convention found in several different newspapers, but in the September one we changed it to a story so that our local newspaper did not show the same layout every time it was published, giving it a variety of looks but still recognisable by the name, logo and colour scheme.
To go along with the change in image we also chose different styles of photos to publish on the front page. On the July front page we used various different shots from close ups to long shots of the victim in the main story but on the September front page we did not have any photos of people but of something that was very recognisable to the people of Portishead. By doing this we thought it would show the variation of stories covered by the 'Portishead Beacon' on the front page, following conventions of other newspapers.
The layout of both of the front pages were very different to show we didn't produce the same layout everytime and that we were able to be creative givin that we had to stick to 'newspaper guidlines'. On the July front page we had the headline and story at the bottem with the pictures just above it, where as on the September front page we moved the headline to the top and put the story and picture below it. Either way, we still felt that the layout of both front covers looked effective.
When we researched adverts we came accross bussiness that were advertised quite frequently, resturants, hairdressers etc, so we thought it was important to follow the same sort of bussiness but design them the way that we wanted. With the resturant one we made up our own name of a resturant and designed it the way that we wanted. Even though we never came accross a taxi advert we thought it would be a good idea to insert one, firstly to not strictly follow the same adverts published in local newspapers but also taxi's apply to pretty much everyone and we thought it would be a useful advert to insert.
Some of the basic common conventions of newspapers we felt we had to use to make our newspaper look authentic. These incluced the captions under all of the main photos, date, newspaper slogan, newspaper name and logo at the top of the local heros pages and full date also at the top of those pages. These conventions, we felt gave our newspaper a more authentic look.
On the september local heros page we have inserted a pull quote in the middle of the text. In one of the local newspapers we looked at we found that they published specifit quotes by people they had interviewd next to a photo of their face. We followed this similar idea but changed it slightly by not publishing a photo, as we thought there was no need due to the whole artical being about the person who said it, and by it being a quote that was in the artical but just shortened down to become a 'pull quote'
Another main convention that we thought we had to follow was the short sharp headlines used by all newspapers. By using these types of headlines it should draw the reader in making them want to read the artical straight away. On our July newspaper we came up with Stopped, Stolen and left Stranded. With this headline we thought it was 'catchy' due to the alliteration of the 3 S's and we feel like it makes the reader want to know what happened. One of our headlines on our local heros page, 'spun gold', can be adressed in two different ways. One of them is; as the person in our photo is holding a medal the 'gold' bit can be addressed as a gold medal and also 'spun gold' is a phrase commonly used in tabble tennis which is that our artical is about
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