1. Codes & conventions – true crime magazines
• GENRE: Crime magazines are a niche genre.
• TARGET AUDIENCE: It’s difficult to define this but readers are obviously
interested in crime, and particularly a fascination with violent crimes and
murders, the police and investigation procedures.
It’s not so strange when you consider that TV crime drama series are very
popular.
• APPEAL: This might seem macabre, but these magazines fulfil the same
audience pleasures as might be experienced by a horror film viewer – they
are reminded by their experience of the text how comparatively safe and
happy their own life is.
It’s highly unlikely that someone whose real world in any way came into
collision with any of the kind of experiences recorded in these stories
would want to read them.
• COVERLINES: Most of the crimes selected in the coverlines are extreme
examples, not common crimes such as the regular murders that happen
every week in the UK as a result of domestic violence.
• OFFER: They offer a safe way of closing down fears about violence in
society – they are all about how perpetrators of crimes, no matter how
cunning, were ultimately caught, exposed and punished.
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2. Codes & conventions – true crime magazines
• COMPERITORS: There are 5 main titles on the market in the UK:
• True Crime
• Real Crime
• True Detective
• Master Detective
• Murder Most Foul.
Some also produce special editions.
• COMMON FEATURES: From looking at the images, it’s clear that each
individual title shares some features in common with others.
• Historical crime cases from around the world form most of the coverline
content.
• All of the editions have a feature crime focus, which in 4 of the 5 cases is
positioned on the left-hand side around the sweet spot.
• Other secondary images are used in conjunction with coverlines to
emphasise the human nature of the subject matter and to hook the
readership in.
• The lexical coding (words selected to generate specific effect) uses
frightening words with strongly negative connotations – monster, lethal,
hell, slaughter, rape, slayer. These emphasise that the magazine covers the
extremes of human experience of crime in a sensationalised way.
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3. Codes & conventions – true crime magazines
• ICONOGRAPHY: The majority of the magazines use similar iconography –
many black and white images indicating the starkness of the subject matter
and the historical nature of some of the crimes.
• COLOURS: Red and black, which can have a connotation of danger, and
yellow – which combined with these can seem to be a sickly or disturbing
colour – form the majority of the palette.
• BACKGROUND: The background selected in each case is dark and cold,
blues or blacks.
• HOUSE STYLE: The house style is not dissimilar in its cluttered look to many
women’s weekly titles which feature a mixture of true stories, puzzles,
some celebrity news and lifestyle elements or even soap weeklies. This is
similar for an audience age range of predominantly middle-aged and older
women in lower socio-economic categories.
Your task: Collect a range of examples from your chosen magazine
genre, such as sport and fitness or hobbies and crafts etc.
Write a post – a case study exploring the genre conventions and
similarities as in this example.
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