1. Magazine Analysis
PCPlus Magazine
Jarad Tansley - Cambridge Technicals Media
Unit 30/31: Photography for Media Products/UK Media Publishing.
What’s the front cover like? The front page has a masthead which
consists of the PCPlus logo, their tagline
(“Passionate about technology”) and an
advertisement for their articles. The
masthead also advertises articles and a free
item, and lists the issue and URL for PCPlus’
website. The magazine also advertises its
articles below the masthead. An article is
given a page number so the reader can go
to that article first.
How many sections is the magazine divided
into? What are they?
• Cover stories - the main stories of the
magazine.
• HelpDesk - Gives advice to the reader on
using the computer based on questions/
problems submitted by readers.
• Regulars - for people who regularly read
PCPlus
• Make it - Tutorials for projects, mainly
creative projects.
• Technology on test - PCPlus’ testing and
evaluation of technology they have used.
How does the magazine guide readers to
different stories using the cover and
contents page?
The magazine advertises its articles on the
front page, however there are not many
page numbers directing to where the article
is except for one article.
The contents page shows all of the page
numbers, sometimes divided into sections
so the reader knows where to look to read
what they want to read. It doesn’t reveal
much from the actual report, so the reader
would have to go to the page to read what
they want to read.
2. How much space is given over to each
section of the magazine? What proportion is
regulars / features / competitions / news /
reviews (for example - it can vary an awful
lot in different genres of magazine)
Using the contents page:
8 pages are given to the regulars section,
for people who regularly read PCPlus. There
are 7 pages for the cover stories - stories
that were seen on the front cover. Six main
pages are dedicated to the magazine’s
“Technology on test” area where they test
new technologies or peripherals. 13 pages
are dedicated to the Make it area, and only
one page each are dedicated to the
competition in the magazine, the Helpdesk
and the magazine’s “Hot list” (A list of the
most essential products in technology by
the magazine itself). The rest are dedicated
to smaller articles and advertising.
Are there images on every page? If not, then
on what proportion of pages? What kind of
balance is there between images and text?
Yes, there are images on every page.
Depending on the article or advertisement,
the balance changes. For articles, text
usually dominates the pages more than
images. For more important articles, the
images are larger to emphasise on the
image. Advertisements tend to use more
images than text.
You don’t need to be precise here, but what
is the balance between ‘regular’ content
and ‘feature’ content. (For example - news
and reviews are regular, main articles are
‘feature’)
There tends to be a bias for feature content,
however it could be a possibility that there’s
more regular content, but the feature
content is highly exaggerated and
advertised, resulting in such bias.
Does the magazine have the kind of
‘editorial’ section that a newspaper has,
where it says what it thinks about things
rather than just reporting on what’s
happening?
It is debatable whether the magazine has an
editorial. The magazine contains news and
reviews, however they put their own opinion
into the news a lot, but don’t specifically
state that they are editorials.
What kinds of advertisements do you find in
the magazine? Who are the core audience
for a typical advert? What does this tell you
about the core audience of the magazine?
The advertisements are for tech or internet
products, such as solid state drives,
computers and laptops, computer
components (like power supply units) and
multimedia server storage. The core
audience for the advertisements in PCPlus
are people who are enthusiasts in
computing and technology and are most
likely male and 21 or over. This also shows
that they are the audience of PCPlus and
are likely to read and understand what the
articles tell the reader.
