1. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
The audience feedback has enabled me to make more informed and educated decisions about
my final product, such as the importance of imagery and the length of articles. I conducted a
questionnaire to a sample of 30 people, to enable me to get a more accurate answer, than
would be gained from using a small sample. One of the questions that I asked was, “What
usually entices you to read a local newspaper. From this I found that the majority of my
sample believed that Imagery and Headlines enticed them to read local newspapers, which in
turn lead me to focusing more on the imagery and headlines in my final product.
By conducting audience research, I was able to find out not only what enticed the reader to
read a local newspaper, but also enabled me to find out what type of articles they prefer to
read. I asked my sample “Which type of Article do you usually read first”, which half of my
sample answered as sport. This lead to me ensuring that a substantial article was included in
my final piece based on sport in the local area.
Also by conducting audience research, I was able to base which ancillary products I created to
accompany my final product, asking “How do you usually hear about local news”. The majority
of my sample (66%) answered via the Internet, with only with only 4 of my sample saying
newspapers, and 5 saying other. This lead to me creating a website for the newspaper, as this
seems the most popular way for people to obtain news and also to create a billboard to create
awareness of the brand and the product.
I feel that my audience research enabled me to make informed decisions which in turn, made
my final product more effective and to the wants of the sample I conducted my audience
research to. However, by using a limited sized sample, there is a possibility that the samples
wants are not the same as the majority of the local area, which is a flaw in using a sample.
Because of this, I also followed the conventions of existing local newspapers, by doing article
analysis, to find out what type of article and how real articles are written, to enable my final
product to be more professional.