Toya Angullia A2 media evaluation Question1

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

2. Using forms and conventions Date/ slogan/price/website Date/ slogan/price/website Masthead Headline at the top of the page Dominant image Subheading Advertisement at the bottom Beginning of articles that are inside the paper in side Colum For the front cover of my local newspaper I generally tried to stick to the conventional layout as I felt it was trusted and I wanted to keep a traditional feel to appeal to my target market of 30+ year olds that may be adverse to change. Beginning of articles that are inside the paper in side Colum

4. Large headline

5. Weather

6. Main image

7. Captions

8. Two stories on page

9. Layout

10. Tragic storyI feel that the majority of my inside page follows forms of previous products for the reasons listed. The layout of my page was much like existing local news papers; split into columns with the inner margin being smaller than the others. Although I wanted to address community issues in my newspaper I ended up writing a stereotypical story about a young girl dying. Which is seen a lot in newspapers. I felt a story like this would be more news worthy as it fits the audience identification news value of personalisation.

11. Using forms and conventions Product name Engaging statement Product Image Slogan Availability and price I could really find many posters advertising local newspapers so I just made a poster I thought would sell my newspaper effectively.

12. Using forms and conventions My website uses conventions of real media products almost completely. When looking at websites of local newspapers I noticed they were very basic, with minimal colour and many adverts. My tool bar across the top of the page and the masthead as well as the information at the very bottom of the page stayed the same on each page like most websites. When looking at the news website I noticed that their advertisements are often the same as well this is the reason I have used the same adverts at the top of my page. My home page layout is typical of a local newspaper, it is simply pictures with the relating story summaries and links next to them. I also made a competition page consisting of a heading, large image, information about the competition and a place for people to leave comments. On both of my pages there are also links to popular stories and most commented ones.

13. Challenging forms and conventions When looking at other newspapers I saw that they were very people orientated, there were lots of pictures with people directly looking at the camera and a lot of personal stories. I wanted my paper to have a real community feel rather than that of different individuals, I saw it as a paper that mainly addressed issues that involving the city and collectives of people. I used stories on my front cover about community issues eg. Playground, litter and transport. I challenged the conventions of newspapers by not having any faces on my front cover. My inside page is also conventionally laid out however I did change things slightly. I put advertisements on the inner column as I thought this would brighten up the page so it could live up to the slogan “your colourful local newspaper” that is used on the poster. The ads are for community events and local places in the city I did this to reflect the community inspired genre of the newspaper. I also put in an about us paragraph explaining the importance of the community to the paper and how they help out with their charity.