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

For my media product, I had decided to create a local newspaper, which was packaged with two hyperlinked pages and a radio advertisement for the newspaper which I also created. In terms of looking at the style and colour of the font that would usually appear in a local newspaper, I would say that my media product both follows and goes against the traditional form of a local newspaper. Unlike most newspapers, I had chosen to use a more ‘modern font’, rather than use a ‘sans serif’ traditional font that you would see applied to most newspapers. I have also used a variety of different, but also modern style fonts for the name of the newspaper (‘The Isle Eye’) and various article headings and features that appear on my two hyperlinked pages. However in terms of looking at the colour of the font, I would say that I am following one of the conventions of local newspapers. I have chosen to use a black font, with the word ‘Eye’ using a red coloured font on the first page of local newspaper. This was done for effect and to stand out against the white background. By highlighting the word ‘Eye’ also links with my idea to make the newspaper ‘eye-catching’. The colour scheme of my media product is white and black, which follows the traditional form of a newspaper. Looking at the layout of my newspaper shows that I have tried to copy the layouts of some of the newspapers that I had previously analysed (such as ‘Portsmouth News’ and ‘Bournemouth Daily Echo’). Like the ‘Portsmouth News’ newspaper, I had decided to place a fairly medium sized image underneath the masthead, with the article headline placed just above the image and a section of the article placed underneath the image. I have also gone against this layout as I have included two articles instead of one on the front page of the newspaper (this copies the layout design of the ‘Isle of Wight County Press’ local newspaper, however they only choose to select one image. Like the ‘Portsmouth News’ newspaper, I have chosen to only select a small amount of context from each article, whereas the ‘Isle of Wight County Press’ newspaper tends to select a much more large amount of text from some of their articles. I have also followed the form of a local newspaper by placing the date that the newspaper was published, signs of social media, and the newspaper logo inside of the masthead. Instead of placing the contact details inside of the masthead, I have chosen to place my media product’s email address next to the two images from the

newspaper front page. I have also placed the name of my media product’s website and the price of the newspaper underneath the name of my media product. In terms of context, like many local newspapers I have included mentioning articles that are related (locally) to me. Looking at the first two inside pages of my newspaper, I decided not to follow the traditional structure of presenting articles. As well as analysing newspapers, I had also been analysing teenage magazines to and apply some of their forms and conventions, to attract my target audience. Instead of paragraphing my articles like most traditional national and local newspapers do, I decided to include no paragraphs in my first article, and only included a few paragraphs with my second article that I published. I wanted to try and mix up the way that articles are presented to try and make my product seem more unique and contrast with other local newspapers. I have however included the name of my media product, the date that the newspaper was published and the page number placed along the top boarder of the newspaper inside pages. I have also challenged the forms of local newspapers ,and followed one of the conventions of national newspapers by including articles that are not focused on my local area, and would expect to see in a national newspaper or magazine. I chose to do this to try and appeal to my target audience, in terms of looking at the results of my audience feedback. Referring back to a point that I mentioned earlier, I have also included signs of social media (Facebook and Twitter) on the front page of my newspaper, again to show what kind of audience I am targeting and to follow one of the forms of a local newspaper. My media product challenges other local newspapers by not including any form of advertisements both on the newspaper front page or the inside pages. Again I had made this decision based on my audience feedback, with results showing the most people that participated in my questionnaires were not impressed by the amount of advertisements that feature in local newspapers. By not including any advertisements allows there to be more focus on the content of the respected articles.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

With the combination of both my main product and my ancillary tasks, I believe that because they have all be presented using different forms of media that they are all effective. The radio advertisement that I created as part of my ancillary tasks includes an upbeat, catchy rhythm with features at the beginning and at the end of the advertisement, which is used to catch the audience’s attention. The radio advertisement also lists the topics/features that feature inside of my media product, giving the idea a bit of insight information about my media product as well as trying to appeal to them. From analysing both previous newspaper radio advertisements and other radio, advertisements I found that nearly all of the radio advertisements that I have analysed uses some form of slogan (with most of these slogans rhyming). I chose to also do this by using the slogan, ‘The Newspaper That Listens To You’. Although my slogan doesn’t rhyme, it is a great tactic to use as audiences can refer to your slogan when trying to remember a name of an advertisement. There is also more chance that an audience would hear about my radio advertisement through the use of radio, rather than spot my media product in a shop as you can listen to the radio whilst at home, have it being played in shops and when you are travelling (for example, when you are travelling in a car). My other ancillary task was to create two hyperlinked pages. The two hyperlinked pages are effective as they provide a lot more detail than newspapers and allow more interactivity. The first hyperlinked page is the newspaper website homepage where all of the topic headings are available to see and access, with some of the featured articles featuring on the homepage. There is also a ‘Register’ and ‘Log in’ button that allows the audience become more involved with my media product, and become a part of online media. Like my main media product, social media features at the top of the website homepage. This is effective as it is appealing to my designed target audience. Looking at it from a stereotypical point of view, more younger audiences tend to use social media to communicate. If a certain target audience member/members likes a particular article, they can ‘like’ the article through Facebook, or share/ ‘Tweet’ about the article through the use of social media sites: Facebook and Twitter. A search button also features. This is a fast and effective way to

receive information on certain features from or about the website, opposed to a newspaper where you are continuously flicking through the pages to find a particular article, the search button allows you to search for what you are looking for with a click of a mouse, your related search results are displayed to you. Taking my audience’s interests and feedback into consideration, I have designed the website homepage so the featured headings appeal to everyone. I have also included articles for my main media product that also belong to different topic/feature headings. The majority of my target audience said that wished that they could see more music related articles and features in a local newspaper. I then decided to take advantage of technology and feature one song on my website as part of the ‘song of the month!’ feature. By contacting the site manager (me), they can send in their music requests, and one will be picked at random at the start of every month. The purpose of this is that it forces people to communicate and interact with the website. It also makes the website appealing to younger audiences. The website homepage also uses different effects to try and catch the audience’s eye. A reflective rippling effect has been applied to the product logo (the product logo also features with my main media product) on the website, along with a landscape style menu where you can click the arrows to move on or go back to reading a small section taken from each of the articles shown. The effectiveness of the product logo indicates to the audience that this is a local newspaper website. This is effective as it gives the audience a small section of the article, and by not exposing the audience to the full article, if they like a particular article, they are forced to click on the section provided, which allows them to explore other articles that feature on the website. The hyperlinked section where it says ‘Click here to read the full article’ below the article on Miley Cyrus is effective as it a fast and appropriate way to get to the page quicker, rather than typing it using the search button. The ‘Click here to read the full article’ section takes you to my second website page, which is an article on Miley Cyrus attached to the ‘Celebrity Gossip!’ topic heading. Here the full article is free and accessible for the audience to view.

In terms of looking at colour and font, the font and colour used on the newspaper webpages differ from the colour and font used on my main media product. My media product chooses to follow some of the forms and conventions of a traditional newspaper, by sticking to the traditional white and black (some hints of red) colour scheme, whereas my webpages have a light green background, which a turquoise/blue effect going on in the middle, featuring behind the website content. I chose to stick to the red, black and white theme for my media product because I wanted to keep and follow the

traditional colours of a newspaper. I also had to be careful that my newspaper wouldn’t be mistaken as a magazine. I also wanted the webpages and my product to contrast in terms of colour so my audience wouldn’t be bored of the same designs, and to go against the forms of other newspaper websites in order to make my website appear unique. I chose the colour green for my newspaper website as I considered it to be a mix gendered colour, rather than pick a pink or blue colour, which both receive connotations of either being a ‘girly’ colour (pink) or appealing to boys (blue). The homepage uses a variety of different fonts so that the website would look and be considered more modern than other newspaper websites that are out there. The use of modern font for my product name was again to appear more modern and ‘hip’ than other local newspapers (although the rest of the text uses a more traditional style of font). By presenting my ancillary tasks and my main media product allows the product’s circulation to increase and expand through the different forms of media.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

When collecting audience feedback, I devised three different ways, in order to receive various forms of feedback. The first thing that I did was ask a selection of ten people if they preferred to read newspapers of magazines, of which I found out that the majority preferred to read magazines. I then went on to ask this same selection of people what they liked about magazines. Some of the feedback that I received from this stated that people preferred to read magazines as they make better use of colour, you can buy a magazine specifically for your own particular interest and have more interesting features. I also asked the other remaining few what they liked about newspapers. The results of the feedback that I received showed that a few people preferred to read newspapers due to their size, allowing more content to fit on the pages.

I then created a survey on Survey Monkey where I asked another group of people a series of questions about what would attract them to a local newspaper. I found that most of the people that took part in my survey would prefer to see more music based articles featured in a local newspaper. I also found that most people that took part in my survey were put off from buying a local newspaper due to the amount of sport related articles, and the amount of advertisements that feature. I also created a focus group who anlysed three local newspapers and commented on what they liked and disliked about local newspapers. Some of their comments included that they liked that use of bold font and the use of different colours. There was a comment made about the size of an image on the front page of a newspaper, questioning if it was necessary to have an image at such a large scale. With my own main product, I took all of the feedback that I had received into consideration when creating my own local newspaper. I had learnt that people like to read articles that belong to a range of different categories, instead of specifying in reading about one particular subject. I have also learnt that people are attracted to bright colours and bold fonts.

For my own media product, I used a bold font for the name of my newspaper, and included a few images on the front page and inside pages. The text that came with the article however was kept at a rather standard, small size. When thinking about the context, I chose to feature articles, both on the webpages and the newspaper that belong to different categories/subjects and have no relation to each other. I decided to not have any advertisements featuring, both on the web pages and the media product, due to my audience feedback’s dislike to them. I have also used a lot of colour for my webpages, so that the web pages stand out and catch the eye of the audience.

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

When first researching into local newspapers and newspaper websites, I created various power points which I then uploaded onto the site, ‘Slideshare’, which allows you to share you presentations with other Slideshare users, as well as being able to view other user’s presentations. I then began exploring other media technologies such as ‘Prezi’, another free presentation site, which provides you with templates and allows you to use a range of effects. When I began researching to use a site called ‘Soundcloud’, where I could analyse other people’s sounds, and I used this site to upload my own radio advertisement. I also used the site ‘Youtube’ to listen and search for other radio advertisements to analyse. In terms of planning, I used a site called Survey Monkey to conduct my questionnaire about how to attract people to local newspapers. I also used Slideshare to upload various presentations. When creating my ancillary tasks, I used and uploaded a program called ‘Audacity’ for creating my radio advertisement. Audacity allowed me to import more than one sound to edit, and apply various effects to them, such as ‘Fade In’, ‘Fade Out’, ‘Studio Fade In’, ‘Echo’ etc. It also allowed me cut any sections of the sounds that I wanted to remove, or I could ‘trim’ the sound down, long enough for the appropriate time of a radio advertisement. I could play the sound back and make any adjustments if necessary. When creating my web pages, I used a free website called ‘Wix’, which allowed me to use any of three templates, which gave me starting point to creating my two web pages. I could browse other websites and find appropriate templates under specific headings. Wix also allowed me to make changes to font, colour and layout , and allowed me to insert me own text and images. With my own main media product, I first created and designed the newspaper front page and first two inside pages on Microsoft Publisher. My evaluation questions were presented on Microsoft Powerpoint then uploaded to Slideshare.