THE BLACK BOX THAT CAUGHT A KILLER

Olivia Lewry (left) was killed along with her friend Jasmine Allsop

20 year old, Samuel Etherington thought he could lie about the speed his car was driving at when he ran over and killed two teenage girls.

There is a device known as the Event Data Recorder (EDR), which is used to record the speed of drivers and test whether they are fit to drive on roads. Samuel Ehterington had this device fitted into his car to monitor his speed after he was caught speeding before.

The legal driving limit is 30 mph, but the box found him to be speeding at up to 71mph in the 30mph zone and at 65mph when he hit the girls.

He said that one of the girls, Olivia, was playing about in the road when he hit her and that he meant to stop and see if they were ok, but left when two angry men appeared.

He drove up the road and rang 999 where he said "I have run over a little girl", but he didn’t know he had also hit Jasmine.

He arranged to meet officers at a nearby petrol station.

Etherington said he didn’t commit manslaughter, killing without meaning to, but admitted to causing death by dangerous driving. Jasmine, who lived near where the crash happened, died at the scene while Olivia was taken to Portsmouth's Queen Alexandra Hospital where she later died.

It was later found that he had been taking the illegal drugs ‘ketamine’ and ‘mepherdrone’ before the accident. He was sentenced to 9 years in prison and has been banned for 7 years from driving. He also has to take a driving test on his release.

My story is ‘news worthy’ because it covers most of the news values which help make a successful news story. News values are important as they form what is seen to be a “good news story”.

Negativity – My story is negative. It involves deaths and damage which, according to Galtung and Ruge’s news values, is always rated above positivity and is more interesting to readers. Negativity makes the reader more interested because, scientifically, it can make people feel better about themselves.

Proximity – This story is close to home. It involves people from our country which is usually something which attracts readers to a story/article, and occurred in our country. When stories are close to home, it makes the reader want to read it because it is more relatable.

Currency – My story is a recent story and this is important in the news values. Newspapers are competitive and this story is classed as ‘breaking’ news which is what readers and viewers want to know-the latest! Although older cases and articles (for example Madeleine McCann) are still interesting, breaking news is seen more interesting as there is still much to find out about how, why, where, when, who and what happened.

Unusual- Although this story isn’t the most unique, and fatal crashes happen quite often, it is different because it is a story which is very gloomy and you might not expect it to happen in such a tragic way. You may expect someone to be injured or suffer in one way, but when reading this news article, you realise the depth of how distressing it is that 2 girls had to suffer because of one man’s irresponsibility. The discoveries of the police also made this story even more heart-breaking as the driver was being incredibly irresponsible, therefore it wasn’t really an accident.

Simplicity- The story I have chosen is simple to understand which is, according to “Gultung and Ruge’s” news values, preferred over stories which are complicated and hard to understand. This story is easy to understand as overall it’s is straight forward and there isn’t much to it.

Interest – Although this story isn’t necessarily interesting to all people, it’s a story which is unusual and so devastating that the title may catch people’s eyes’.

Treatment

Name:

News 4 Teens

Gender: Unisex (Both genders) – My site is going to have news stories for both genders.

Target Audience: The target audience of my News Website is the youth market, aged 12-16. This is a good target audience, because stereotypically, teenagers spend a fair amount of time on social media sites and the internet.

Content Focus: The content focus of my news website is going to be a mixture of celebrity gossip, sports and fashion. This is because stereotypically, the youth audience aren’t necessarily interested in the ‘hard’ news that adults are, for example insurance and politics. It is going to contain celebrity gossip because it is thought that teenagers find that more interesting to read and look at, rather than governments and financial crisis’s. Celebrity gossip has various aspects for different genders and ages to read about, therefore I think this is a good thing to put in a website as it attracts all different types of people who are interested in different celebrities. I am also going to involve sport in my website. 73% of boys between the ages of 12-16 say sport is their favourite thing to read about and watch on TV. My website is unisex; therefore I have incorporated things which both boys and girls, stereotypically, like to read about.

Finally, I am going to include fashion in my website as this is another thing which many people like to look at and read about. My fashion section isn’t just going to be based on girls’ clothing, it is also going to consist of boys fashion ware, shoes and girls fashion ware and makeup, as stereotypically, these are sections which the youth audience are interested in. Also, it would be biased to just include girls fashion.

My news website is also going to be interactive. I am going to include videos, GIF’s and hyperlinks to navigate to different pages on the site. I think it’s important for a website to be interactive as without sound and moving images, it might get boring.

Design: My news website is going to have bold colours such as blue, green and red. I think it’s good to incorporate colours in to a website for a youth audience because personally, if the website has no colour it’s not as

eye catching and interesting to look at. It’s thought that teenagers get bored fairly easily, so my website will have images and legible, yet fun writing to make it look more informal unlike BBC News, for example.

This news story is relevent to my product becase one of the topics in

my website is Celebrity Gossip. Most teenagers likes to know about celebrity life, whether it be about how much they get paid, divorce, marrige affairs etc. Celebrity news is a unisex topic which can be read about and enjoyed by both boys and girls.

News like the one in the image, is news which is anticipated by many teenagers. If they are fans of certain celebrities, they would want to know about what is to happen in the future for them, so it’s good to include celebritie news because the youth audience, stereotyipically, love a bit of gossip!

This story is relevant to my product because my website involves sports. Having sports in my website is important as it is a unisex news provider, therefore it must include subjects for both boys and girls.

It is relevant to my target audience (the youth audience) because stereotypically, boys who may view my website are interested in sport and not so much celebrity gossip and/or fashion. Having a famous

sport engages the reader more because it makes them want to know more about the situation. Also, linking back to celebrities, some teenagers like to know about footballer’s lives, including affairs, wages and injuries. Youths that are passionate about sport generally read about sport so they can keep up to date on what’s happening in the sporting region.

This story is relevant to my product because fashion is another subject which appears on my News website. Fashion is relevant to the youth audience because it is something which all teenagers have different views and opinions on. Different teenagers are interested in different designers, trends,

accessories so by putting fashion into my product, I hope to involve a variety of different teenagers. Fashion is also something that the youth audience takes an interest in. Some youths aspire to be fashion designers, others just enjoy looking at the clothing, but fashion is relevant because it is more focussed on when you’re younger. Although adults still take pride in how they look, stereotypically, teenagers still feel like they need to “dress to impress” so they aren’t judged. Having a fashion page in my product should help inspire teenagers to wear different things and look unique.

Deconstruction

My News website is constructed where it includes a variety of different aspects which help it to appeal to a youth audience.

Firstly, my website, unlike other news sites, includes a variation of colours. It’s good to have different colours as dull or solid ones don’t engage the audience, whereas having colours makes it more interesting to look at and the appearance of a site makes the reader want to continue reading. This engages my target audience as it provides them with a more relaxed site to read and gives the impression that news can be for all ages, not just adults.

The title of my website is “news 4 teens”. I have chosen this title because I think the ‘4’ represents how the youth, stereotypically, type when they are texting as they generally abbreviate words. It’s short and snappy and easy to remember and makes the website appear more ‘cool’. Also the title doesn’t include any capital letters as they make it seem more grammatically correct, which then makes the site seem more formal.

Videos and images make up my homepage. These make it more interactive and should engage the audience for longer. Having too much writing on a homepage may look overwhelming and the audience won’t want to read it. If it’s interactive, it would engage them because it doesn’t involve too much reading as stereotypically, teens are fairly lazy.

The background colour is unisex and isn’t too bright or bold so that the homepage is overpowering. This helps engage the audience because if there are too many colours or the colours are too bold/bright, it can be hard to read text or see images against the background.

My navigation bar has tabs that are different shapes as they make my site seem more outgoing and adventurous. This engages the youth audience because basic shapes give the more formal and adult impression, and may appear off-putting or boring, so the audience won’t want to read on.

My site offers a pleasurable more relaxed news site to look at rather than the more adult, formal ones. It’s important to be able to involve the audience because teenagers want to read/hear about stuff appropriate for their age range rather than more adult stuff, such as taxes, which can be found boring and irrelevant.

My homepage is full of well-known celebrities. It will help to engage them as many teenagers idolise celebrities, therefore I included celebrities in my site so that it can attract various differen’t types of teenagers, and engross them so they carry on visiting my news site.

Finally, my homepage includes well known social networking sites as stereotypically, teenagers like to go on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. It engages the audience because it provides them with familiar sites for people of their age range, as well as older. Having sites which are for their age range make the website seem more youthful and for people their age.