Evaluation

When I began designing my newspaper I already had a fairly clear idea of how Sport is generally represented in the mass media. Local newspapers purely dedicated to sport tended to be quite uncommon but given the popularity of sport within the UK I felt that perhaps there is a niche in the market.

My newspaper is a local newspaper aimed at sports fans of both genders. I focused on basing the codes and conventions of my newspaper on existing newspapers that are popular for their sports sections, such as, The Sun. Furthermore my newspaper had to be local, so I aimed to develop my newspaper’s identity by merging the codes and conventions of local newspapers with those of typical national tabloids.

I based the design of the front cover of primarily on national red-top newspapers; though considering the fact my newspaper is a local newspaper you could argue that this is breaking the conventions. I put together my masthead, by using a simple Sans style font on top of a dark blue box. I changed the colour so the masthead wasn’t misleading as it is ultimately not a national red-top tabloid. I felt this suited my target audience and the masthead’s conventional positioning would stand out on shop’s shelf. I based the pricing of my newspaper on the results of a questionnaire I did at the start of my project.

I found that most tabloids tend not to have many, if any, articles on their front covers. I decided to stick with these conventions when designing my cover so I included three images and a large advert along with two short articles. These articles finished inside the newspaper and if the newspaper was real this would persuade interested buyers to purchase the paper in order to read on.

The second page of my newspaper tends to match the conventions of existing local newspapers. It seems to be common for local papers to include a contents page. They tend to promote their best stories on the second page whilst including conventions such as adverts, pictures and short articles. Hence, I used a fair amount of pictures on my second page, an advert in the form of a voucher and three short news items.

My poster took the form of a bus stop billboard. I found that common conventions of such posters were designed with a large message/picture in the centre. This allows the target audience to associate themselves with the product. My posters consists of a golf ball about to be hit by a driver, which would immediately grab attention because it gives an illusion a ball is about to be hit in the audience’s direction. Plus, it would show that my product relates to sport. I also used the slogan “Have you bought your Southend Sports Paper today?” to help create a false need amongst potential consumers.

Considering the genre I had chosen, I based my website pages on the design of already established sports websites. I found these websites tended to include a large amount of links to current news items quite often represented using images. Newspaper websites used the same masthead as their actual newspaper hence I mimicked this convention so my audience could associate my website with my newspaper. For the same reason, I used matching colours and narratives written in similar styles to those in my newspaper. This helps to strengthen the identity of my product. Local news websites tend to have at least one promotional item on each page justifying my decision to include an advert on both of my website pages.

I used a questionnaire at the start of my project aimed at my target audience to find out what they look for in a newspaper. I found that tabloids were slightly more popular than broadsheets and national newspapers were slightly more popular than local. This is partly why I chose to combine tabloid conventions with local newspaper conventions. Sport is culturally different depending on location. For example, the most popular sports club in Southend is Southend United yet in St Helens it is St Helens Rugby Club. I therefore decided to include Southend United in an attempt to appeal to my target audience. I also found from my survey that football and hockey were the most popular sports.

In hindsight I don’t feel my newspaper or website represents females as well as it does males. Although you could argue that the media products I was basing my products don’t meet these expectations either. If I was to do this project again I would try to find out more about hoe females want sport to be represented in local news in order to get a more balanced representation of both genders.

The three main programmes I used were Adobe Photoshop, InDesign and Dreamweaver. Photoshop helped me to create positive representations of sport in Southend by allowing me to finely edit images to suit my target audience. This allowed my newspaper to attach a positive association to sport in Southend. I found the layer tool particularly useful to help me arrange my content in an effective style. InDesign was particularly useful for modelling a layout that would suit my genre. It allowed me to create an arrangement that imitated those of already existing media products. I used both programmes together to create a positive representation and a suitable layout to fit my genre.

Overall I am pleased with my final products as I feel they serve their purpose well and suit my target audience. I feel my newspaper develops the forms and conventions of existing products effectively plus I believe I have given my newspaper and identity that will suit sport within Southend.