Poster Stages

First of all, I picked the font I was going to use, I chose this one as I will be using it in my main tast as my Masthead Font and it will therefore be an ongoing and reccognisable feature in my newspaper. I did not chose to make it colourful as I think this would make it look like it was for a cheap magazine as apposed to local newspaper.

I then wrote a list of the kind of things people would expect to find in the newspaper and what would be normally covered on a weekly basis. I will also be adding photos of similar events in the next stage of making the poster.

Radio Advert Script

Young child: (groaning) Muuuuum! We missed the charity football tournament last week!
Man: Gosh, you didn’t tell me that woman down the road was getting an ASBO!
Woman: Oh no! I missed the town schools bake sale last weekend!
(Background noise, all three people are complaining)
Voiceover: Are you tired of missing out on the events near you? Are you tired of being the last person to know about some juicy gossip? You need the newest most up-to-date information every week. And ‘The Bedfordshire Post’ will give you exactly that! When you wake up to your coffee on a Sunday morning, wait for T’he Bedfordshire Post’ to be delivered straight to your door for all the weekly news as well as all the events you won’t be missing next week!
Woman: Oh, look darling, there’s a wine tasting class at the Inn next week!
Man: Ugh, can’t we just go to the pub?
Voiceover: The only thing we can’t tell you is how to change the man in your life. But for everything else, ‘The Bedfordshire Post’ will be sure to let you know!


This radio advert is heavily based on a extremely stereotypical family situation. The Mother is expected to take care of her Children and Husband and is being blamed for the missed events. The Husband just wants to go to the pub when his Wife wants a romantic day out, it is meant to symbolize the typical modern working class family. This advert relys on a humourous situation that the women listening to it may be able to relate to whilst still being amused and therefore the radio advert would stay in their mind, advertising the newspaper well. I listened to a few hours of radio coverage on Heart FM, as it is the most popular local radio station that is funded by its advertisments. The adverts were catchy, humourous and often contained jingles designed to stay in someones mind and therefore remind them of the company when they perhaps hummed the tune later on. There were also a lot of songs withing the adverts and the voices seemed to be that of those the audience could relate to, e.g. the same age group 30-50 year olds with children or young people in the house who would also hear these adverts, and men and women often conversing with eachother to remind the audience of their own conversations and similar situations that have occured in their own lives. I also noticed that there were more upbeat 'fun' sounding adverts on between the times of 8-9am and 3-5pm as these are the typical rush hours and school commuting time so people would hear it in their cars atthe busiest time of day.

Storylines

Interesting and appealing to all audiences, catchy and makes the reader want to know full story.
Is accompanied by picture if it is a big story or ‘Headline’.

Teen is Banned from USA over Obama Hate E-mail
Cops slated over seized drugs policy
Uni reports leap in applications
Police seek Witness for Act of Indecency
Dunstable Woman Given 2 Year ASBO
Bird Dropped Killed Man’s Thumb
Children’s Detention was Unlawful
Sex Assault on walk from school

All of these articles, bar the very first ones were ones that I had found on the Bedfordshire Times wesite and the website for Heart Radio Station, they are all therefore local and relate well to my newspaper articles as they are what are typically founf in the newspaper on a day to day basis. The laguage is very direct and quite formal although they use the abbreviation 'Uni' but this may be because the people this story was aimed at (Students) reffer to University as 'Uni' and would therefore feel more comfortable with the language being used. The articles mentioning schools and the town Dunstable show the local area being named within headlines so the readers would associate the articles with the places they live or live very close to.

From a couple of recent headlines I found you can see the range of things that are included in a newspaper for Bedfordshire. As well as local news, e.g. ‘Dunstable woman given 2 year ASBO’ you can also see that there is news involving an American matter. There are political issues relating the rise in University fees as well as crime stories, which seem to be the vast majority of the easily accessible storylines I found. The storylines would appeal to all ages as there are things for younger people to read, e.g. the university story and Sex Assault on walk from school as this may worry people of the same kind of age. My newspaper will include high interest stories from over the world, but mostly local headlines e.g. local sporting events charity and fundraisers etc.

Cost and Availability

I need to decide whether my newspaper will come out daily, weekly or on specific days etc and whether the newspaper will be delivered free of charge on be available to buy from a newsagent or supermarket for a small price. My newspaper would be available in the county of Bedfordshire, so quite local including several towns so that it is not too small of an area covered and there woud be a lot of content in each issue. The newspaper would be delivered weekly to people free of charge on a Sunday with the weeks events and most interesting stories locally. This means they will be delivered by someone employed by a newsagent and delivered to anyone who wants to receive it on Sunday mornings. This also means that my newspaper will have to include a lot of adverts from companies so that it is easily funded when there is no charge for it.

Pictures and Articles

The articles will be created my by myself, perhaps based on old news stories but will be changed so that they are local to the area and rewritten to appeal to my desired audience. I will include issues such as the University Fee protests and criminal activity from around the Bedfordshire County. I will also include local events and fundraisers to give more of a personal touch and for advertising purposes. A lot of Newspapers are funded by adverts so will often have lots within the paper that help pay for the production of the newspaper which I will have to do in mine as it is a free newspaper and I will not be charging customers to purchase it. I will also be using my own photographs for the adverts and some of the articles that need a photograph so that it is entirely my own work.

Photographs are used as a visual aid or to show a person realted to a top story. It will be either a shot of a scene, perhaps a place where a muder took place, or the Mugshot of the suspect as well as a pictuyre of the victim. This often helps the reader to identify with the story and makes it more personal to read as it may be aplace one recognises if the newspaper tabloid is local. They will usually be quite small in comparison to the article and front page stories are often started up to a certain point and then say 'continue of page -' to entice the audeience to read on.


Article Ideas:
Local schoolgirl commites suicide, 'Bullying thought to be the cause'
A mother's protest as cuts close town library
Cat rescued from a well

These articles would appeal to a wide range of people, the first article is shocking, a young girl tragically taken from the world would spark a lot of emotion for any mother or father and for young people around the same age as the victim making this a Headline or Lead Story above the other two.
The second headline would appeal to a wide variety of people too, for example students and perhaps the older generation e.g. the retired who enjoy the Libraries quiet aptmosphere. A protest is also something someone would want to read about as it gives people a way to express their feelings about the matter.
The last article is a more feel-good story, most probably favoured by women and the elderly, it would be a small feature perhaps towards the back of the newspaper for people who do not want to only read the main headlines.

Mastheads

Needs to be catchy and stay in the readers mind. Will usually tell you something about the newspaper e.g. the Sun and the Mirror are for more low brow readers whereas the Daily Mail and the Herald you can tell from the names would be more highbrow. I think my Name is informative as it shows you the area covered in the newspaper and it is neither too highbrow or lowbrow, therefore it will be aimed at working and middle class people living in the Bedfordshire area.

Bedfordshire Times
The Dunstable Gazette
The Mirror
The Sun
The Daily Mail
The Herald
The Daily Express
The Post
The Times
The Daily Telegraph
The Guardian
The Bedfordshire On Sunday

My Newspaper Name:
The Bedfordshire Post

Fonts

Font choices are very important because they are a running theme throughout the editions of the newspapers, they will give an easily recognisable feature that will be eye catching to petential readers. For the masthead a large bold black font will be used, my selection is shown in the picture. For the headlines a slightly smaller boldblack font such as 'Impact' would be used and for the features and actual article an easy to read but quite small font, 'Times new roman' will be used as it is very traditional.