Contacting Local Newspapers (Recieved E-mails)

Hi Iain,

Thank you for your email, which has been forwarded to me.

I don't know which specific aspect of newspapers you are researching, but here is a link to facts and figures section of the website of the Newspaper Society, the umbrella organisation representing regional and local newspapers.

http://www.newspapersoc.org.uk/Default.aspx?page=1

I hope some of the information is useful to you. Good luck with your project.

Best wishes,

Chris Walker
Regional Managing Editor
Trinity Mirror North West & Wales
0151 472 2350
Secretary, 0151 285 8476/472 2480
Fax 0151 330 5034

Contacting Local Newspapers (Sent E-mails)

I sent the following e-mails to members of local newspaper companies.
This was an email sent to Andrew Campbell of the Liverpool Echo.
From: Iain Warren (iain_warren@hotmail.co.uk)
Sent: 14 October 2009 10:51:30
To: andrewcampbell@liverpoolecho.co.uk

Hello Andrew,
My name is Iain Warren and I am currently studying in my second year of media studies at Roby college. I am researching into newspapers and was wondering if there was any information you could provide me that would be useful and would help me with my coursework.

Thanks


The next e-mail was send to the picture editor at the Metro.
From: Iain Warren (iain_warren@hotmail.co.uk)
Sent: 14 October 2009 10:48:03
To: pictures@ukmetro.co.uk

I am a second year media student who is researching into newspapers and I was wondering if you could provide me with any answers to why pictures are so important to a newspaper. For example are people more likely to read a certain story if it has pictures to illustrate it?

Any answers you can provide me with would be very useful,

Thanks

This e-mail was also sent to the Liverpool metro
From: Iain Warren (iain_warren@hotmail.co.uk)
Sent: 14 October 2009 10:58:28
To: news.liverpool@ukmetro.co.uk

My name is Iain Warren and I am currently studying in my second year of media studies at Roby college. I am researching into newspapers and was wondering if there was any information you could provide me that would be useful and would help me with my coursework.

Thanks

Newspaper Poster and Radio Advert (Ancillary Tasks)

Poster
My poster to represent my newspaper will consist of the liverbird that is used on my newspaper. This Liverbird being half blue and half red. The colours purple, blue and red will also be used for the poster as they are the three main colours for my product.
I will also use an example of the front cover of my magazine for so that the audience can become familiar with the style and layout that my newspaper uses. I want to make my newspaper recognisable to my audience.
I will research other newspaper posters to get an idea of what is required within them. However I will be using ideas of my own to make my poster original.

Radio Advert
For my radio advert I will be using a young male from Liverpool as this is my target audience and the area I am aiming my newspaper at. I will be using somebody who is between the age range of my target audience to speak throughout my radio advert. I will try to keep my advert simple but at the same time adding my own features to it to make it more effective. I will also listen to other radio adverts to try and gather some information on what it takes to make a good radio advert.

Questionnaire ( First 10 feedback)

I produced a questionnaire for my newspaper and below are the results of the first 10 questionnaires I gathered feedback from.

Type of News


The highest type of news was Entertainment which received 9 out of 10, the number of people interested in this type of news.
The rest were as followed;
Entertainment 9
Sports 6
Fun 5
Politics 3
Economic 3
Art 2
Industrial 1
History 1
Religious 0
Science 0

From this collated data I can see that the most enjoyed type of news is Entertainment and the least interesting are Religious and Science.


Do you prefer local or national newspapers?

This shows that from the 10 questionnaires 60% of people prefer national newspapers over local ones with 40% preferring the local newspapers. This could be seen as a good issue for me because if more people prefer the national to the local it means I will have to look at why this is and try and improve on it.


I was also able to work out that the average price from my 10 questionnaires that people would be willing to pay would be 40p.
20p 30p 30p 40p 40p 40p 40p 50p 50p 60p = £4 divided by number of people (10)
Average price = 40p


What do you like about newspapers?


I can see that the main thing people like is the content, what actually goes into the newspaper and the least liked thing was the language so I could make the language I use more informal and friendly towards the reader, hopefully getting them involved for example, an emotional story would appeal to their emotional side.

I wanted to see if a new local newspaper, if brought onto the market would appeal to the public.



I can see from this data that more than half of the first set of feed backs (6 people) would be willing to purchase a new local newspaper if it were to come onto the market, with the other 4 being unsure. This is good for me because none of the questionnaire feed backs said they wouldn't be willing to buy one if it was to appear on the market.

I also wanted to find out whether people preferred the online version to the print based version.

I can see that there is a massive difference here, with 90% (9 people) preffered the print based newspaper to the online version ( 1 person, 10%). I find this to be useful because if more people were to prefer the online version then I would have to look into why this is,
Is it more accesible?
What is different about it?
Are the stories different or more detailed online than the printed versions?

And finally I asked what people thought their local newspapers were lacking and the responses I recieved were;
More gossip
More entertainment
Agony Aunt
Better layout
More interesting stories
Less adverts
Others believe that the newspapers lack in variety.

Newspapers (Overall Research)

I have found that many newspapers tend to use the majority of the front page for an image of the story and it's headline.
Examples of this are;





I have also found that these images used are very representative of the story and can almost capture the whole story in one image. This is strongly illustrated by the newspaper front cover, "The Daily Telegraph" showing the Twin Towers burning on 9/11. This one image almost makes it so that the reader wouldn't have to read the story to know what has happened.
There also tends to be a first stance as well as the main headline and this is used to give the reader a bit more information on the story. For example,

Headline- "Local Flat Collapses"
First stance- "Hundreds injured in freak accident"

The New York Post is an example of a local newspaper from America and the same style is still used, the main image and headline dominating the front page.

I have also found that free local newspapers will use more advertisements that local newspapers that charge and this is to bring in more revenue. My newspaper is going to be paid for therefore I will not need as many advertisements in it.