More stories - Boardmasters, Petrol, Police

Boardmasters
With my article, I will outline who is going to be performing at the festival this year, as well as history from other years and more information people might like to know, such as the website and Twitter accounts for the festival.

Update: Full article - Sheeran To Headline Boardmasters


The eagerly anticipated line-up for this year’s annual Boardmasters festival in Newquay has been announced this month, with the notable  inclusions of successful young artists Ed Sheeran and ‘Bonkers’ rap artist Dizzee Rascal.

Sheeran, who earlier this year won two BRIT awards including ‘Best British Male Solo Artist’ and has hits with “A-Team” and “You Need Me, I Don’t Need You,” is seen as one of the biggest prospects in the British music industry.

In previous years,  the ‘surf & skate’ festival, which is mainly hosted on Fistral Beach and Watergate Bay, has attracted acts such as Fat Boy Slim, Plan B, The Streets and Paolo Nutini; capturing the imagination of music lovers from around the South West, and this year will be no different. Other acts confirmed for 2012 include The Ting Tings and  Maverick Sabre as well as sets from Radio 1’s Zane Lowe and dubstep artist DJ Fresh.

Fans hoping to make the short trip are being warned that tickets are expected to sell quickly for this year’s event, which is to be held from August 8th-14th with music on Friday 10th and Saturday 11th. For more information, visit the Boardmasters website www.boardmasters.co.uk or follow @BoardmastersRBM.

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I happened to attend last year's event, in which I took some pictures which I have recycled for my newspaper. They are here:

 I like the lighting on this image, as well as the angle it is taken from. However, I wanted to use an 'action' image, where it almost advertises the event. In this case, people stood around waiting is not indicative of having that much of a good time.

 I almost used this image for my article because of the lights coming from the stage and the movement of the crowd in front of the camera, however the night-time atmosphere gave a negative feel to my page, with the dark colours not fitting in well with the rest of my double page spread.

 This is the image I eventually used. I like it, because it has the angle and lighting I spoke of from the first image, yet captures the festival in full swing, which was what I wanted.

Petrol Prices
As a fairly new driver myself, I wanted to cover a story on the increase in petrol prices, which isn't difficult to find as they seem to be going up every week. I feel that it meets the needs of my target audience because in my survey people voted for politics-based stories. It is something that affects everyone in tough economic times.

Update: Full Article:-


Pasty lovers aren’t the only people with reason to be dismayed at the release of this week’s budget by Chancellor George Osborne,  as  fuel prices continue to increase, becoming the highest rates ever for fuel in the UK. Annoyed motorists took to   The Cornish Insight’s brand new and increasingly popular Facebook page to express their disgust at the latest tax on drivers. One  lady explained how she felt;
“I’ve voted conservative all my live, but I can stand up and admit they’re ruining our country at the moment.  Ordinary people  just can’t hold down a living with all these cuts and taxes. It needs to stop!”

And this seems to be the general feeling among the public; as petrol has become a necessity in recent times, albeit an expensive necessity.

Riots
For BBC News Day, a youth official for the South West was asked by Bodmin College students why he thought the August riots did not reach Cornwall. He said that, amongst other things, our 'white background' helped us through the anarchy in the rest of the country. I think that this will be a good story to cover, as it is extremely interesting for all readers. I have to be careful that it is not too sensationalised, in fear of either misquoting him or becoming a tabloid style newspaper. I wanted to use this as one of the smaller articles in the end, as it is not a particularly big story, but it would still feature on my first three pages. Because of this, I have only written a paragraph towards it

Update: - article

August’s Riots Didn’t Reach Cornwall Due To Lack of “Ethnic Diversity”

The anarchy and lawlessness which spread across the major cities of the country last year has been met with widespread coverage from the press, as people continue to search for answers as to why and how the chaos erupted. Cities like London, Manchester and Liverpool were all heavily affected by the riots, however the South West remained relatively impervious to the riots, which... 

Progress - Website

My website is looking neat at the moment, especially given the fact this is the first time I have properly used iWeb for making a webpage. I have copied over from InDesign my logo to add continuity to my productions. I have also been working on creating tabs at the top of the page, following the conventions of the websites I have observed.

 Here I was just playing with a blank iWeb page, trying to make sense of it. After some issues with saving and one or two things disappearing from my page, I began to structure my homepage in a way that met my initial flat plans.

 Having imported my masthead and date, my webpage was starting to take shape. I used the line tool to separate off my masthead from the tabs that I chose beforehand. At this stage, while my website was looking good, it was looking fairly plain. I needed some colour to it.

Using the blog function on iWeb, I was able to create story pages for my articles which would then link to my homepage. You will be able to see that near the conventional search bar on the right I had tried to add in drop down boxes which would link users to different areas of each section, for example under sport would be football and rugby and under entertainment would come music and film. I found the html code from the internet, though the boxes I created, after strenuous work trying to edit the code, would not re-size, meaning I had odd shaped drop down boxes which was impractical.

After realising the tabs on most news websites are colourful, I chose to do this myself. With this, I had to do a bit of manoeuvring with text and boxes, but I feel it was worth it as I liked the effect it gave. With this I started experimenting with other colours. Originally I wanted the background of my website to be white and simplistic, though I found this to look amateurish so gave it a neutral colour which in the end I was pleased with.

My stories

Boardmasters
I want to cover the announcement of the Boardmasters line-up in my newspaper because music stories scored highly in my survey when I asked people what they would like to see in my newspaper. Boardmasters is one of the biggest festivals in the South West, so would be a good story to cover in my newspaper. I will not need to be on the scene, so I will not need to spend money when researching the story, I need only internet facilities.

Fuel Prices
Another story I am to cover is that of increased fuel prices. Nearer the time of publication, there may be new hikes in fuel duty, but I want people's opinions on how the fuel prices are hitting pockets across the country; something that is currently frustrating me. Furthermore, people wanted to see political stories in my newspaper, as per my survey.

Sport stories
I want to incorporate local sport, and sport associated with the college into my newspaper, despite the fact my participants did not originally want to see sports stories in my newspaper. Sport is a big convention and selling point in newspapers, which is why I will be including it. I have also found that BBC Sport Relief will be coming up in March, so I will cover this.

I will keep my blog updated as I collect more stories in the run up to Easter.

Market research - posters

For one of my tasks, I need to create a poster. A good poster is one that attracts the attention of passers-by, but before I can make my poster, I need to know what it is that attracts those people to it.

 Firstly, I wanted to know whether or not posters actually had an impact on people, and question 1 sees that they do not appear to. This means that I will need to make my own poster imposing and thought-provoking, to make sure 4/6 people were not just 'walking straight past it' or 'not noticing' it. The answer for this could be colour, but similarly, some of the most striking images are simplistic, like The Beatles' The White Album.

 Secondly, I asked people what kind of outdoor advertising would catch people's eye, as I need to choose where to put my poster before I can make it, to get things like paper dimensions right. Unanimously, bus stop posters won over road side billboards, which doesn't surprise me, as people walking along a street will have more time to read a bus stop poster than they will if they are driving a car along a busy road and see a billboard for a newspaper. This suggests that I should use bus-stop posters, which fits in with my previous research, and now I know that it is what would catch people's eye the most.

Finally, I asked what people think my poster should look like, and quite surprisingly the simplistic approach took a big lead against a more complex approach with more to digest. I think that in this climate of technology with instant information, people's attention span for something like a poster in the street will be minimal, so it is imperative I can grab their attention within the first few seconds of them laying their eyes upon it.

In all, my market research was extremely productive. I have learnt that I will need to make my poster attractive for an audience who seem to naturally block out posters in the street, as well the fact a bus-stop poster will be the most attractive, where people are stood aimlessly waiting for buses, looking around for something to stare at. I will also need to make my production simple but eye catching, much like those that I have already analysed.

Press Photography Research

As I will be taking photos throughout the course of my story-collecting stage, I will need to have some knowledge of press photography. Press photographers, like journalists, are essentially people who can work for large companies, media outlets or free-lance, who are hired to go out and take pictures on the scenes of big stories, openings of events, press conferences and stalking celebrities on their holidays to name but a few.

Unlike studio photographers, images are nearly always shot on location with a hand held digital camera. As well as this, the photographer will take a laptop with them, so images can quickly be uploaded to the internet ready to be published in a product by the editor, who has sent them there in the first place. The editor naturally decides which stories will make the newspaper, and the picture editor will make a decision as to the type of shots the photographer needs to go out and get, as well as how many images need to be used.

Typically, the general view of paparazzi photographers by the general public is one of an annoying, intrusive journalist constantly snapping pictures of famous people, eventually getting one shot in which they look miserable, and putting it on the front cover of OK magazine. Despite this, press photographers work to strict deadlines with great pressure on them to deliver good quality images that can be used in a publication. Often, they are expected to present up to five good quality images for each story they cover, so the picture editor has a good choice of image to use to fit around text and other images.
Often, press photographers can have niche specialities, such as celebrities, sport and the royal family, however on a smaller scale, like in my newspaper, photographers will be contracted to do all of these jobs.

With this knowledge in mind, when it comes to taking my own images with an SLR camera, I will take a variety of pictures, as when they are put onto a laptop and don't look very good, there is no going back to take more.