Thoughts and Ideas

After my recent research, I have come to change my mind as to how I want to present my newspaper.

Like The Guardian and The Independent; newspapers of the 21^st century cannot be broadsheet size. This is backed up by the fact that when these two newspapers moved to the compact/tabloid size, their sales began to increase. This is a good example of how I can use real media texts and their ideas in order to create my own product effectively. As Bentley said, the making of the new is nothing more than the remodelling of the old, meaning it is important to use existing products to meet the conventions and needs of a target audience.

Because of this, I will also use the compact/tabloid size, which is 380mm x 289mm. Despite being the same size as a tabloid newspaper, I will be reporting and laying out my paper in a broadsheet manner, with serious stories and lexical choices. This is to follow the conventions of regional newspapers I have observed while theoretically catering for age groups across the board. Older people, who are a prominent audience of local newspapers, will be attracted to the conventional broadsheet style news coverage with the luxury of not having to carry around a giant newspaper, especially in a world where everything is now so compact, a la iPods, flat screen TVs and game consoles. This is the area I believe will attract more young people, who want to keep up with a comprehensive coverage of local news, while not looking un-cool or out of place reading what many see as an outmoded form of news with the expansion of the internet. Because of this and my survey results alike, I will be fully integrating technology into my newspaper, giving it a youthful slant but at the same time not alienating older generations who do not ‘tweet’ or use Facebook.

I will keep the same formal layout as broadsheet newspapers I have observed like the Cornish Guardian, again to please traditional consumers, and even pry CG readers away by moving into the 21^st century in terms of evolving local news with technology and bringing in more interest from wider age groups who have expressed an interest in local news in my survey.