Newspaper Front Page Plan

Through my research I have decided to use more of a structured looking front page, like The Evening Post rather than the front page of Echo which is portrayed as quiet messy and informal. I have mainly choose this as it will convey my location, Portishead. As Portishead is a new up to date town which has both working class and middle class citizens, it is clean and fresh as more and more people are joining the community and more buildings are being built.

Title research for my newspaper

My Masthead Ideas

For my newspaper I will have to come up with an original title, which differs to other newspapers which are already published. I will do this by researching several other newspaper titles and take a little bit of each one and combine them to make my title. I will not just have to think of a font and style but also the name of my newspaper which I could get inspiration from the location I would think of selling too, Portishead or perhaps a larger audience location such as Bristol. 

Past newspapers that I have researched are:

All of these newspaper titles either use the colour red or blue, or even both somewhere on the masthead. For example the Evening Post is in blue and their logo is red, the ship. This is the same as Daily Post but the logo instead of a ship, is a dragon. Three out of four of the mastheads are in capital letters and bold whilst one, The Cornwall Review is looking more formal not in bold rather in your face like the other mastheads. All three, Evening Post, Daily Post and Echo are very similar, as well as using the same colours they all have a logo which represents their location of sale, as the Echo is sold in Liverpool it uses their football shirt logo as their logo on the newspaper to promote their city and to reinforce them. The logos of Daily Post and Evening Post separate the two words as it is put centre of the masthead, this could imply that the newspaper value their location and see it as an important part of their newspaper, to know where its from as they are proud of their city. The Cornwall review also differs from the others as it is cut up in three lines which makes it seem as though its more casual and relaxed rather then The Echo which makes itself seem urgent in bold large capitals. Two out of  four use serif font, Evening Post and The Cornwall Review, this suggests that the masthead is more classic and elegant rather than Daily Post and Echo which use sans serif font. This could be because of the location they're sold in, as Liverpool is portrayed as a rough, area they try to mirror this in the masthead. Whilst The Cornwall Review is released in Cornwall, seen as a pleasant, welcoming city. Echo is placed on a heavy red banner which helps to make the masthead noticeable as it is white along with the logo. They may also choose this colour as Liverpool's main colour is red, as it is their football shirt and other sports.  

Advert Research

Newspaper inside page analysis: The Times and Mercury

To find a suitable second page for a newspaper was quiet difficult as it can be hard to differentiate between the second page and the front cover, apart from that the second page has no headline. I found that the second page is like an introduction to the whole newspaper, which tells you what is in the newspaper, what pages you might be mos interested in and sometimes a story in the middle. The image on the right shows an annotation of my first second page analysis, The Mercury. 

The second inside page I have analysed is a local Mercury newspaper which targets a audience which live in Portishead, Clevedon and Yatton. 

Research questionnaire.

To find out what type of people read newspapers, I have came up with a short survey with a few questions which will help me find the largest group which newspaper companies do or should make as their target audience.

My questionnaire:

To get my results I had 15 different people complete the questionnaire so that the answers where varied and not all similar.

I found that majority of readers where male
and minority where female. This could be
because some females feel as though some
newspapers are made more attractive to male
readers by having male colours such as blue and
their main stories to be mainly sport.

    In this chart it implies that majority of readers
    are over 50 years old, which suggests that this
    could be the newspapers target audience for age.
    Reasons why the age maybe so late might be because
    the younger generation now have more access to the
    internet and understand it a lot more then the older
    population. However the older generation may just
    like to buy a newspaper rather then go on the internet 
    because it's how they have been brought up.

   This chart is in answer to question 6, "How often do 
    you purchase your local newspaper?". It shows that
    majority of readers purchase a newspaper daily rather
    then weekly or monthly. This maybe so that they can stay
    on top with the newest news. It could also suggest that
    the newspaper is a large company as it can afford and has
    time to create a brand new newspaper everyday, including new                         stories which can be hard to obtain. 

 This is a chart for question 9. The answers mirror that of
question 6, as the readers which buy the newspaper daily, 
read it daily.

This chart shows that most of the readers read the newspaper
for its sport, as five people have answered that is the main reason
why they purchase their newspaper. This maybe the reason why
from my results that more men purchase their local newspaper
then women, as they purchase it for the sports. Following with four
for recent incidents could imply that some readers are actually interested in finding out what horrific things have happened near their location, for example someone who has recently died in a car accident.
Other has been the next top answer, this could be such things as to read their daily horoscope or just buying it because they have nothing else to read. Lastly is Stories and Weather, these maybe least selected because you can easily find this information out online or on the television quicker.



Through doing this I have found that newspapers target audience should be elderly people, perhaps because they're more interested in purchasing a print copy rather than going online or getting their information from television. Also I found that males are more likely to read a newspaper then females this maybe because of the most newspapers are bought because of the sport. There is also a much more dominance in people purchasing their local newspaper daily to find out the most up to date news which implies that a newspaper has to find new stories and information everyday, it could also suggest that most newspapers are large companies.

Newspaper front page analysis 5: Daily Post North Wales