Question 1 1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

QUESTION 1 

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

TITLE OF THE NEWSPAPER

The word telegraph follows conventions of newspapers as it’s a word associated with newspapers, however it challenges conventions also as the word is quite old fashioned and not used a lot anymore however I thought it would suit my newspaper as it’s an informative paper not a tabloid and the word telegraph is very formal and so fits well.

CONTEXT After doing my product research I recognized a common theme in all three

which was bad news makes good news. In the newspapers I researched the majority of the main stories were negative stories usually based on a crime or a negative story line in the news, examples of these are below. Following this for my main story on my newspaper I reported a natural disaster which is a negative story, on the inside I also reported a story about a wanted man who was guilty of armed robbery. Developing this convention I chose to write a story about dogs being abandoned at Christmas however it was written in a less negative way to the other stories as it aims to persuade the public to either donate to the charity or not to buy dogs if they don’t have the intention to look after them properly.

DESIGN AND LAYOUT/HOUSE STYLE After researching different newspapers I had a good idea about how newspapers should

be laid out and tried to follow these conventions in my own newspaper. The articles I have written are in narrow columns and the text is very small which is a usual convention for newspapers. The masthead is placed at the top of the front page and has a thin red line running underneath it to separate the masthead from the rest of the page which I found to be used in existing newspapers also.

I have also used a yellow banner on the second page which is positioned at the top and runs along the page with the date, name of newspaper and page number above, I found this in a number of newspapers I researched and therefore this follows conventions.

When positioning the articles and images I used guides to make sure that everything was aligned correctly to make the newspaper look professional and more like a real newspaper as existing newspapers have everything perfectly aligned. The house style I believe follows conventions as it’s not too colourful and when colours are used mostly on the second page these are common colours found in newspapers such as red, blue yellow and grey, however the front cover I have stuck to the house style of black red and white.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND PRINT DESIGN AND LAYOUT The images I have used on my newspaper I took using both my

iPhone camera and a camera from college. The images used follow conventions for newspapers I think as for the wanted man story I created a mug shot image which fits well with the story.

I have also took images of my dogs for the charity advert, out of the selection of images I took I chose the two where my dogs look the saddest as the story aims to persuade readers to empathise and feel sorry for the dogs.

I also took an image of my conservatory as after researching existing newspapers I noticed lots of advertisements inside of newspapers for companies selling things such as windows doors and conservatories and therefore I have followed usual conventions with my images.

I have also included two images on the front cover which I had previously taken on my Iphone, I used these as adverts one was the sunset in Ibiza which I edited to look slightly more professional and another was of my godson in Gulliver’s world, I believe these follow conventions as they are real pictures advertising holidays and a day out at Gulliver’s world and you can usually find these on a newspaper

NARRATIVE AND HOW THE OPENING SETS THE STORIES UP The main story on my front cover is conventional for

a newspaper story which is reporting something as serious as a natural disaster, it is conventional as it goes straight into the story starting with ‘thousands of homes have been damaged’ this would catch the reader’s attention and lead them to carry on reading the article. The crime story I have created on the second page also follows conventions as it’s a serious story and therefore I have written it in a formal tone and it starts with the wanted man’s name and then goes onto saying what crime he has committed. The third article I wrote was a dogs trust charity story in the same way as my other articles I have used a formal tone which is conventional for this type of story as its not meant to be humorous.

GENRE AND HOW IT IS ENCODED

The genre of my newspaper is quite a formal serious newspaper and I have encoded this with the use of my three articles as they are mainly quite negative storylines and these are the main type of stories which are usually featured in more serious newspapers unlike tabloids such as the star and the sun which mainly report on celebrity gossip. I also think the name of my newspaper encodes the genre well as the word telegraph is quite an old fashioned formal word and encodes the formality of the newspaper.

HOW CHARACTERS ARE INTRODUCED IN WRITTEN COPY

In my main story on the front cover I have introduced two different witnesses to the natural disaster and introduced them in a formal way as they are discussing there ordeal. I think I have followed conventions well when introducing characters as its written in a formal tone which is how I want my newspaper to be decoded.

SPECIAL EFFECTS ANY IMAGE MANIPULATION YOU HAVE USED ON PHOTOGRAPHY

All of my images have been slightly edited from their original copy, I have mostly just adjusted brightness and contrast of the images to make them stand out more and I also used the crop tool to crop out any unwanted parts of the images.