Evaluation

I am very happy with my result as I feel that I have worked hard to complate the tasks, before the year I ahd never even used a mac before, so a few months later to produce this kind of work is something that I am really happy about.

Genre is the placement of media texts into categorises based on their style and conventions, for example the film “Shaun of the Dead” could be classified as both a horror film and also a comedy and thus making this film a hybrid, as David Bordwell notes " any theme may appear in the genre". Genre is extremely important when producing a media text in order to make it obvious who the audience is and what the purpose of the text is for example to entertain or to provide information. I created a media text, the genre of which was a local newspaper for the people of Southend; more specifically it was about the sport in Southend. My target audience therefore was people who lived in Southend and were interested in sport and more specifically the sport in Southend, I made the lexis of the newspaper easy to read as that way the target audience can be expanded as many people would be able to read and understand what was being said. To make my newspaper successful I looked at various other newspapers such as the Sun owned by Rupert Murdoch and looked at the codes and conventions within it, such as a masthead, structured in columns and many stories per page. Codes and conventions such as these, we as an audience expect to see within the newspaper genre ad that is how we identify it with that genre.  Codes and conventions are very important to identify genre as expressed through John Fiske’s view that” there is no audience, only individuals with varying taste.

Conventions that I put into my newspaper that would be seen within a newspaper such as the Sun are; headlines, at least one image per page and a masthead. The connotations of a genre can be effective, giving the sub-culture a sense of identity, as Richard Jenkins said “with ought it (identity), social life is unimaginable”. On the front page I had two stories, one of which was about Football the other about Cricket. The clothing in both images in terms of colour are clear to the reader that these pictures are genuinely about Football and Cricket, therefore allowing consumers an easy link to which to identify the genre. Like most papers I decided that my text should be formal as that way it makes it seem more like a newspaper and the audience again can identify it to the genre. Like other newspapers my newspaper also had the characteristic of adverts, this is a commonly used characteristic within the genre as part of the purpose of a newspaper is to advertise other medias, which is where they get some of their of their financing from, a technique known as Bricolage in which that other medias such as magazines and websites use a similar technique in order to get their view or point across to the reader. David Buckingham would argue that genre is constantly developing and changing through negotiation and change. As our society changes so does genre, for example if their was a War in the country you  would see a lot more news published on that genre as it is happening now and is something that society can relate to. We can thereofre say that the popularity of a genre depends on how it relfects on society.

I feel that my newspaper does follow the conventions of its genre, as it has similar conventions to a newspaper and is structured in the same way i.e. in columns. I made my text in a serif font, which the consumer can again identify to the genre as a serif typeface is traditionally used for the main body of text whilst a sans-serif font is used of the masthead which again can be identified within my newspaper. I think that if I did it again I would put more colour within my newspaper as I feel that parts of I don’t stand out enough such as the adverts on the side, however in a typical newspaper the colour is mainly found within a large image and the name of the newspaper. However I feel that my construction of the genre is effective as when reading you can feel escapism as form of construction, and you can easily identify the genre by its layout and what its purpose is because of this I think that it represents the genre well. It is hard to find textx which are exceptions to any given definition of a particular genre. There are no "rigid rules of inclusion and exclusion" (Gledhill). Particular features which are characteristic of a genre are not normally unique to it; it is their relative prominence, combination and functions which are distinctive (Neale).

Narrative

Media texts rely on cultural experiences in order for audiences to easily make sense of narratives. I used both conventional and experimental approaches when constructing my website, by using different programmes in order to make parts of the website and get the final piece completed. My website like my newspaper is aimed at those who are interested in sport and more specifically sport in Southend.

Narrative is the story and the plot of a media text. There are many different narratives such as; open, closed, linear, non-linear, single stranded and multi stranded. The narrative of my website is fairly closed as most questions that a viewer would want answering are answered such as; who, what, when, where. This is fairly conventional of a website as a viewer or reader would look on a website for answers for example people use Google to find answers as that is Google’s purpose. Some websites however are closed, for example a travel website doesn’t have all the questions answered until someone expresses or determines where they will be travelling to, for how long, how they’ll get there etc. My website follows a linear narrative as it is structured in a specific order, for example it has a masthead, a picture and then text about the same story, this is the same structure that my website follows throughout, therefore the reader can identify the structure and can predict where certain information will be placed or what the story is about and therefore making sense to the viewer, therefore not making the website non-linear as it isn’t out of order and doesn’t have things such as flashbacks which websites for television programmes may as well as websites such as BBC Sport as they cover news that as already happened as well as the latest news. Therefore you could say that my approach was experimental but also in some website’s cases conventional. The narrative of my website is also multi-stranded as there are more than one story per page and there are several stories within one story, for example my story about Athletics involves different clubs points, who won, and an ex-professional athlete. This narrative is fairly conventional within stories in BBC Sport as well as news programmes, but may not be seen within a poster for example, this is why I think that my website develops the forms and conventions within real media products.

George Landlow in Hypertext 2.0 uses Roland Barthe’s term lexia to prose links supplemental narrative discourse. As links, they allow the readers to switch instantaneously out of any particular passage and link up with something else, perhaps more significantly they give the reader/viewer the opportunity to choose to go to any link within a website, a technique that I used several times within my newspaper, you can therefore say that is similar to real media products. I used the planning side of my newspaper which I developed into a blog to make it more easy to follow to compare and look at the different forms and conventions within a website, this way I knew what kind of things to put in, I could then choose from that list what conventions to put forward into my own website, thus making it similar to a real website whilst also making it unique as I could decide what to put on the website, where it should be placed, and distribute it to an audience. Whilst doing this I could get relevant feedback from teachers and fellow students so that both myself and the other could learn about what other people have done uniquely and what they have kept similar, this way from looking at other peoples work I can evaluate my own work and then attempt to improve it my applying similar things to my own to improve my website whilst still making it efficient. Barthes and Chatman argue for a distinction between constituent events (events that lead the story forward) and supplementary events (not neccessary for the story which is important for meaning and the imapct of the narrative such as the colour scheme for my website or the font of the headline or masthead, which often carries the "message". Through the ages a story may remain the same (Dr.Faust), but different versions although some elements persisit.

I have learnt from different people's feedback that some people like certain things wehereas others don't, you theroegfre can't plaease every kind of audence, this is why though there is a more dominant kind of newspaper or media, there will never a time where everyone likes the same films, websites, music, newspapers hence why there is more than one media. I thereofre used media technologies in the construction and research during the planning and evealuating stages to try and intertes as many people as possible to create a larger audience, one of the problems I had in doing this is that it is meant to be a local newspaper and is aimed at those in Southend, it therefore doesn't effect or really intertest anyone out of that area, people in Manchester for example wouldn't read my newspaper as what is in the newspaaper doesn't effect them. By not making my newspaper daily makes the newspaper more interesting as they have to wait for it to come out, if there has been no sport in southend on one day then there is nopthing to write or inform people about, with this happening often raders will wnat to read another newspaer which informs them every day. By researching different medias I could easily find out wat an audience expect to see in each media, in doing this I could easily identif what to put in my media to make it conventional whilst also making it unique so that it doesn't seem like a na ordinary newspaper. By doing this I feel that I made the combination of my main product and accialry textxs effectievas they are both conventional and different to other example sof media texts, they are informative, colourful, easy to understand with a simple lexis, syntax and sentence structure, they involve things like competitions and in my opinion are interesting and have information that a reader would want to know about a specific story.

Time keeping

Below is the plan I made to so that I could keep track of what work I had done and what I still had to do, in using this I managed to jeep my time effectively as I had a plan of what to do next and made it simple so that I had enough time to do each part of the work.

September 2010	Decide what genre of newspaper will be about. Basic Structure for first page of newspaper. Find images. Begin planning and researching examples of poster, newspaper and website.
September 2010	Begin putting together first page of newspaper
October 2010	Finish first page of newspaper and begin second
October 2010	Finish second page of newspaper
November 2010	Begin thinking of ideas for poster, make sure that newspaper pages 1 and 2 are completed
November 2010	Begin constructing poster
December 2010	Finish poster
December 2010	Make sure that poster is finished, begin making structure of first page of website-images
January 2011	Begin constructing first page of website
January 2011	Finish first page of website
February 2011	Begin second page of website
February 2011	Finish second page of website
March 2011	Make sure that poster newspaper and website is completed. Continue with planning and researching blog.
March 2011	Planning and Research Blog
April 2011	Finish Planning and Research for Blog and begin Evaluating
April 2011	Evaluation-Blog

Work

Website-Feedback

Good	Bad
Very clear and precise viewing	Some of the pictures are not edited properly
Good use of colour scheme (house style)	Text is quite small
Good variation of pictures i.e. different types photos, clipart	Could use more hyperlinks
Excellent proportion of text and images	Repeats a picture
Good interactive features	Background is plain

Poster-Feedback

Good	Bad
Different	unsure as to relevance of background image
attractive to reader	simple-bit boring
simple-easy to understand	Table Tennis-minority sport
shows a variety of sport-shows what the newspaper is about	use same image twice-boot
Good slogan	Make word sport stand out more-even more clear as to genre
link to Southend United’s colours-blue	Nothing about cost or how often it is distributed
link to find out more information	Small text in bottom right hand corner

Newspaper-Feedback

Good	Bad
Colourful	bit original to other newspapers
Conventions of a newspaper	Images take up a lot of space
lots of information	Some gaps where text could go
good use of layout
barely any space left
set up in columns
good images-fits with stories
easy to understand
Good masthead

Conventions of a poster

This is a poster advertising the film Pirates Of the Caribbean- Curse Of the Black Pearl. It has s large title which is eye catching,with bold colors which stand out because of the contrast with the relatively dark background. It has an intriguing picture which attracts the viewer to the film, the poster uses persuasive language in order to persuade the audience to go and watch the film by having big hollywood Stars on the poster such as Johnny Depp. It uses the rule of thirds well as it splits the poster into three so tat the audience can look at each section bit by bit in order to gain whatever information they want and to see what the film is all about. It also splits the villains and heroes into three, the two people on the left look like heroes, and the two on the right being the man and the skeleton look evil and balances out the good vs evil situation with one man in the middle suggesting that he is neither a hero or a villain.

Newspapers- categories

All newspapaers typically meet the following four criteria:

• Publicity- its contents are reliable and accessible to the public
• Currency- its information is both valid and up to date
• Periodicity- Its published at regular intervals
• Universality- It covers a range of different and new topics e.g sport and travel

Most newspapers are aimed at a broad spectrum of readers, usually geographically defined, some focus on a certain age group or a certain group of readers as defined by what interests them. Newspapers are categorised by how often they are published, for example they could be weekly or daily.

Daily

A daily newspaper is issued every day, sometimes with the exception of national holidays or Sundays. Saturday and Sunday editions tend to be larger and include more specialised sections such as adverts or certain stories. Generally the staff of the newspaper work monday to Friday, so the paper largely depends on the news during the working days of the week as well as what the news was on the Sunday which they can then publish on a Monday for example a natural disaster or a big story within sport. Most newspapers are published in the morning, this way the public have a longer period in order to buy and read the newspaper, and may want to read it on the train to work for example. Afternoon or evening papers are aimed more at office workers and commuters.

Weekly

Weekly newspapers are fairly common and tend to be smaller newspapers, which may be a big weakness of a weekly newspaper as the daily newspaper will provide a lot more stories and information and so people would rather read a daily newspaper in order to read and find out as much information as possible as to what is happening around the world.

National

Most nations have at least one newspaper that circulates throughout the entire country, a national newspaper as contrasted to a local newspaper serving a city or region. In the UK there are numerous national newspapers including, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, The Times and The Guardian. Large metropolitan newspapers have also expanded distribution networks and with effort can be found outside their normal area.

Newspapers

A newspaper is a regularly scheduled publication containing information, news, gossip and advertising. By 2007 there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a day. Newspapers generally publish stories on local and national events such as celebrities, sport events, festivals, strange happenings. Newspapers are generally structured in columns, with lots of text providing detailed reliable information as well as generally at least one image to go with the story, this is the part of the story that leaps out at the reader influencing them to read it. other features of a newspaper include; cartoons/comics, advertising, television listings and inserts from local companies and businesses trying to sell a product. Typically the main story is on the front whilst the back pages consist of sporting events that have recently taken place and sporting news. Newspapers share links with other types of media such as the internet and television, there are conventions of a website that can be found in a newspaper such as a web address, hyperlinks, similar format of information and possibly the same image, this is known as bricolage. There are lots of stories within a newspaper there could be as many as 100 stories or even more found inside, as there are generally around two or three stories on each page with around 60 pages per newspaper.

website- bbc sport

This website follows the conventions of other websites as it has the following characteristics;

• links
• back-links
• uploads
• website address
• hyperlinks
• a strap-line
• a header
• images
• video/s
• advertising

Posters

Below is an example of a sport related poster...

This is a poster advertising the FIFA 2011 World Cup, though there is very little information the image and the text provided make it very clear to the reader as to what the poster is advertising, for example you can clearly see that the poster has something to do with football as it shows a person kicking a ball, you can also tell this by the fact that it says FIFA World Cup which is the national governing body for football and determines all the rules and regulations within the sport. it also tells you where and when the World Cup is being placed identified by the words " south africa 2010" and "June 11th-June 25th". The poster is very attractive due to its bright colors which instantly attract the readers attention, as well as the fact that the font is in a large font size and certain important words such as "Africa" are written in a different color font again informing the reader that this information is important, you can therefore say that the poster has achieved its purpose of attracting the reader and informing the reader about the 2010 World Cup.

Below is another poster...

This is a poster advertising the 2009 European Championships in Nottingham. You can clearly see what the poster is about by the image of a man canoeing, this is further evidenced by the words "Canoe Slalom". This poster gives lots of information, it clearly identifies what the poster is advertising, identifies  where it is being held (" Nottingham"), identifies when it is being held, and gives the reader a website address at the bottom of the page where they can find further information. The image is a large size and through the use of the colors it will be easily seen by a passer by, as it is eye catchy, the font colour of the text contrast to the colour of the water and the color of the man, making it easy to read and understand whilst also indicating to the reader whether or not the information is important by the use of the size of font. This poster is easy to read and easy to spot compared to other posters due to its colour and its size of font and images, the target audience would be anyone interested in canoeing and more importantly the european championships, though this poster does advertise the canoe slalom the bigger picture is that it is part of the 2009 European Championships. This poster advertises its sponsors such as lottery fund and uk sport, which again helps the advertisement as the sponsors will gain money from people watching the canoeing, promoting the golden triangle in the commercialization of sport as shown below.

commercialization occurs in a number of ways which are; financial, media attention, product and changing of sports.

Below is a third sport related poster...

Though this isn't as traditional a poster compared to the other two because of the fact that it is advertising a radio station it has links to sport. For example the Nottingham Forest football club emblem can be seen in the bottom right hand corner and the link to "come on you reds" linking with a chant that you would hear at football match, i like the fact that the words "you reds" is written in a red font linking with the word red. You can also see the football pitch in the background that the producer of the poster made opaque so that it didn't cover the text and highlight attention to the football pitch, the producer has used the strong link of football to draw the reader in, more people would rather see and read a poster that was about football than a about a radio station. Though there is very few words it is important and meaningful, for example we can tell that it is a radio station in Nottingham, and shows what stations it can be found on. The link to football though is also a weakness, it draws in the reader but when they see that it isn't about football it may disappoint them and they may lose interest. another weakness with this poster is that it is predominantly a link to football rather than a radio station, there is very little colour which makes it less attractive and gives it a smaller chance of being seen and read by the public, if the public don't stop and read it (as that is what the purpose of a poster is) then it isn't effective, the purpose of this advert is to get more people listening to the radio station so if there not reading it they are not achieving their aim. To improve it they need to be make it more attractive and colorful whilst also giving a lot more information such as what days it is on and what time as well as who is presenting or who is host of the station for a specific day or all the time, if it is a celebrity then the public may be more interested as to what they are saying due to their influence.

Above is a poster that isn't related to sport. This poster is advertising a film- The Dark Knight. Though its target audience isn't directed to someone with an interest in sport it has similar characteristics of a poster such as those above and the one below. For example it has a masthead, indicating what the poster is about, lots of colour and a large font size (in particular the masthead) to draw the readers attention, and gives lots of information as to what the poster is about including what (a poster for a film), who (Batman, The Dark Knight) and when (coming soon). You can clearly  see that this isn't directed specifically at sport as it has no sporty images and has no relevant information linked to sport, and looks to be directed towards a film because of the language used such as "Coming Soon", the symbol of Batman (The bat seen towards the bottom of the page) as well as the fact that you don't recognise the man in the poster as a ordinary person that is real and isn't fiction, for example you don't see many if any people wearing paint, with buildings being destroyed all around him with a gun. You can also tell this by the names of the actors at the top of the page such as "Christian Bale, Michael Caine" etc who most people, would know and relate to films. You can clearly see the genre of this film is action by the exploding buildings and debris behind the man as well as the fact that he is carrying a gun, you can also tell this if you know anything about the comic books of Batman. Batman was first a comic and has been produced and is being distributed as a film. This poster is a bit of a tester as the image makes it look interesting and exciting and so you want to read more, however the poster doesn't really give much information, however it gives a website where the viewer can learn more "www.thedarkknightmovie.co.uk" and also the words "Coming Soon" also implies that you're going to have to wait for the film to be distributed and then go and find out what happens yourself by going and watching it. In particular I really like the bat symbol and the blue light in the background of it because it looks interesting and unique, the blu colour contrasts with the rest of the colour which is predominantly black and so makes it stand out, when looking at this poster this was one of the first things i saw because of this and so if you know what the symbol stands for (Batman) then you instantly know what it is about and so interests a viewer.

This poster is advertising Basketball. Thought there is only a small amount of information, this poster says a lot, for example their are eleven images all of which can clearly be seen to link with Basketball, this can be identified through the actual word "Basketball" as well as the demonstration of techniques and skills such as the far right image of the middle section a boy about to have a shot, as well as a basketball in the same image, it can also be seen by what the people are wearing (basketball shirts). From these images you can tell that it is aimed at younger people by the fact that the people in the images look fairly young.  This poster explains what the poster is about (Basketball), where it is held "Maine- Endwell JV" as well as what year "2008-2009" indicating what season the poster is advertising. However this poster is taken up with the images and some more information in my opinion is needed for example what days and times are these matches going to be held, who are they playing, what league they are playing in, to do this they need more information and a few images could be cut out of the poster to provide room for this information. The colour also is fairly boring, it would stand out a lot more if the background was a darker colour as this way it can contrast to the images of which the lighting is quite high, also a orange background could make it even more obvious that the poster is about Basketball as the orange links to the colour of the Basketball.

Liverpool Echo Masthead

This is the masthead of the Liverpool Echo, below is a table of what are the advantages as well as trhe disadvantages of thee masthead, concentrating on aspects such as colour, size, presentation as well as whather or not it grabs attention to a passer by or reader.

The Liverpool Echo

This is the front cover of a local paper in Liverpool, more specifically it is about the sport in Lioverpool, it therefore links to my idea of the local newspaer in Southend. This page consists of ...

• a small image
• a red background linking to Liverpool Fc's colours
• A masthead
• A price tag
• A column of text
• A big (in terms of font size) headline
• A filler 

What I like about this page from the newspaper is the fact that there is very little white space or space that has been left withought being filled by a column of text or an image. It uses the colour red well, linking in with the team colours of Liverpool FC of which the article is about, which is seen even clearer by the use of the Liverpool FC logo situated in the middle of the page. The masthead is slo very clear and thew blue background behind the word "Liverpool" stands out as the blue contrats against the red background throughout the remainder of the page. Though there is only one colum of text, it is clear to the reader what the newspaper is all about, you can clearly see the words "Liverpool" and you can see the Liverpool logo as well as the use of the word "Red's", Liverpool's knickname. The disadvantages of this newspaper is that there isn't a great deal of information as there is only one column of text, the red background and the headline "NESV GET REDS!" is probably prodeuced in a font that is slightly tobig, if it were a few sizes smaller then the editors could have possibly produced a second column or a second article to draw the readers attention whilst also being infromative and interetsting. The advert at the bottom of the page as well is probably a little to big, it covers about an eighth of the page and widens to each margin to the bleed. This space could be used for another article, a further image or an extra column of text. The masthead is also a little to small as the masthead is one of the first things that a reader or a passer by will look at, if it doesn't grab there attention then they won't stop and look at it, therefore with a larger masthead they could achieve mopre people looking at the newspaper and so could make more sales of the newspaper. Another problem is that the target audience is those who are living in Liverpool or are a supporter of Liverpool FC. Thereofre the target audience was limited, if they had some information on other aspects of Liverpool or other football teams in Liverpool such as Everton and Accrington Stanley, then they could achieve a larger audience.

Masthead- Evening Echo

Pro’s of Masthead	Con’s of Masthead
Colourful-stands out and attracts reader	Bit boring
Large Typeface- Stands out	Does it stand out over other mastheads?
Two contrasting colours- makes it stand out even more	Easy and quick to produce
Bright colours- makes the newspaper seem friendly and a respectful newspaper	Not a lot of thought about how to make the design different/ more interesting-just text
Dark Blue-link to evening(night/dark)

Exisiting Newspapers- The Evening Echo

This page of the "Evening Echo" newspaper, consists of the following conventions of a newspaper;

• Masthead
• date of when the newspaper was published
• Price tag
• strapline
• Headline
• Large image in terms of pixels-takes up a lot of page
• Gutters
• text written in newspaper form- columns
• Byline-authors name printed at the beggining of the article
• Barcode
• Jump-article continuing  from one page to another
• Bleed-illustration filling more than one margin
• A filler-stories or advertisements used to fill spaces where needed

The very first page of the "Evening Echo" as seen above, consists of one main story and two smaller ones, each roughly three columns, but only has an image for the main story, in fills in the remaining soace with an advert, which they could've used to place an image for the other two articles. There is very little space for any more images or text. The masthead as well as the image are fairly colourful and stand out, which may draw the attention of a psser by, which is the aim of the colour, it has lots of information and so seems reliable, and as a reader you get the impresion that the information that they have collected andwritten in the articles is given to the newspaper via a reliabel source, and so makes the information ore realistic and trustworthy. The main headline is written in a large font size, and is written in a bold typeface, this makes it stand out above the rest of the newpaper, and the fact that it uses statistics ("1,100") make the article seem more reliable as it is specific. Other parts of the newspaper are written in a bold typeface which makes it not only stand out but informs the reader that the information is important.