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.