Level 2 Print Media Production

Complete your analysis of a newspaper in the following way.  1. Open up a new blogpost called 'NEWSPAPER ANALYSIS - AN ADVERT'   Find an ad, preferably either a half-page, full-page or double-page ad. Again, take a shot of it and slot the image under the heading.  2.  Then tell me about the advert, again answering only the questions you think are relevant.   What’s the style of language? (Formal/chatty/serious/funny/young/old)?  What sort of  colours and fonts are predominant – why?  What kind of image features in the ad? Why? What is the images denotation and connotation?  How is the meaning created through the layout – why do you think things have been placed where they have? Would you have done things differently?  Does the ad actually appear close to an article that refers to what’s being advertised?  Does the ad seem targeted at the same audience that the newspaper has (working class for a tabloid newspaper, middle cl...

Continue your analysis of your newspaper in the following way. 1. Find a FEATURE article or LEAD STORY. This should take up either most or the whole of a page or better still  is a DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD. Try and find a feature/article about something that interest you, even vaguely, otherwise your analysis will just end up as a load of moaning about how boring you find it. 2. Open up a new blogpost called NEWSPAPER ANALYSIS - FEATURE ARTICLE Take a photo of your chosen feature/spread and put it into your blogpost under that heading. 3. Then perform a similar analysis of the feature as you did for the front cover. (a) Firstly, in a 2-d sense tell me about the LOOK of it. LOOK at it, don't read it in depth yet. How is it laid out? Is it Picture-dominated or text-dominated ? Is the headline font/typeface unique to that piece or used throughout the paper for headlines (sometimes headlines in gossip/sports sections can have different headline fonts than usual)? Does th...

Publisher part - DONE. Alleflippinlujah.  Now time to look at an individual newspaper according to the pictured criteria. Start this in the following way. As you can see you can ONLY GET A PASS for this criteria. The chances for merits/distinctions only start occuring when you start proposing/producing/creating your own idea for a magazine.  START THIS ANALYSIS PART AS FOLLOWS  1. OPEN UP A NEW POST. Call it 'Print Media - Newspaper Analysis - The Front Cover' 2. Take a picture of the front-cover of your newspaper and put it in your blogpost.  One of those unfortunate story/advert combinations that can happen. 3. Then, tell me about THE LOOK of the front page. Can you see a MASTHEAD ? Where is it? Is the page Picture-dominated or text-dominated? Is the headline font unique to that piece or used throughout the paper for headlines (sometimes headlines in gossip/sports sections can have different headline fonts than usual)? Do you think the page has...

Paperboys, circa 1900, New York City OK, so you've nearly finished the first criteria of the Print Media unit. You've told me about a Publisher , the products they bring out, the production process they go through to create their print products and who their target readership is, tabloid or broadsheet . We're nearly there. As you can see the final bit of this criteria is about how Print Media Companies get their products TO US (i.e how do they distribute them) and what organisations keep an eye on what Print Media Companies are doing (regulation). This bit should be quite quick to do (one session) and because you can only get a pass on Criteria 1 doesn't need to be exhaustively detailed (although if you want to, feel free). Complete this part as follows. 1. Open up a new post. Call it 'Print Media Production: Distribution & Regulators'.  Newsagents (or 'Newstand' as they were known) late 30s, NYC 2. Under a heading 'Distri...

So far in Print Media Production you've told me about a PUBLISHER , the JOB ROLES at a magazine or newspaper, and how those job roles come together in the PRODUCTION PROCESS . Today I want you to tell me about the TARGET AUDIENCE or READERSHIP (same thing, in print media we call the Target Audience our 'readers' or our 'readership')  for the publisher you've talked about and you're going to do this by telling me the difference between TABLOIDS and BROADSHEETS . These terms used to strictly be descriptive of the size of the newspaper - Tabloids are small, broadsheets are bigger. A tabloid used to be defined purely as a newspaper with a compact page size smaller than broadsheet, "roughly 17 by 11 inches (432 by 279 mm)" and commonly "half the size of a broadsheet", although there is no standard size for this newspaper format. Broadsheets (as the word implies) were bigger, "characterized by long vertical pages (typically 22 i...

OK, last week you gave me breakdowns of all the important job roles in a magazine or newspaper and how they fit into the production process . Remember, so far we're just writing in general about a publisher , and the typical production process behind print products . It's towards this first criteria in your print media production unit. Today, just to absolutely nail the 'production process' element I want you to write a blog post about exactly how all these people working together get a newspaper onto the shelves. You'll tell me about the 4 stages involved, pre-production , production, post-production  and final print run.  PRE-PRODUCTION starts at the EDITORIAL MEETING . These are weekly for weekly papers/mags, daily for daily papers/mags, monthly for monthly mags. They're basically a staff meeting where the editor , the section editors , the writers and designers meet up to discuss and argue about what should be in the paper/mag this day/w...

The above image is from a film called 'All The Presidents Men', a great movie all about the two journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward who exposed the Watergate scandal in the US in the 70s, eventually leading to the toppling of President Nixon. Alot of the film is set in the Washington Post office you can see above. To a certain extent, it's a dated image (journalists don't use typewriters anymore for instance) but you'll still see similar scenes in newspaper offices today. Journalists on phones, chasing stories, taking notes, writing up copy. The way newspapers and magazines make it from planning to print has changed technologically (e-mail and internet-research for instance) but the actual basics of the process has remained the same. Editors and section editors ask writers and photographers to give them story ideas - writers and photographers then provide copy (another word for text) and shots to commission. Sub-editors check it all as the copy comes in...