1. Amy Walker
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1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
I took inspiration for my own local newspapers from other local newspapers that are
published throughout vast communities. I tried to enable my stories to contain those similar
to those found in the Salford Advertiser, whilst making the layout of the pages similar to
those in the Metro newspaper. I took inspiration for my mast head mainly from the Salford
Advertiser. This is mainly due to the high degree of formality that’s entailed with the
newspapers mast head. I noticed that they usually make the typeface for the name of the
newspaper obvious and noticeable to its main target audience. They do this by using large
text with, often, a bold format. Often, the name of the area that is in a newspapers mast
head, is often smaller than the actual name of the newspaper to show it’s importance and
significance. As a result, I called my newspaper The Manchester Independent, making sure
that ‘The Manchester’ was a smaller font than ‘Independent’.I also made sure that this was
the largest piece of text on the front page implying its importance. I have noticed that the
term, ‘Independent’ adds a sense of formality. The national broadsheet newspaper, ‘The
Independent’ is a highly formal and traditional newspaper; I wanted to follow this same
convention of a traditional national newspaper by applying the same purpose to my local
newspaper. The newspaper I produced is a local, weekly newspaper. It does not follow the
conventions of both, a tabloid or broadsheet newspapers. This is due to the main fact that
it’s a local newspaper, it’s purpose is to deliver important and interesting local news to its
readers. Local residents don’t want to here about celebrity news, especially with the
newspaper only being published weekly. My newspaper can appeal to a variety of ages and
reading abilities, I didn’t want to pick one particular style of newspaper, I felt that I would be
neutral and combine both a tabloid and broadsheet style newspaper. An example of this is
the fact the tabloid newspaper use extremely large and over powering images that implies a
slightly informal approach to the reader. Whereas in a broadsheet newspaper, there is more
text overall than there are images. In my local newspaper, I have made sure to include an
equal balance of both images and text to ensure large amounts of text don’t over face and
put off the reader from reading on. I have also made sure that the images are totally
relevant to the articles. I have tried to keep the colour scheme of my newspaper as neutral
and realistic as possible. I have followed a simple grey colour scheme throughout, making
the newspaper appear more formal as well as applying a simplistic and sophisticated
approach. In addition, I also noticed that a lot of local newspapers use advertisements for
local schools for things such as opening evenings and car boot sales which overall, help
promote the school as a whole. I have decided to use this in my local newspaper as a small
addition on the front page, advertising my brother’s school. I have applied this same
advertising technique on my second page when I wrote about a local community school
raising money for Comic Relief. I spoke about the activities in which one class took part in.
This is usually brought up throughout a local newspaper; I felt that this would be a good
alternative story of write about in my newspaper. The images I have used throughout my

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coursework are fitted appropriately with the articles. It took a while to collect my images as
I had to use different locations and objects in each image. Whilst writing up my articles, I
tried to make sure that all of the key, necessary information was placed in the first
paragraph. I felt that this would help engage the reader into reading further on in the
article. I also attempted to be as creative as possible when it came to making up my main
headlines. The article mentioning ‘I’m Hoofin’ It’ applies to local residents as it’s about horse
meat being found in ‘100% beef burgers’ in the Walkden branch of McDonalds. This is eye
catching to the local audience and community and also relates to a global institute of food
that has been falsely advertising their burgers as ‘100% beef burgers’.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
My first ancillary task was to produce a local newspaper billboard poster. In order to
produce this I used Adobe Photoshop as I was able to manipulate images and be as creative
as desired using this manipulating software. My billboards overall purpose is to advertise
the newspaper to a local audience and community. As mine is named ‘The Manchester
Independent’, I used a variety of images to make this billboard poster appeal to local
residents of Manchester. In order to portray this message, I had to use things within the
poster that would be apparent and appealing to local residents. I used images of the
Manchester Wheel, Manchester Cathedral and Salford Quays, all of which play a large role
in Manchester’s society. This is also a form of iconography as the images that are used are a
large part of Manchester’s community. The newspapers masthead is also displayed,
covering a large amount of the page which is typed in large, bold text. This makes it clear
what is being advertised. I also used a large red circle in one of the primary optical areas to
establish the price of my newspaper. It sends the message to the viewer that the newspaper
is accessible and reasonably cheap to purchase. My second ancillary task was to produce a
30 second radio advert, helping promote and advertise my newspaper. I think my radio
advertisement was relatively successful as it portrayed relevant information about the
newspaper in the time limit that was allocated. In terms of my inspiration for this ancillary,
there wasn’t any form of radio advertisements for newspapers so it was very difficult to
know what to expect from such advert. This advertisement informs my target audience and
others, of what content you’d typically expect to see inside of my local newspaper. It gives
the impression that the newspaper is rather formal and not too much like a tabloid
newspaper, which I feel is very similar to a real local newspaper and what people of todays
society, want to see.

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3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
When looking at my audience feedback, I revisited the market and audience research that I
did in the initial stages of production. This allowed me to see if I took on board and utilized
the information and data that I received. When I looked back at my findings for the market
research task, I discovered that the vast majority of people enjoyed reading the Metro the
most. This is a daily tabloid newspaper that is published nationally for those on the go using
public transport. I tried my best to adopt a similar style for my own newspaper. This is
mainly due to the fact that I actually like reading the newspaper also, it portrays a simple
and sophisticated appeal. However, as mentioned, I did not want my newspaper to fall in to
one specific genre of newspaper such as tabloid or broadsheet. I wanted my newspaper to
have an equal balance of the two. For example, the inside page of my newspaper looks very
formal and follows similar conventions to those found in a broadsheet or a local newspaper.
Tracy mentioned that my inside cover alone would “persuade her to purchase another issue
of the newspaper as she enjoyed the formality of the articles as well as the stories that were
written.” My front cover has similar styles to both a tabloid newspaper and a broadsheet. It
has the large image placed in the primary optical area on the left hand side of the page, but
it evenly balanced out by the large amount of text positioned directly next to the image
which continues all the way down the front page. It looks a lot like my desired newspaper,
the Metro. Peter mentioned that it was “nice to not see celebrities all over the front covers
of newspapers” in addition “I like how it looks a lot like the metro, with the large images but
are balanced out by the interesting article by the side”. Many of the people from my
audience feedback mentioned that the main articles attracted and they would consider
buying an issue of it. This is positive feedback for my as I feel I made the right choice in
choosing an evenly balanced newspaper style and layout. When looking at my second page
feedback, the focus group agreed that the stories in my newspaper were appropriate for the
formality of the newspaper and the audience in which it was aimed it. Those who took part
in my feedback said that they liked how the articles inside were aimed at small, local
communities which made the newspaper appear to be formal, sophisticated and
professional. Overall my feedback was positive. It said that the layout of the newspaper and
articles were displayed to professional standards. I think that this was mainly due to the
equally spaced columns and accurately placed text. However, Lucy spoke out about the
general size of the images. “They were quite hard to work out what they were; they could
have been a little bit bigger”. I didn’t make the images too large as I didn’t want to force the
images into the readers faces and over power them however, I can see this from Lucy’s
perspective and she is correct. Considering my media product in all aspects, my radio
advertisement, billboard poster and final piece, my feedback came back that I had created a
media product that successfully used the conventions of a real media products. It was
evident that I wanted to create a consistent house style and layout in terms of colour
schemes etc. For example, the red used on the logo, the grey boxes and lines that were used

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to separate articles from one and other, all which were carried out throughout both pages
of my newspaper.
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning
and evaluation stages?
In the process of the research and overall production of my product, I used a number of
different media technologies. I used, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere, Google, Microsoft
Excel, Prezzi and my phone to record my radio advert. When conducting my initial research
for newspapers and their articles at the beginning of the course, I used the search engine
Google which helped display a large amount of text and image for me to conduct my
research. Whilst using the search engine, I was able to gather images of the different styles
and types of newspapers that are on offer today. I used these to analyse and take
inspiration for my own project and product. Google was also useful when it came to not
knowing how to do something in the image manipulation software, Adobe Photoshop.
Initially, Photoshop is quite hard to come to terms with even though I used the same
software to produce my AS coursework. For example, I used this to refresh my memory on
how to alter the brightness and contrast of and image. Google helped me develop my own
skills on Photoshop as a whole. I thought that Photoshop as a whole, was the most useful
and successful software to use for the construction of my newspaper. I used it in order to
develop and create my initial layout plans, my front cover as well as my inside page. This is
due to the fact that Photoshop is professional software when it comes to producing such
products. Photoshop was also the best software to edit and manipulate my images to how I
want them to look and appear. By using this software, you’re able to resize images without
them becoming pixelated or misshaped. I used the eyedropper tool to make sure that a
consistent image was used throughout my products. Such tool uses colours from other
areas of the document and places them in the areas where you want them to be. This keeps
the uniformity of my products as well as making the overall look of my newspaper look to
professional standards. I used my phone to record the sounds of my radio advert whilst
editing and adding a backing track to it by using Adobe Premiere which is an editing
software used to manipulate films. I then uploaded my file to sound cloud where I used the
HTML code to put on my blogger account where I display my coursework. I used the
software Microsoft Excel to arrange and sort my market research findings.