MK News Content Analysis

Front Page

Being also a local newspaper the MK News, has a similar layout and style to both the Herald and Post, and the Dunstable Gazette. The majority of the front page of MK News is taken up by the headline story of ‘Firemen miss bodies’ in house blaze search’. The headline is backed up by the complete story and a picture of the scene, in comparison to a larger, national paper such as The Sun whose main story is inside the paper with just the headline to catch reader’s attention.

Unlike the other local papers analysed, MK News has its contents on the front page, and highlights only the main story’s and features, however it does use adverts, with half of the inside page being dedicated to them, and a couple on the front page.

Similarly with other local newspapers, MK News’ title is written boldly and simply along the top of the front page in plain blue and black. This suggests papers rarely use fancy or elaborate titles, and this would be something to consider when creating my own paper. Also the name itself is very simple and to the point.

Inside Page

Apart from the lack of the contents page, the inside page of MK News is similar in style to the other two local newspapers. A lot of space is dedicated to advertisements, with just two taking up half the page, the difference between the adverts on local and national newspapers, is that the one in MK News are for more local businesses and events. The rest of the page is split between two smaller stories.

The two stories follow the 5 W’s rule, of explaining Who, What, Where, When and Why as soon into the story as possible and elaborating more throughout the article. At the bottom of the inside page there is an advert for the MK News social networking addresses, so the paper can technically advertise itself, as well as other companies.

Herald and Post/ The Sun – Content Analysis

The front page news on the Herald and Post, in comparison to The Sun is obviously on a much smaller scale and deals with more local news which would concern the target audience of the local area. The main story focuses on a police investigation into sex trafficking in Luton which had also been televised. The story has a large heading ‘Paradise lost for street girls’ which is also quite vague and doesn’t give a lot of the story away. In comparison The Sun’s front page is full of entertainment/showbiz news and the main story is a celebrity scandal whose headline covers a majority of the page. The main goal of this paper is to grab people’s attention, and encourage people to read of as only a small paragraph of the story is on the front page.

As The Sun is a daily paper, compared to the weekly Herald and Post, The Sun may have to work harder to grab customer’s attention every day whereas the Herald and Post is already delivered to peoples doors, so it doesn’t have to work as hard to encourage people to buy.

The secondary story on The Herald and Post is supported by a large picture and the story itself continues onto the second page. The story of a local graffiti artist is probably not much more important than the other stories on the inside page of the paper, but the reinforcement of an image gives the story a higher priority. The only other story on The Sun is again entertainment news, and there is no story at all, just a heading and direction to the inside pages.

Both main stories use banner headlines after the main headline to give more of an indication to what the story is about, as main headlines have a tendency to be more vague and the main use of them is to grab readers attention not give the whole story away.

The second page of the Herald and Post uses contents down the left hand side of the page to direct readers to main features, and a lot of space is dedicated to local advertisements, while The Sun doesn’t use any. However this could be used as a way of funding, as The Sun charges readers they don’t have to give as much space to adverts. While the front page of The Sun covers mainly entertainment news, the inside page covers topics such as weather and more political news. Smaller side stories, which only consist of a couple of sentences are put down the right hand side of both papers, and could act as fillers of space.

The actual stories themselves generally follow the five W’s rule; Who? What? Why? When? Where? The questions are usually answered within the first few sentences and can be enhanced upon throughout the story. This is used in the majority of the stories in both newspapers, for example the ‘Empress of India hosts Macmillan Charity Dinner’ tells us that Macmillan is hosting a fundraising dinner, to revive the popular tradition of the Empress of India,  at the Empress of India in High Town on Thursday September 16^th, all in just two sentences.

Media A2 Introduction

For my A2 coursework I have decided upon the print option in which I will need to produce the front and inside page of a new local newspaper, and two ancillary tasks consisting of a poster promoting the paper, and two hyperlinked pages for the paper's website.
To begin with I will start to conduct research into exsisting papers, both national and local, to gain an understanding of the conventions of tabloid style newspapers, and also gain an understanding of what is typically included.

For the planning and research part of the production I constructed and produced a time plan, to keep track of my time management and how much work I had completed. This also allowed me to see how each stage of work was allowing me to continue and progress.