Research into my main product.

1. The Advertiser- I have researched into existing local newspapers, and I first researched into the Advertiser which is delievered weekly on a Thursday in the local area. This local paper has a lot of advertisements, and the primary aim for this newspaper is to advertise things, such as houses on the market, local businesses and local services. There is alos a section at the back for local residents to write in with a stroy that they want to share, and personally I think this is a very good idea as it gives a good opportunity to see and read local people's opinions on what is going on and what changes are proposed for example, and we the reader can engage with what them and decide for ourselves whether our opinion conflicts with theires or not. This newspaper is mainly aimed towards people who are looking for homes on the market for example, and looking for services to suit their needs. It is not geared towards people who want to read a newspaper for news, as this is primarily a good advertising opportunity for people who want to advertise their products/homes/business to their specific local audience. The masterhead is displayed across the top of the front cover, and the colour of this is red, which does stand out from the white background, and also this follows the codes and conventions of a normal newspaper masterhead, as you can find that a lot of newspaper masterheads are in red, for example 'The Sun' and 'The News Of The World' both have this, and it is effective in grabbing the audiences attention, as they are both very popular national newspapers. However unlike the mainstream national papers, this is a free paper, and in free papers there are certain preconceptions we have, for example, the amount of space that is taken up by advertising, and the general lack of quality from the stories that are printed. To an extent, this newspaper, goes along with these expectations that we have before we pick it up to read, with big advertisments taking up large amounts of room, and the stories being quite dull and not very interesting (which is also down to personal opinion), for example a story called 'Shortcut for buses opened by athlete', which is just a story about an athlete opening a shortcut for buses, which in my opinion, is not very interesting and dull, and would never make a normal national newspaper as this is nowehere near interesting enough. Also the audience that will be most attracted to reading this newspaper i have found out will be more older around 40/50/60, and we can see evidence of this asin the dating section, nearly all of the people that are aged 60plus (image below)

2. The Daily Echo (Bournemouth)- This newspaper is a typical local newspaper, it has lots of local news stories that will interest the local audience as this is it's primary purpose. The main headline on the front page is usually a big accident for example that has occured  recently, for example a big car accident, or when a local soldier who fights in the Army and has died. The audience is quite likely to know someone who has been involved in an incident that has ben published, or maybe participated in something local, and the reader will feel close to the newspaper because of this, and they will be able to relate to the stories a lot more than say a national newspaper, as things in a local newspaper will obviously be more relevant to the reader. The layout is very typical of a newspaper and follows the code of conventions of a newspaper, with the masterhead in the to left hand corner and the layout of the ariticles is what we would expect. The masthead is cleraly displayed acroos the top of the newspaper, and the name 'Daily Echo' is widely known and as soon as people see this then it is very familiar to them, and also the reader feels very safe and happy with this paper, they know what stories to expect, as the content in these papers is very much the same but just different content, for example a story about someone that has serious health problems but are complaining about the NHS service, and this story could be repeated a number of times. As previously stated, i have stated that the target audience for this newspaper is of course the local residents, but also, i have found out in my audience research that the majority of readers seem to be of an age around 30/40/50, as i haven;t found any people that are aged around 16-21 that are even interested in reading this newspaper, or any newspaper in fact. The reasons can be cited as that they are just not interested in local affairs, it is not 'cool' to be seen reading a newspaper or just that their lives are too busy to have time for newspapers.

I went about contacting this paper, asking for information about how the edittors and reporters go about choosing what stories they want in the paper and the proccesses they go through. Unfortunately they were unwilling to disclose anything without me working for them in someway, and this was not convienient for me at the time.

The frequency of an event will also affect how it gets reported. For example, a murder take very little time, and their meaning is very quickly arrived at, and therefore their frequency fits very well into daily newspapers and news programmes. Other topics, such as social, cultural and economic trends take much longer to unfold, and therefore take a lot longer to unfold and become meaningful. The threshold of an event is when the event is decided whether it is worthy of being reported, and what part of the newspaper it will fall in (for example headline, small column story), or also if it won't be reported at all. Meaningfulness is another theory that will decide what/how a news story/event will be reported. For example, if something happened in the local proximity, then the event will be most likely reported on, as the audience will be more attracted to read/buy the newspaper, as it effects them in a more direct way. Also, if you live in a Western country, then Western stories will be given priority over Eastern stories, as westerners will be much more interested in reading western stories than eastern stories just for the fact that they live in a western country. This same model can be applied to local newspapers, as stories about the region you live in will have priority over stories from a region that you don't live in (for example stories about Yorkshire when you live in Dorset), again just because you live in your county and stories about another county are not as important or engaging. This also comes under the model of relevance, which sorts out if a certain story is relevant or not and therefore whether it should be reported on or not. For example a story which occurs in an Asian country for example, will become worthy of being reported on if it directly affects the home culture, in the form of something important like a 'threat'. And also Western journalists are fascinated with the eastern culture and their customs and beliefs and often in the western press, they are reported on as being weird, and generally being presented in a negative manner. Also, if a certain story is covering a long time period, it will be reported on over a period of time, to keep the audience informed. If a event contains a reference to an elite person, for example a head of state/president/prime minister, then the event is much more likely to be reported on, and their actions are assumed as being more important and consequential as they affect our lives and they are famous people in a lot of power, what they do will effect us, and also if they do something wrong and make a mistake, then this is percieved as being more serious and they are made to look like complete idiots and failures at their jobs as they are very important people and high up in society, and therefore they should not make mistakes, especially mistakes that cause a lot of negative happenings and very bad things occur for the public as a result of the mistake of the person who is supposedly in a lot of power.
                                                        
For a effective newspaper to work, then certain threshold must be in it, to decide what stories need to be in a newspaper, and what stories don't, what are important, and which are not. This comes from Galtang and Rouge's news values, which includes news threshold. The newspapers have to decide what will sell best to their target audience, and how they will go about trageting their audience. For a local newspaper, stories about local people getting into serious accidents, they will be most probably be one of the top stories in the newspaper, because they will directly affect someone reading it, and more people will be affected because they could know that person in someway, and also stories like that will sell a lot more newspapers, than what has aheadline about for example a cat being stuck up a tree or something. Having said that, there are stories and main headlines when an animal gets stuck up a tree or injures themselves in someway, as people like to read heartning stories like that, that don't invlove humans, but of course, the main sellers will be about big local events invloving humans. Nationwide stories will be treated with less importance, as if the reader wnated to read about these, then they have plently of nationwide newspaper to buy, and they will not attract readers to a local newspaper to buy, but however they do have some nationwide stories in them, but they always affect us readers in the locak area someway, for example the current government making severe cuts, this is a story that will be reported in all major nationwide newspaper, but because it will affect everyone, it is reported, and the story is made very specific to the local area also to give it a local newspaper story feel to it.  Sport is also a big thing in local newspaper, readers like to see how their local sports teams and sportsmen/women are getting along, men and women alike, but prodominently this is more suited to males, and for this the sport news will again be kept local as this is all what local newspaper reader will be interested rather than the bigger nationwide news, which readers can find in the big newspapers.