Analysing Layouts of Local Newspapers
- 1. Analysing Layouts of Newspapers
- 2. First Newspaper 37cm 30cm The first newspaper I’m going to look at is the Surrey Comet, this is one of our local newspapers. The first thing I’m going to analyse will be the front cover. Here you can that it set out as a typical newspaper, the title of the newspaper is the biggest text. Then the picture is the second biggest item on the page, this is typical because usually a picture would attract the readers attention, also this relates to Gaulting and Ruge’s news value ‘Reference to Elite Persons’. Also there is only five columns; two taken up by the image with the main story, two more of text for the main story and the last one is column of advertisements. Whereas on the inside of the paper there is six columns, this is because on the front cover the columns are slightly wider. I think this is because the front cover is there to attract the readers attention and only needs one big story, whereas on the inside there are more stories so therefore the columns are smaller. Also at the bottom of the front cover there are smaller columns with brief descriptions of other news the paper contains.
- 3. First Newspaper Continued The second thing I’m going to look at is one of the double page spreads, this page was the second page in the paper and has the main cover story as the main story on this page. As you can see the front cover story takes up a large quantity of the page; the story has two columns with a small image, then the larger image takes up a further two columns. Unlike the front cover this inside page has six columns in total with images embedded in the text. The text is also smaller which means more stories can be fitted into one page. There are two smaller stories next to the main story which must be seen as less important than the David Walliam’s story. Another point is that the stories in the top three quarters of this page are fairly good news’ David Walliam's raising money, lecturer designing logos for the Olympics and road works ending. Whereas once you get to the bottom quarter of the page there’s a story about online affairs which is bad news. Then there’s jewellery advertisement in the bottom right corner of the page. This is in the paper because it’s a local shop.
- 4. First Newspaper Continued This is another double page spread but it’s further into the paper. As you can clearly see it’s set out different to the fist double page spread in the paper. One thing that is the same is that there’s a dominant story. However unlike the first double page spread this story only takes up a quarter of the page. This could be because the main story on the double page spread was on a famous person which relates to Gaulting and Ruge’s news value ‘Reference to Elite Persons’, so therefore the story takes up a smaller amount of space because it’s about and ‘ordinary’ person. Another point about this story is that it bad news but it’s the biggest story on the page because the paper sees it as good news because the public want to read about things like this because it’s in their local area. However the biggest image on this page doesn’t have a lot of text to describe the story behind it. There are more advertisements on this page than there was on the first double page spread.
- 5. Second Newspaper 35cm 28.5cm The second newspaper I’m going to analyse is the Sutton Guardian, this another of our local newspaper. What’s interesting about the Sutton Guardian is that the first page of the newspaper isn’t the front cover. This is a recent change to the newspaper, and what they have done is wrap the newspaper in an advert so that the first thing the reader sees is the advert which therefore makes it impossible to miss. This is also a four page advertisement. They still have the title of the paper obviously so that you know your buying and the price etc. But also next to the paper title they have a smaller version of the actual cover looks like which is the next page in the newspaper.
- 6. Second Newspaper Continued The next thing I’m going to look at is the actual front page which is the second page into the newspaper after the advertisements. This is set out like a typical newspaper. It still has the newspaper title as the heading with the date and cost of the paper. Also it has a main story which takes up a large percentage of the page, the image for this is as expected bigger than the text. However front covers for newspapers are usually set in columns of text and images, this particular paper is not, its set out more in blocks. The rest of the front cover is more advertisements in a column along the bottom and going down the right hand side of the page. What is unusual is that there’s an advertisement next to the newspaper title, whereas in other newspapers the paper title is usually the only thing going across the top of the page.
- 7. Second Newspaper Continued The next thing I am going to analyse is one of the double pages from further on in the newspaper. As you can see this double page spread is set as a typical page in a newspaper; it is all columned with some advertisements and a couple of stories. There are two main stories on this page; a pub who homes goats and the second about a disabled man got ignored when flagging down buses. One story is positive the other is negative, however the newspaper see both stories as good news. The pub story is good news because its quite a happy story, the second story about the elderly man is seen as bad news by the readers but as good news by the paper because the readers will still want to read about it despite it being bad news. This page is consisted with six columns but some columns consist of a combination of text and embedded images. There are two smaller stories in the centre of the page. One story, ‘Elderly man, 75, fights off ‘mugger stealing bag’’, which has barely any text or a photo. The second story, ‘Men face drug smuggling charge’, which has slightly more text than the first story but still no image. I think that these would be less popular stories with the reader because there is no image to attract them.