Our afternoon session with Noakes saw us discussing feature writing and writing for different audiences.
We were told to look at 1 story across 3 different media outlets and I specifically chose the story this week about the Olympic Torch relay around Britain. The outputs I focused on was the BBC website, the Olympic website and the Western Mail online – the Welsh national daily.
Seb Coe holding the torch at St Pancras station - courtesy of guardian.co.uk
The distinctions were obvious in that the London Olympic site gave as much information as possible, it quoted an interview with Seb Coe and despite it being a national event the promotion was on locality and reaching 95% of the UK. It also described some of the transport used. This site is clearly aimed at providing information for a national audience. The writing also keeps in mind business owners and transport authorities and despite being nationally focused it is probably written for businesses.
BBC always aims to give a rounded view and generally looked at this story as a source of information. The interesting note is that despite the story appealing to an nation interested in headlines and important landmarks the torch will pass, there were links imbedded that focused the story to more local areas, and provided the reader with the option of looking at a map of the country with every stop pinpointed.
Western Mail obviously focuses way more on locality and is appealing to the higher brow, lower-middle class. It notes every stop in Wales without mentioning that it will be anywhere else in Britain. The article also quotes Welsh Secretary rather than Seb Coe. It is clearly defined for Welsh audience and aims to involve many areas and audiences, but the usual readership is more pinpointed.
Almost every one of the stories is for an ABC1 audience.
ABC1 is the higher up members of society who are professional, well-educated, earning members of society.
Arguably the Western Mail online could have drifted partially in to the C2DE category.
C2DE is for slightly lower-class readers. Notable publications popular with this market is the Sun and other tabloids.
Readerships are defined by a number of other categories however;
Education Age
Engagement with news Proximity
Consumation of news Sex
Social status (ABC1 C2DE) Specialists
We defined the definitions of Readership and Circulation;
Circulation – How many copies are actually printed
This information is held at abc.org.uk
Readership – How many people read the printed copies altogether
This infortmation is estimated at nrs.co.uk
We ended the class by getting into the group in which we were to begin preparing our magazine. The magazine will be completed this term so we can write up an analysis about how it went. Then we will do the same next term in a similar module but print it and write up again an academic analysis of the production.
A Journalist's look at the media 