ABC more intelligent than 123

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.

Advertisement

Read Full Post »

The Real Day One

M42MC – In other words ‘Law Ethics and Public Administration’

The first week is always just a haze of various information thrust in your hands, and important information displayed and said that you will expect to keep in the back of your mind until the day you graduate, but it is, in essence, simple. You turn up they give you information, you go home. Even with the Induction week project it was mainly a demonstration in what they expect from us over the next year.

Fresh out of the first lecture, the students are running, and from the moment Marcos Young began talking that’s exactly what they have been doing.

We. We have been doing, because of course I am here too. Running like crazy. I wish I was a bit fitter.

There was some really interesting live discussion though as Marcos introduced this particular class. He asked us what the top story of the day is, and ultimately, no one answered. This is another learning for us to take away. We are journalists now, we must conduct our lives as such. That involves listening to the radio – Radio4, local radio, 5live – anything that contains news we must know whats going on, where its going on why its going on, who its… you get the picture.

With the class being so brief the learning’s were simple and straight forward.

When reporting news that affects local environment make sure you are going to the right person/place/office to ensure you get the right information. If I were reporting about bin collection in Coventry, would I ring up the Warwickshire Council or the West Midlands, or the city council, or the district council? Even if you know the answer to the question, check it.

I will also (if I want to pass this module it seems), set an allowance each Monday to buy the Guardian. Every job I’ll ever want will be posted in the job section each week and I must also of course grasp an element of news before I attend this class or I’ll end up looking very silly indeed. I don’t think journalists get much in the way of a break – now I understand why even when Jeremy Vine isn’t on the radio, his twitter feed is still constantly updating about news outbreaks.

We also spoke about creating radio news packages and how it seems we’ll have to be making one pretty soon. I have already begun thinking up of ideas regarding the Olympics coming to town for football and how the road outside our building has gone through a revamp. They seem to have a sort of diamond shaped roundabout built up, with no road signs, markings or lights to help direct the several hundred auto drivers that will go over it in the next hour. (UPDATE)

The red square of suicide

.

Radio News Packages are pre-recorded and can last between 3.30 and 5 minutes, it generally has to contain 3 contributors and you have to think about background sound to create the illusion of time space and atmosphere. I must also think about target audience (as with everything I’m going to be doing for the next year). If I’m recording a piece for Radio1 it’ll be full of atmosphere, jingles, short clips (not soundbytes) of the contributors but if I was recording for Radio4 it would be straight talking and information longer clips and no effects in any way.

I’m not sure if we will be doing this task in the afternoon session of this class but one thing I know is I’ll be running through that one as well.

Read Full Post »