1st draft of Newspaper Front Cover

I am currently creating my newspaper front cover, here is my 1st draft on my newspaper front cover where I have added an image and completed the masthead.

I now need to create more advertisements for my front cover (I have currently done one) and to start writing my articles for the main story, with headline, and small sports story which I will feature briefly on my front cover.

Newspaper Adverts

Today I have been thinking about advertisements that are going to feature on my newspaper, on the front cover and on the first page. This website has given me inspiration for creating my adverts as they feature many different styles of adverts and different places, companies that are being advertised. I have created one advert today, which is promoting a local plumbing company that will feature on the newspaper front cover. I used photoshop to create the adverts and used a mixture of text and images to make the advert look more realistic.

I feel that this advertisement looks like an advert you would see in an every day local newspaper, plus I think that it will fit in well with my newspaper front cover.

Newspaper Front Cover Image

Here is the main image that I am going to use on my newspaper front cover:

I have chosen this image because I feel it will fit in well with the article that I am writing on my front cover and explains what it is about as well.

Newspaper Images

I have now got my images for my newspaper front cover and the newspaper first page. I have taken images of a local community centre for my first page story and I have also taken pictures of a local couple, my parents, who have "won" the lottery. Here are my images that I have taken:

Newspaper Photos: Front Page & First Page

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I will now choose from this selection of images which ones I will use for my newspaper to represent the front cover story and first page story.

I also have a stream of all my images on Flickr so my images can get a wider audience feedback to help me choose what images to use.

Flickr Photostream

Font For Newspaper Masthead

The font that I have chosen for the masthead of my newspaper is called 'Lion King' and I think that it is a suitable font for my newspaper. I have screen grabbed an image of the font with the title of my newspaper, 'Portsmouth Post', with black which I might use for my final masthead. The other colours I was thinking of using were blue or yellow as these are colours traditionally associated with Portsmouth. I may however keep the masthead black but I have not made a final decision yet.

Mock Up Of My Newspaper

Today I started to create a mock up of what I would like my newspaper to look like on InDesign, this will help me create the overall layout for my newspaper when I properly start to create it. In my mock up I have placed where I want the main image, main headline, masthead, article and the advertisements. My layout is quite similar to other local newspapers that I have viewed, as this is my 1st mock up I will over the weeks change this layout when I start to properly design it to make it more original. I have also tried to think of the colours that I am going to use for my masthead, I have thought about using blue and yellow as they are two colours that are symbolic of Portsmouth and as my paper is called, 'Portsmouth Post' I feel that these two colours would be appropriate.

Newspaper Stories About Community Centre's

Usually stories about community centre's are featured in local newspapers talking about them in a positive and negative way. In positive stories, usually the stories focus more on the people who work there or volunteer. In negative stories, the actual community centre is the focus of the story but it usually talks about it being vandalized or broken into. When looking at th

ese types of stories in national and local newspapers they are documented in different ways.

Here is a story about a community centre in local newspaper, South Wales Argus

Here is a story about a community centre in national newspaper, The Sun

One of these stories in written in a positive light and the other takes a more negative approach. The story in the local newspaper is the more negative story talking about a robbery in a community centre, the article itself isn't very long and features a brief interview with the manager of the centre. Also there is no image featured with the article which may suggest that the manager of the centre did not want anything to be photographed. This kind of story in common in local newspaper as community centre's tend to be at the heart of the area which means when something happens to the centre, it will make big news in local newspapers.

On the other hand the story in The Sun, a well known national newspaper, features a positive story focused on a community centre. The story is about British boxer Amir Khan opening a community centre in his local area. There is a long article which also features an interview with Amir about the centre and other topics that it involves. This article shows a much more positive side than the local newspaper as in the national story it is based on a well known British boxer who will help to sell the story to the readers. As people will see his name and face which will make them want to read the story as they are probably more interested in w

ho is opening the community centre than the actual centre itself. Unlike the local article this story has images to back it up, these images all near enough have Amir in them which highlights the fact that he is the main focus for this story.

New Ideas

Over the past week I have decided to change up my idea for the article on the first page of the newspaper. Initially I was going write an article on a local community centre being vandalized or broken into, I have now decided to base the story on the community centre being closed down. I came to this decision as the community centre that I am going to photograph has actually shut down so I thought that this story would be more fitting. The story will still have a negative angle to it and will contrast to the story on the front cover, I also will keep the aspect of youth crime mentioning in my article that the community centre has been vandalized in the past so some of my original ideas will still be used in this article.

How Newspapers Write About Lottery Stories

As my front page story is going to be about local lottery winners I am looking at how other newspapers have reported on this type of story. I will be looking at how national newspapers and local newspapers report on lottery winners.

Here is a link to a lottery story from The Guardian

Here is a link to a lottery story from The Bath Chronicle

The two different stories both report on lottery winners, the main difference between the two stories is that the local story, from The Bath Chronicle, has written more about the story and even has an interview with the winners. The Guardian story is a shorter article and gives an outline of what has happened to the winning couple and also gives lottery statistics. Both articles have included an image, in The Guardian the image shows the winning couple opening a champagne bottle in celebration and in The Bath Chronicle the image is not of the winning couple but of the Euro millions lottery ticket. This shows that the couple written about in the local newspaper did not want to be photographed whereas the couple in the national paper clearly did want to be featured in the paper.

My Newspaper Ideas

Over half term I have thought about what I am going to include in my local newspaper, I have come up with a story for my front page where I am going to write about a local couple who have won the lottery. For this story I am going to take photos of a couple or person holding a lottery ticket and with the story I was thinking about adding something extra to the story by adding suspense for the reader. I have also thought about what I am going to write in the first page of the newspaper where I am going to write about a story with a negative angle. This story is going to be about a local community centre which has either been vandalized or broken into by youths. As crime by young people is written about a lot in the news, especially local news, I thought this would be a newsworthy story. I have also thought about the different advertisements that will be included in my newspaper on the front cover and first page. I will be creating adverts for local businesses and special offers, for example '2 for 1' offers aimed at families.