Designing the Magazine

The week we had a meeting to decide the design of the magazine instead of a task. We elected an editor for the magazine, as well as the layout and possible articles.

We elected Sam as the editor of the magazine and decided to keep the name of the magazine as 'Anthem', which is the name that has been used for the previous two years. There were other names suggested, however, we decided that 'Anthem' was the best name.

Next, after a long discussion, we decided the magazine would be somewhere between A4 and A5 size. We felt that the A4 size is too big for the magazine, as we feel the target audience we are aiming the magazine at (males and females, between the ages of 15-19) would not pick the magazine up as it is too much to read for them. Furthermore, the magazine would be around 32 pages, keeping it short enough that students would pick it up and read it, but not so long that the audience would feel overwhelmed and not bother reading it.

We also decided that the layout of the magazine would be 'bold' and 'iconic', as this would stand out, grabbing the attention of passers by, getting more people to pick it up. The idea of having a 'modernistic' magazine was suggested, however, we thought the iconic idea would stand out more.

Next we decided on the articles that each member would write for the magazine; each member would write at least two articles, this way it could be guaranteed that each member would get one published, and the editor could pick the best to go into the magazine.

These are the minutes for the meetings;

College Magazine – First weeks plans

Name ideas for the magazine:

Sam: ‘First’

Curtis: ‘Last’, ‘The Anthem’

Michael: ‘Testament’

James: ‘Oasis’

Beth: ‘Full Stop’

Reno: ‘TCM’, ‘Splice’, ‘TCstyle’, ‘Cactus’, ‘Banter’

Although we decided that the name for magazine; will remain as ‘Anthem’

The magazine will be about:

Fashion, Music, Film, World news

Size of the magazine: We decided to keep it like last years, - Anthem ’09 article.

A 30 page spread.

We agreed that, the magazine will be on both internet and magazine copy

Sam said; magazines are real and better in hand held form – no internet.

Curt, Michael, Lisa, James, Beth – Bit of both may work well.

Layout and design: Iconic – ‘GQ style spring ‘09’

                                               Minimalist and clean – simplistic

                                               ‘Magic eye page’ – of college logo

The theme can be = things that are mysterious and hidden

Features = lots of students

Articles

Kat; Fashion – Rita shim – photograph her fashion and models and Preparation for uni – recipes

Lisa: Films – top ten RomComs, how talent shows cause young people to confuse success with celebrity

Michael: article on university fees and interview with Mark Bramwell and possible article on Afghan

Sam; Kenyan Interview

James; Equality and diversity ‘Jame’s perspective’

Podcasts

In this lesson we focused on the media form of pod casting. We looked at a podcast from Richard Eno about getting into the media industry; http://media23.podbean.com/pb/a01e52ad6ea88d8cccb27e04729e7cb5/4cc4985c/blogs23/302944/uploads/RenoCast-TheMediaIndustry.m4a

Our assignment for this week is to write and produce our own podcast on any topic of our choosing. I have decided to base my podcast on the recent change in university fees. This podcast will be based around a rant on the subject.

Transcript:
So, the new spending review has been released from chancellor George Osbourne. As many of you already know, the country is in economic ruin. So it comes as no surprise to most people that we will now be paying a lot more to the government, while the government are going to give us a lot less in return. As usual, university tuition fees have come up again. And guess what. They're going up again!

To all you potential university students out there, you have Lord Browne and his review to thank for this, which has now been endorsed by a certain Lib Dem minister, Vince Cable, who seemed to be strongly against rising tuition fees last time I looked.
The Browne Review suggested that there should be no limit on the amount a university can charge its students, however, there would be a levy placed on universities charging over £6000 a year, to cover the cost of the government having to loan the students money upfront.


Students would not have to begin paying their loans back until they begin earning £21,000 a year. Any money that isn't paid off within 30 years would be written off. The problem at the moment with universities, which is causing the rise in applicants, is that it is too easy to be accepted and get a degree, so more people are capable of filling the qualified jobs, causing more unemployment, as the skilled have to take up the unskilled jobs. It seems to me that the second part of the Browne review encourages people to go and get the degree any way. This way, even if they can't get a skilled job, they would have an advantage over other candidates in the unskilled jobs, and they would't have to pay the money back because they wouldn't be earning £21,000 a year.


To me, the logical option, would not be to raise tuition fees because this penalises the students that genuinely need the qualifications, and brings back the days of elitism and inequality, but to raise the bar of the ability universities allow in, this way the system is fair and judges ability rather then money, which is how an educational establishment should be run.

Cast your minds back to May this year. All the parties were scrapping it out to try and win your vote. Along side the economy, trying to win over first time voters was one of the main focus points. This included university tuition fees. Now, the Lib Dem manifesto states that they believe university should be free to all those that have the ability to go to university, and should not be put off by the cost. This has been one of the key beliefs of the Lib Dem's for years, but now they have had a sniff of power, their beliefs, and those of the people that voted for them have gone out the windows of the Houses of Parliament. I wonder how many of them would still vote for them as part of the Coalition.

This year was the first year I really took an interest politics and the election, and I was keen to know what the parties had to say. If I could have voted, I would have voted Liberal Democrat. I thought they had the best policies (including their policy on university tuition fees), well, except for immigration, which is where I thought the Conservatives were better. So, when I heard that a coalition was to be formed between the two parties, I thought this was the best possible out come, well, until now.


I completely understand that there has to be some compromise from each of the parties, other wise it would never work, but at the moment it seems that Conservatives are getting more out of the relationship. There surely has to be a point where Nick Clegg and Vince Cable stand up for the voters of the Liberal Democrats, instead of bowing down to the PM.

I can understand that not everybody shares this view, such as Head of Multi-Media at Totton College, Richard Eno, who thinks all universities should be privatised, and why would they? Not everybody has to go to university, so why should they have to pay for the people that do? Generally these people are people that have either already been to university, or people that do not want to go. However, if this is how you want to think. Why should people have to pay for the elderly to get a free bus pass or money towards their fuel bills in the winter? Why should people have to pay to give the unemployed a living? Britain is a welfare state, that's the way we wanted it, and that's the way we've got it. When, or, if you ever got into this situation, you would want these services. Education is a right, not a privilege.

The government is always banging on at us to make things fair and equal. We need to break down the class barriers. So why are were returning to elitism. The coalition is making so only the rich can afford the mountain of debt that comes with university. How is this fair and equal and breaking down the class barriers. If anything, it is making them bigger!

Does it not make more sense that an educational institution should be deciding its limited positions on a persons ability, rather than the size of their wallet.

However, its not just people that need to go to university that feel this way; a teacher at Totton College, who did not wish to be named, was very passionate about the subject, and would have gone on strike, but feared they would lose her job if they did.

If your one of those people still in favour of raising fees, think about your children. If you have, or planning to have children, think about when they go to university, either you or your child will have to face up to, or over £30,000 in debt, I'm sure you'll change your mind then!


Since first writing this, it seems that Mr Clegg and Mr Cable have given in to the mounting pressure. On BBC's Sunday morning show, 'The Andrew Marr Show', the deputy PM indicated that a cap would be placed on university fees. In an attempt to backtrack over their pledge, which seems to have gone missing since the coalition was formed. The President of the 'National Union of Students Scotland', Liam Burn said "He and his party made a simple and explicit promise to students to vote against any increase in fees", "You could be forgiven for thinking that this has all been choreographed for some time now to make students grateful for being charged twice as much for their education." I seem to remember that Nick Clegg's mantra in the election was "No more broken promises." I think he must have forgotten this somewhere along the way.


Either way, it makes no difference. A lot of future students would still struggle to pay the current fees of around £3000 a year, never mind the rises.

The Role of the Journalist

In this lesson we focused on the role of the journalist in the media. We looked at a website, called http://www.skillset.org/, which encourages people to take up jobs in the media. In particular we looked at a document called http://www.skillset.org/uploads/pdf/asset_15030.pdf?1, getting the following research.

The role of the journalist is to communicate the latest information that the publication feels the public should know about, based on the target audiences social background and beliefs.


To do this successfully, a journalist needs to do be able to do the following:

• Be flexible to changes in the media: Journalists need to be able to adapt to changes in technology as ways of communicating change. Journalist need to be able to easily switch between ways of researching, creating and distributing the information to the audience.
  
  Furthermore, a journalist has to be able to adapt their writing style to suit the publication that the journalist is writing for. For example, a film magazine would have a different style of writing its articles, and aim them at a different audience to a 'Red-Top' tabloid newspaper.
• Be able to work safely within the bounds of the law: A journalist has to be knowledgeable of the aspects of the law regarding contempt, defamation, privacy and data protection, and copyright to avoid being subjected to numerous law suits. They have to be able to pick out any breeches of these laws in their own work.
• Keep up to date with the market's interests: Depending on the publication, journalists must to up to date with the speciality subjects; for example, journalists that write for motoring magazines must be able to keep up to date with the latest motoring information. The audience only wants to know new information, not articles that are behind everyone else. Journalists writing for general publications, such as newspapers, need to keep up to date with the most recent current affairs, especially as these publications are produced daily. Fortunately for journalists, technology now makes it easier to keep up to date with the latest information.
  
  Linking to being flexible and keeping up to date, journalists have to be able to cover breaking stories. Most news events are not scheduled, so journalists have to be able to get to these events, so they cant stay ahead of the competition.

Analysing Magazines

This week we focused on magazines, looking at a variety of magazines, on different topics.

We studied the magazines looking for the target audience the magazine was aimed at and how this affected the language used, the layout of the magazine, as well as the overall design.

I studied the magazines "Uncut" (http://www.uncut.co.uk/magazine), "Wonderland" (http://www.wonderlandmagazine.com/) and "IDN" (http://idnworld.com/mags/).

Uncut Magazine is a Music magazine which is aimed mainly at people in their late teens/ early 20's. I can tell this because the articles are written on bands that mainly appeal to this age group. Also the language was generally quite witty, and uses a variety of interesting adjectives, which appeals to the younger audiences. The magazine focuses on rock music, so the design of the magazine was centred around this. The magazine generally uses dark colours; a lot of the pictures were in black and white and the font is an 80's American style, which links back to a rock filled era. Furthermore, the dark colours link to the teenage social groups, such as "Emo" and "Goth", who generally listen to this style of music.


Wonderland Magazine is a fashion/ culture magazine aimed at young adults. I can tell this because the magazine features a lot of adverts from companies such as Gucci and Prada; these are companies that are generally associated with young, rich people. Furthermore, the magazine is mainly full of adverts and pictures; there are very few articles in this magazine, so again we get the impression that this magazine is aimed at the young and rich (business men/ women) as they do not have a lot of time to read articles; they just flick through the magazine in breaks, or on the way to work.


The final magazine was IDN Magazine, which is a design magazine. The target audience is very small, as the magazine is very specialist. The magazine is aimed at the younger designers as it uses bright colours in its design and has a modernistic layout. The are not many articles; most of the magazine is image based.

Editorials

This week we focused on writing editorials. We started by looking at notes on how to write editorials from http://home.pacific.net.au/~greg.hub/editorial.html and http://www.snn-rdr.ca/snn/nr_reporterstoolbox/writingeditorials.html

We looked at some previous editorials; looking at how influential a good editorial can be. In particular the editorial, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/features/dcmovies/allthepresidentsmen.htm which is from the Washington Post, about President Nixon. This editorial was so influential that it forced the President to resign.


For this weeks assignment we had to write an editorial, for a specific publication; but any publication. We could choose any topic to base our editorial on.


For my editorial I chose to write about how health and safety has gone over-the-top in Britain. I chose to write it for the Daily Mail newspaper, as I found a lot of articles on this subject reflecting the same views as me. Because we had to write for a publication, we had to research the publication; looking at the writing styles, language and views on current affairs.


I found writing the editorial quite hard as I was writing an opinion piece; I was very tempted to use the pronoun, "I". However, from studying editorials we learnt that should try to avoid using this pronoun wherever possible because, by writing an editorial, you are voicing the opinion of the publication and the community of readers. Also, another feature of editorial writing I found challenging was getting the balance between writing an article and writing an opinion piece. The editorial had to be at least 500 words long, so I was tempted to fill most of the editorial with to much information, and not enough opinion. However, I think I managed to get the balance right.


Next week we will be analysing magazines.

Reviews

In this lesson we focused in writing reviews, starting by looking a some of Roger Ebert's reviews, in particular, his review of the film 'Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen'. We studied this review in great detail, looking at the features, and his writing style.

For this weeks assignment we had to write a review on any media product. I chose to do a review on the TV show, 'The Inbetweeners'. However, we had to write the review for a specific publication so it suited the audience, views and writing styles of that publication. We looked at notes on how to write award winning articles from http://jonathandeamer.com/2007/06/12/how-to-write-great-reviews/ and http://www.mantex.co.uk/2009/09/16/how-to-write-reviews/.

Before doing our review, we had to research the publication that we were writing in the style of; I chose to do my review in the style of 'The Independent' newspaper. When researching for the review I looked back over the past reviews produced by the paper, and studied the styles and vocabulary used.

My review was positively written about the show, giving the impression that the show is very funny. I started by writing an introduction to the review, which set the tone of the review, giving a brief description of the show. Next, I began to go into more detail of the particular episode I was reviewing, then the main body, which walked through the episode giving opinions and small quotes. The review was then concluded with a short piece of information about the show.

I found writing the review not to hard as I followed the notes from the links above and tried to use witty and complex vocabulary, however, it was hard to find the right publication for my review, as most TV reviews are often written in a 'Last Night's TV' style; the publication writes about a couple of programmes, with only a small section dedicated to each show. The brief for the assignment was that it had to be no smaller than 500 words, so I couldn't use these publications, as I was only reviewing one text. Furthermore, when studying review writing, we learnt that you should be ruthless when editing your review; however good a line is, it should only be put in if it helps the overall review. I found this difficult as there was a lot of lines and quotes that I thought were quite good and witty, however, some did not help the overall review, so I found it difficult knowing which lines to cut, and which ones to keep.


Next week we will be focusing on editorials.

Interviews

In the first lesson we focused on interviews, looking at some of the 'Great Interviews of the 20th Century' from http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/series/greatinterviews, including the interview with F. Scott Fitzgerald, by Michel Mok. We read and analysed the interview so we could write an interview in a similar style.

For our first assignment, we had to write an interview in the style of Michel Mok, but it could be with anyone, as long as it was conducted face-to-face or over the phone. I chose to do my interview with my brother, based on unemployment in the current UK recession.


The aim of my interview was to give a positive representation of unemployed; to get their point of view into the public eyes, as often they are shown as scroungers and slobs in the media. I did this by focusing on mainly the negative feature of his environment, this way people would find it easier to empathise.


For the interview I had set out a few pages of questions, which I asked, so I could guarantee I had all the information. However, most of the answers were not used. I started by giving some context to the interview, a brief introduction of his background up till present day, this was so the reader could understand the interview better, making it easier to empathise. Next, I described the environment in which the interview was taking place, trying to describe the negative features in as much detail as possible. The main body of the interview was structured as if my brother was telling the story, instead of a traditional 'Question and Answer' based interview. This is because this is how Michel Mok structured his 'great' interview with F. Scott Fitzgerald. I find it creates a more entertaining interview.


I found writing the interview quite challenging as I have never attempted writing an interview in this style, but now I have done it, I feel it is a more successful style.


Next week we will be focusing on reviews.

Introduction to the Course

The following information is an outline of the course; the content and the assessment.

ABC Level 3 Award in Writing Skills for Journalism

Unit Summary

This award focuses on developing writing skills for journalists. Candidates will explore a range of publications, their house styles and values. Candidates will develop skills in writing for differing readerships, types of publication and story.

Outcomes and Assessment Criteria

The candidates should be able to demonstrate they can:

1. Identify and evaluate a range of publications and their respective house styles

2. Write in a variety of styles appropriate to differing readerships

3. Select and use a style of journalism appropriate to a given story

4. Evaluate personal strengths and weaknesses in journalistic writing

Content

An indication of typical areas of learning includes:

· Newspapers and magazines: news and features, readerships, timelines, news values, advertisers

· House styles: identifying house styles and following that house style

· Writing for differing readerships: tabloids, broadsheets, consumer magazines, periodicals

· Styles and stories: news, features, tragedy, politics, entertainment

· Career opportunities: further training, professional development

Assessment Evidence

· A portfolio of stories written for a variety of readerships in a variety of styles

· Reflective diary evaluating personal progress