Statement of intent

For my newspaper NEA I am going to produce the front cover of a local newspaper, called LJN (Local Jersey News). This will be aimed at an audience of all ages living in the region who are interested in national and international news stories as well as stories relating specifically to the local area.

As such, I know that there are local elections coming up in both the UK and in Jersey, so I will make my main story about voter apathy from young people. This will make it easier for me to take an original photograph as I will be able to use students in a classroom. It will also make clear links to some of the theories that we have looked at in class. For example, we have looked at the theory of the ‘liberal free press‘ through the writing of Jurgen Habermas, James Curran and Jean Seaton, which essentially positions newspapers as media forms produced to enable political discussion and civic involvement, or what Habermas calls ‘The Transformation of the Public Sphere‘.

In terms of layout and design, I am going to follow the style model of our CSP (The i). This has a main image (half page) with two ‘plugs‘ or ‘ears‘ (ie headline stories from inside the paper), underneath a strapline for my paper. I will also have a masthead, barcode and other institutional details (time, date, price etc).

Underneath the main image I will have the body article. Unlike my style model I will have about 150-200 words which will form the main article (which will be continued inside the paper) which will be set out in columns, with a big drop cap on the first letter of the first word. I will also have a contents bar at the bottom / footer.

Overall, the paper will be clean, contemporary and stylish, for example, I will use sans serif font and feature more hard news than soft news (ie no gossip or celebrity news, as well as a focus on words over images). I will employ a formal register, using mature and sophisticated vocabulary. I will follow the inverted pyramid structure for my main story. I will also use a pastel colour palette – yellows, oranges etc.

I will design my key elements in Photoshop. I will write my body copy in word and use InDesign to create the other elements and to put it all together.