For my newspaper NEA I am going to produce the front cover and a double page spread of a local newspaper called The Jersey Times. It 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, especially those that concern the right’s of islanders and want to be aware of news regarding
My article concerns a local issue – the housing crisis in Jersey. This will make it easy for me to take an original photograph as I can easily go and take a picture in Jersey. This will have links to theories of the ‘Liberal Free Press’ by Curran and Seaton as well as Habermas in terms of creating the newspaper.
The style model I will be following is from our CSPs: The Daily Mail and The i. I will produce a masthead at the top of the page, which will be made in photoshop at the top of the page, similar to the Daily Mail and The i. I will also include the date of publication, the price of the newspaper and the barcode. My main image will be of a picture of town with lots of buildings and some houses and flats as a dominant signifier, which will make the readers aware of what the article is about. As well as this, it will also include the headline, ‘The Looming Housing Crisis of an Affluent Island’ in wrapped text to follow my style models and the main body of the the article in three columns (approximately 200 words) with the first letter being a drop cap, it will also include a page number to refer to the article at greater length somewhere else in the newspaper to resemble the real life product of a newspaper. A strapline will be included to draw the readers/audience in. There will also be included plugs to other stories in the newspaper with their page numbers. I will use Times New Romans font to try and resemble the professional look of a conventional newspaper. The colour scheme will be black and white for a more contemporary and clean appeal.
My newspaper will have a libertarian compass, as it is concerned with society and humanitarian ideologies rather than authoritarianism and individualistic matters. This links to Haubermas’s theory of ‘The Public Sphere’ and how the intention was for newspaper to allow for a ‘libertarian expression of thought and opinion’. In addition, this will also relate to Laswell’s hypodermic model theory, sender transfers a message, through a medium that has a direct effect on the receiver.
The article will follow the ‘Inverted Pyramid Structure’ to appeal more to the readers/audience.
Body text
House prices have gone through the roof in the small, wealthy island of Jersey. Former Jersey resident, John Le Breton, says that he ‘had to leave the island after my family had lived here for generations as he could not afford to afford a home. Which is a great shame as Jersey is a safe, beautiful place to live in but it is just too expensive to live here’.
Young people as well as retirees are especially struggling to purchase a house in Jersey. Even, for middle class families that are educated and are employed. Research has found that a standard three-bedroom house in Jersey costs on average is £861,000. A one-bedroom flat comes with the average cost of £339,000, which comes to a nearly £40,000 increase in comparison to 12 months prior. In addition to this, working class households are not able to ‘service a mortgage affordably’ for a two bedroom flat, according to the most recent House Price Index report released by Statistics Jersey, based on the final quarter from 2021.
Evidentially, Islanders are really struggling to afford to live in a place they call home. What is even worse is that, politicians are denying that the housing crisis exists which of course does not help the people of Jersey feel any better. Michael Van Neste, Consultant of the Jersey Homes Trust who has been working there for 26 years, says that the housing crisis is down to an ‘ineffective government’ and is ‘causing poverty and despair’.