Evaluation for Daily Mail News Cover



Evaluation for Daily Mail Front Cover Task

1) What was the task you were given and who was the target audience?
The task was for us to write and formulate a newspaper article for the breaking story we were introduced to in a press conference. The news article was that the engagement between Megan Markle and Prince Harry was off because Harry found out that Megan was having an affair with a man called Brett Carpenter. The target audience was anyone who would read the Daily Mail and their social demographic is B,C1,C2 and people who support the Conservatives.

2) What research did you undertake and what did you find were some of the typical conventions of a Daily Mail front cover- layout, types of stories, fonts etc.
To research for this task, I looked at other Daily Mail newspaper covers for the December month, this helped me determine what type of advert I should create or use as a guide. I decided to use an advert from a December newspaper which was an offer on wine which I thought was festive and appropriate. To decide what layout I should use, I looked at a range of Daily Mail front covers to see the way in which they present their news. Daily Mail news seem to present their news by using around 2-3 articles per cover. One of the articles seems to have a picture alongside it on the right side of the page; this article is usually celebrity gossip news (soft news), the main headline doesn't normally have a picture with it and is normally news on health, politics or any other hard news.

3) Which Daily Mail cover did you use as your main source? What are your observations from this source?            
I used this newspaper cover as my main source for the advert because the offer is Christmas related and as the newspaper is issued in December I thought it would be appropriate to have a Christmas theme. I also thought this layout of advert would be reasonably easy to fit on the page and assemble myself.
                                           I used this as my second main source because I like the layout it displays. I like the way the article on the right side of the page focusses on celebrity/soft news and on the left side it highlights big/hard news issues (politics, health etc.) as it breaks up the newspaper for the readers. It is also an easy layout to understand because you can easily tell the mini article on the bottom of the page is linked to the main headline and the picture correlates with the mini headline positioned underneath.

4) What areas did you find most challenging?
I feel the most difficult part of this task was making sure the front cover was as accurate as the real thing. It was challenging getting the writing font/size to fit the page and fill out the cover because newspapers don't often have much blank space on the cover. One of the trickiest factors of this task was matching the font with the real Daily Mail fonts, it was a long case of trial and error. Another difficult part to this was writing an article which linked to the main headline and had relevance to todays news.

5) What was your initial feedback?  What did others say about the production? How successful do you think it is?
People have said the positioning of all the components to the newspaper are accurate and realistic. I feel the most successful part to my newspaper cover is the advert/offer section, I feel I managed to match the writing font and size to the original newspaper. I feel I have also stuck to the layout that Daily Mail actually use which makes it quite accurate. I think I have managed to associate this December newspaper with Christmas by using the advert I have because alcohol is a big part of some peoples Christmas holiday.


6) Identify what went well and with hindsight what you do to improve/do it differently?
I feel the advert/offer went well because the writing font and colour matched to the source I was using making it look accurate and real. I also feel I chose a good picture because it shows that Megan is the one being presented badly and making Prince Harry shine and make everyone feel sorry for him (as the Daily Mail adore the royals). I also feel the headline for the Megan Markle story was appropriate for the Daily Mail because it captures Megan appear like the villain in this situation, which she is because she had an affair with a man named Brett Carpenter. To improve I feel like need to change the colour of the gradient on the advert banner because it doesn't quite match the source I used. I also feel like I could have improved my newspaper by filling up the blank space a bit more by making the writing font bigger or use more words. Overall I feel I need to change a lot of the fonts to make the paper look like a real Daily Mail front cover. Another part I could improve is the article itself, I feel the article has too many points about immigration, I think it should focus on 2 or 3 points linking to the main headline instead.

7) In the exam you will be analysing newspaper front covers. In producing this cover, are there any areas that you hadn't  noticed before? What have you learnt from completing this task?
I have never really focussed so much on an advert so much before, and I hadn't really noticed that the adverts link with the month or a particular time of year. I hadn't noticed that there are so many different variations of layouts for the Daily Mail. From this task, I have learnt that it is very difficult to position everything on a newspaper correctly to make it look realistic.