Research of local newspapers

Our first instinct was to look at existing local newspapers and see how they were presented (layout etc.) and also, the kind of headlines that they printed and who they were aimed at.

Looking at these, we realised that the stories were of local interest, never anything majorly newsbreaking. This is proved in the example we have here, the headline is about a florist, something that would never feature on the national news or tabloid. Also, there are never celebrities featured, all just regular people from the local streets living normal lives, perhaps with the odd scandal. Whereas the tabloids (mainly on the front pages) normally include the word "exclusive", because they have the money and the power to have stories nobody else has.

Looking at the pictures that are included, there are lots of images of buildings demonstrating where the story has taken place; this is because the local people would most likely be familiar with the sites, but also because there is no evidence of the event taking place. In tabloids such as The Sun there are images of the story in action, for example a celebrity falling out of a nightclub, this is because there are photogrophers, or "paparazzi" waiting on the scene to capture the shot, but in local towns this simply doesnt happen. The following is an example of an article from The Daily Mirror.

The next thing we found was that local newspaperss have a lot of adverts for local businesses, restaurants and events. They feature on almost every page, sometimes just fitting in with the text, sometimes having a full page to themselves. Looking at the laytout, it seems it isnt a million miles away from a tabloid newspaper, but it is apparent that there are a lot of smaller stories fitting in amongst the sides, and also the pages are a bit of a scramble. As a difference, however, local newspapers seem to have a smaller subheading under the main one.