The Copy.

I began writing my version of the copy after the layout was produced and decided as a group.
My first draft was on the charity work of sending shoe boxes to the soldiers abroad for Christmas.

Samuel Ward contributes to charity.

'Samuel Ward have always been an involved school when it comes to charity but this year they have been exceptionally thoughtful when they sent a number of shoe boxes to the British troops fighting in Afghanistan for Christmas.

Headmaster Howard Lay explained why it was so important to make this gesture. “I know how important it is to help others, I want to open the students eyes and show them that Christmas isn’t about receiving presents but making the effort to help others have a good day. After all, these soldiers are fighting for us, the least we can do is spend them some homely gifts. We filled the boxes with basic objects that many of us take for granted, for example, tomato ketchup sachets.”

“Within each box we sent a letter to each soldier, which I found was very important, there are many students who are interested in finding out about the army and by doing this we are giving them a great opportunity to do so.”'

After reading through this and comparing it to other articles in the Haverhill Echo and Haverhill Weekly news and I did not think it was good enough for the Haverhill Gazette, the wording was not right as it was too descriptive and the column inches were to large so instead of tweaking it I decided to start from scratch and re-wite the article.

I decided to change the charity as there are many people who contribute to sending shoe boxes to the soldiers and do not get any recognition so I went with a local charity - Haverhill's cancer hospice. 

Samuel ward contributes to charity

'Samuel Ward Academy has been celebrating after raising a whopping £6,476 for a local breast cancer hospice.

The Academy started fund raising for the hospice this year by holding a variety of events. Non-uniform days, bake sales, car washing and a sponsored fun run have all helped raise the phenomenal sum.

Headmaster Howard Lay, said: “I love to get the pupils involved in helping others and by fund raising we are able to teach the pupils that even a small contribution of your time and effort can make a big difference.”

With the in-school events being successful Howard Lay wanted to contribute more. The Academy then went on to raise more money by cooking a variety of cakes: including muffins, cookies and brownies and selling them on Haverhill High Street during the weekend.

A lead ambassador of Samuel Ward Academy, Amber Benjamin 18, found the whole experience thrilling. She exclaimed: “I couldn’t believe how well it went, the whole school wanted to get involved and with everybody’s effort we were able to raise as much as we did.”

Breast Cancer Hospice chairman Daniel Wright, was astonished to receive £6,476 cheque from Samuel Ward Academy.'

I found this article a lot more suitable for the Haverhill Gazette. The article included a local school helping out a local charity. The wording was also more to the point and therefore better for a local newspaper.

Planning for the front cover: What's on my front page of the Haverhill Weekly Gazette.

Main article:

- Samuel Ward Academy contributes to charity.

Main image:

- Samuel Ward students.

Front page advertisement:

- Jewel Mark Jewellers.

Kicker 1:

- Homes for sale.

Kicker 1 image:

- House with selling post.

Kicker:

- Soldiers home safe from the war.

Kicker 2 image:

- Solider reunited with his family.

Inside contents:

Type of font:
- Masthead -  Bell MT
- Copy - Franklin Gothic Book
Three colour pallet scheme: black, grey and red

My issue date: Friday 9th December 2011

Website: www.haverhillweeklygazette.co.uk

Price: 35 pence

Survey results for font copy.

Here are the results from our survey, you can see that Franklin Gothic Book was selected for the font that looks the most professional, Euphemia UCAS was the majority vote for the easiest font to read and the last question showed results that Franklin Gothic Book was the font that our audience would like to read in their local newspaper. Like the other survey we asked if they would like to see the font round or blocked in their local newspaper and if block or rounded grabbed their attention first, both response came back with block font being the most popular. 

Therefore from this feedback we are going to use Franklin Gothic Book text for the copy. Using block, lower case letters to make the font easy to read. 

Fonts for the copy.

Like the fonts for the masthead and article titles we are doing the same type of thing, by choosing six fonts that we think are suitable for the copy and then create a survey and ask 25 people who are our demographic audience and ask them five questions and then go for the majority vote and then choose the font which they would most like to see in their local newspaper.

Survey results from Masthead and Article title fonts.

Here are the survey responses that we collected from 25 people within our target audience age range. You can see that our target attentions attention was grabbed from the font perpetua, although the same people thought that Bell MT was the most suitable font for their local newspaper. Even though the perpetua font was attention grabbing our responses from our audience thought that Bell MT was more attractive, with eleven out of twenty-five voted. Therefore we knew that we were going to be using Bell MT for the Haverhill Weekly Gazette yet we did not know that if we were going to use the font in italics or bold. We asked this question in our survey and the results came back with eighteen people choosing bold. In our survey we also asked if our target audience would prefer to see the font for the masthead and article titles in upper case, or lower case, the majority vote came out to be that they preferred upper case. 

Fonts for the Masthead and Article titles.

Even though I had already completed some research into the use of fonts within local newspapers. I had collected the fonts off the internet and therefore could not use them in the Haverhill Weekly Gazette as I was using the programmes Photoshop and Indesign, where these fonts were not available. As a group we went through some of the fonts available on both programmes. We knew that we were going to have two different types of fonts for the masthead and article titles and different font of the copy. We thought it was suitable to go through these two programmes as a group and decide what eight fonts we thought were appropriate for the masthead and article titles. We then decided to create a survey and ask our target audience what font they thought suitable for the Haverhill Weekly Gazette. 

Creating the front page of the Haverhill Gazette.

After completing all of my research I shall now go on to creating the front page of the local newspaper. I understand that to achieve a good front page of the local newspaper you need to be organised and it shall take a lot of drafts and planning. Therefore I shall use my time planning sheet, that I created at the start of the course, as a guide to follow to help me achieve the best I can.