EVALUTION TASK 3

RESEARCH

During the research process I had to deliver on the music industry and file sharing industry, I had to prepare a piece of featured journalism on the changing face of the music industry, decide on the type of magazine and target audience ect. Throughout the quest of my assignment we was given a newsbeat article informing and providing us with information reflecting on the background of the music industry and file sharing organisation. Highlighting and annotating the positive and negative points within the article for ideas and notes for our journalistic piece of writing was quite understandable, the article really helped me to understand the background of the relation between file sharing and the music industry. The most changeling and negative points on the annotating and taking down notes was paraphrasing it to my own words, it was already an understanding and perfectly written article and I would have to take points from there and make it just as good as the article which was in fact one of the hardiest things I had to do. Moreover, what also helped was the discussion between me and my peers and researching online our points on the positive and negative on the industry, we searched on sites such as The Guardian, BBC, BPI ECT looking for articles based around file sharing and the effect on the music industry. The independent researching online was also very good found some very good points for file sharing. One of the information that benefitted a lot was the research finding the quotes from artists on their views towards file sharing that really helped me back up my side of the argument for file sharing.

Journalism and Writing Skills

My publication for the type of magazine was based for the specific audience I targeted at which was towards teenagers, teenagers are conveyed to be the new consumed generation now, they are the ones that tend to change through what is presented on the media. Within my journalistic writing I intended on using a bit of both high and low lexis. So my technique to get the teenagers attention was by dragging them in by starting off with simple language to receive their attention, then throughout the text I used bits of hard language to really put forward my point but make it understandable towards the my target audience. I also used direct address to my audience by the use of 2rd person narratives ‘YOU’ and ‘I’ to direct the article to my targeted audience and get them involved on their understanding on my point and where I was coming from with my explanations. Similarly I structured my article with beginning, middle and end, within my beginning paragraph I used rhetorical questions to question my audiences views on how well they really know the background of the relation between file sharing and the music industry, this was made to question their knowledge on what they thought they knew through what the media presents to them but not knowing there was much more that the media doesn’t always open up. Equally I used statistics to back up my points which I used from the newsbeat we were given to get points from. The middle was filled with my points to back up my argument for file sharing with also bits of counter arguments, while at the end was written as a conclusion on my overall view on the whole file sharing organisation and how other think its destroying the music industry I believe its benefiting it instead. Writing the journalistic article was easier when I was given notes and found bullet points I could expand on in my own words instead of reading articles and attempting on paraphrasing it into my own words so that was a positive part of the journalistic writing skills. The negative part was structuring it in a way my target audience would want to realise it and take it in consideration to read it.

InDesign

I’ve had no existing skills what’s so ever in using InDesign and Photoshop which i would say is a negative impact of the designing of my article, it shows this is all firsthand use of the InDesign software. I’ve had quite a bit of an experience using publisher but not a lot. In the making of my article, knowing its my first time using this software, I thought just to take baby steps and make it simple and develop my skills as the course went on, so I looked at the different areas I could place the columns for the placement of my journalistic writing, I thought about the amount of images, the sizes and the effects I could do to my image to either make it stand out or make the text stand out more, I took in consideration of pull out quotes of famous artists/people’s views on file sharing and instead of headlines I tried to just structure my text by placing at the beginning of my journalistic writing the history behind file sharing and the music organisation and work my way down to society now and I thought about colour scheme and connotation of the colours I used. One of my strengths through the process of InDesign was the placement of my image, text and title, having in mind magazines I’ve read in the pass and the placement of their articles and what really made it stand out, and attract to their chosen audience. One of my weaknesses was finding an appropriate font to fit my style of magazine.

Web Publishing Skills

I’ve never had much of an experience in setting up a blog, but when it was explained and instructed on how to go about doing it , it was quite straight forward so that was alright. After setting up the blog, the tricky part was how I was to work it because I haven’t ever really had a blog before to know how to go about doing simple things, but because I’ve had some kind of experience in using sites such as Facebook and Tumblr it kind of helped me out on bits and pieces like uploading pictures ect. After uploading my article on my blog, I had to receive feedback from my fellow peers, 2 – 3 people had to give me constructive criticism on my blog about my article, on how it was good and how I could of made it better, I received some very good feedback and understanding on parts of my article I could of made better. They said they really liked the contrast with the faded picture to bring out the title and quote of the colour scheme, also the positioning was very well structured and increasing the size on the quote on the faded picture to show the importants of that quote in particular, although the writing could have been bigger and bolder to really stand out, I could of make use of more images with in the article to show the variation of involvement, the amount of writing was shown to be too much to read. So I could say understanding the procedures of going about on a blog was quite positive but understanding the layouts on the page on how to get back to pages before, re- doing mistakes and adding extra details was quite negative.

4 Targets for Improvement

·         Experience in InDesign and others such as Photoshop-improve my creating skills

·         Paraphrasing-understanding how to put sentences in my own words

·         Structuring articles to fit targeted audiences-understand my targeted audience and the things that attract them.

·         Widen vocabulary