In total I received 65 responses, with 28 male and 36 female, one 'prefer not to say' and one person who chose to skip that question. I tried to avoid this bias of slightly more female participants by asking more males to take part, but obviously as a female myself I am going to get more females to participate as they will feel encouraged to.
The age of the participants generally reflected my target audience with 92% of people being between the ages of 13-25, which is helpful in terms of showing me what my target audience are looking for. The other 8% outside this category help to provide a more rounded view of expectations of newspapers and also give me an idea of what an older audience might expect that a younger audience are not interested in.
The responses to this question were extremely mixed, with a shocking 6 people who never read newspapers, but I was actually quite surprised at the results, as generally the conception is that my age group do not read newspapers, however, 68% of respondents read newspapers once a fortnight or more, an encouraging number in terms of attracting my target audience. This question also made me consider how much of a regular newspaper I would create and I think I am going to go with weekly because I feel daily would not attract a regular audience, where as people are more likely to have time to read a weekly newspaper.
This next question 'What makes you choose the newspaper' had an extreme amount of lengthy answers as it was a qualitative question where I asked participants to comment. I therefore put the data into a table to make it easier to analyse. I also added the age and gender of each respondent to add some perspective to their answer. One thing I picked up on was content, it was clearly very important to many people and it is therefore I ensure my content is up to date, relevant, and interesting to my target audience. They also talked a bit about price, therefore there is a suggestion that the cheaper the newspaper the more likely they are to buy it, and as most rely on parents for money or are on a student budget it is important I make my newspaper as cheap as possible in order to attract the audience. This will however unfortunately mean an increase in adverts. There was also a focus on politics, and therefore in order to attract the widest audience it is practical to make my newspaper impartial in order to attract both those with strong political views, and also those who are undecided.
The next question also had a range of mixed responses. Unsurprisingly, the most common answer was local news, which I agree is key in local newspapers and therefore something I will undoubtedly include. There was also a clear focus on the importance of some regional/national and international news, which I will take from the ideas learnt from the Eastern Daily Press, of including international news yet making it relevant and apply it to my own newspaper where/if possible. The lowest scoring areas were weather and health, and therefore it will be unlikely I will make these a poignant part in the newspaper, especially with these being more relevant to national news as opposed to local news. In addition, I will consider politics which I didn't consider before, however again if it is relevant to the local area, as I picked out on an important part in the previous question where someone said they don't read local news because it isn't 'relevant to them' and I therefore want to make sure, using the results of this survey, that everything in my newspaper is relevant in some way to my target audience.
This response was not as mixed and generally I had answers I expected. Black was the most prominent answer, with a few of the 'other' responses asking for 'black and white'. From my research it is clear that black and white is key for the main body of the newspaper, however for the masthead, blue and red tend to be more prominent colours, supported by the results in the survey, as where they do not reply black/white, the response seems to be blue or red, giving me a clear idea on what my audience expect.
This next question was a controversial one, with many people stating they did not 'like' adverts. Of course no one loves adverts, but as shown in my research, they are essential in a local newspaper and therefore I will pay great attention to the actual responses in this question. Most popular was 'money off vouchers', which I feel given my target audience are generally on a low income, is important as is likely to be an advert featured on the front cover. Events was next, but as this is surely going to be a larger advert in order to include all the details, this would be featured more likely on the inside of the paper. Clothing, Food and Leisure Activities were all of equal importance and therefore will be equally distributed throughout the newspaper in order to fully attract my audience throughout. A respondent made the point of 'Jobs' however, I feel that this would not be appropriate unless on a specific 'job' page as these don't seem to be prominent in normal adverts.
This is similar to the question which asks what makes my audience choose the paper they do, and the same sort of answers come up, that the headline and therefore the newspaper needs to be relevant to my audience or 'on a topic which interests' them, therefore being important to include topics relevant to teenagers in the local area. In addition, the shocking option was quite popular, meaning that my headline not only has to be relevant, but if possible it also has to be something my target audience was perhaps not already aware of, something I will try to accommodate. The aesthetics of the headline were less important to my audience than the content and therefore I will concentrate more on what my headline is saying as opposed to how it looks.
Whilst upon first view, this response seems varied, there is a clear outcome; 2 or perhaps 3, pictures on the front page, with 1 for the main story and 1/2 for sub stories. I very much agree with this, at will look busy but not clustered, and attractive but not unprofessional. I found the responses that said 'no pictures' to be interesting, but I feel this may put of my young audience who would like information to be accessed quickly and immediately gain an idea of the story. I also feel it is important, from this, to make my pictures as eye catching as possible and therefore people will not think they are a waste of space but in fact add to the story. This question was one of the most helpful in the design of my newspaper.
This last question is relevant in many ways, to not only how I actually choose to price my newspaper, but also affects the content. Such as, if it is cheaper there are likely to be more adverts, and perhaps, a shorter newspaper and less stories, much to what is common in a local newspaper. It is quite difficult to stem an idea of the overall majority because there was such a large range of responses for this question, depending on what people considered local. 57.81% of people did response 55p or below, and as a majority, it is likely that my final total will be under this number, and perhaps even free.
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