Research into Local Newspapers - The Suffolk Free Press

In this post, I am going to look at the Suffolk Free Press, and study and evaluate the aspects and conventions used.

Front Page

Name of Paper
Similar to the Halstead Gazette, The Suffolk Free Press immediatly recognises the area that the news paper is based. Although compared to the Halstead Gazette, The Suffolk Free Press covers a wider area, a county, rather than just a town. 'Free Press' is written in blue font, and is larger than 'Suffolk' and all of the other texts on the page, except the main article title. Like the Halstead Gazette, The Suffolk Free Press is being sold on a weekday, Thurdsday.

Content
A competition is shown at the top of the page, advertising the chance to win a new IPad. The text 'Win an IPad in our competition ' is orange font on a blue background, using contrasting colours atttracts more attention to this section of the newspaper. This could also attract a younger audience into reading the newspaper, or winning the competition. Next to this, there is also a chance to win tickets to a Jools Holland concert, this conveys a more mature audience. Jools Holland is an English Pianist, this represents an older range of readers, which levels out the younger range conveyed by the chance to win an IPad. Homes are also advertised in this newspaper, this is shown in white font on a blue strip, so the readers know where the homes for sale are is that is what they are looking for in particular.

Main Article
The main article is about a local citizen being wrongly accused (by the council) of benefit fraud, and the council are now accused of wasting tax payers money. This appeals to a local audience, seeing as it concerns their local council. Journalists have the right to portray and tell their readers what their council has done or is doing, along with other occurances that affect opinions & trust of the public.

Advertisements
There are only two advertisements on the Suffolk Free Press' front page. The main advert is for an opticians in Sudbury, at the bottom of the page. The photograph for this advert includes a young/middle-aged male - wearing transition glasses, this conveys a fairly middle-age reader audience. This advert includes logos, colours (mainly purple and orange). 'Free' is also written in large capital letters, this is a very typical way to present the word 'free' in an advertisement, it draws a large audience as almost everyone wants a bargain, especially on life's necessities.
The other advertisement is for a local car service, this covers a very large audience seeing as 45.6 million people in the UK can drive.

Photographs
The photographs used on the front cover of the Suffolk Free Press include an IPad, as part of a competition advert, as I have previously wrote about in the content section above. The photograph of the front page article is a photograph of the woman included in the article and her friend, they appear to be outside one of their front doors.The last photograph is on the opticians advert. All of the photos are in colour ink, this often draws in more attention to a newspaper when people are searching through newspapers.

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