I wanted to look at this paper in specific detail as it covers a large area and seems to have a balance of crime, advertising and community that not a lot of the other papers I have looked at have. I understand that the other papers that I have looked at so far are known as weekend papers so they are meant to be light and happy and I know that at least one of them is a very rural area and this would mean that there is not a large amount of crime. I am going to compare the articles in the paper and see what if different from community to community. The Isle of Man itself is very rural in parts but at the same time we do have a high crime rating so to produce a paper for this area I will have to find the balance between local crime and local positive news which is something that I hope I can do.
The Lancashire Evening Post is published by Johnston Press,the same company who print the Manx Papers that I have already looked at.
'Johnston Press plc is one of the top community media organisations in the United Kingdom and Ireland – both in print and online.'
This quote was taken from their website http://www.johnstonpress.co.uk/
They provide a service to hundreds of communities across the country, through this they provide access to local information. They have staff that live within the cities, town and villages where they publish which could make their coverage of the local stories and events more specific and more detailed than someone who was writing them who had no idea were the place was. These are the circulation figures for the 'Lancashire Evening Post that are from the 1st of July 2012;
They were taken from the ABC Data base the link;
I thought that since these statistics were taken from an external orginisation that they would be more reliable that something that I found from the paper its self.
This is a report from the paper on 'Visit...' which is the information section which appears in the Saturday edition of the paper. This report is selling the advertising spaces to local business around the area of Lancashire and Preston and they have given an image to the business with a certain area that would be best to advertise.
As you can see it is going up to various counties including Cumbria, Yorkshire, Cheshire and the North East. This is to promote local theme parks, Zoo's ect as the 'Great British Family Day Out' specifically for people in Lancashire. The paper states that 77'000 adults in this area look through the paper for advertisements and that 1 in 7 have responded to an advertisement it the LEP in the last 12 months.They sell advertising space as a full page, a half page or a quarter page. It is only priced for inside the paper, but not for the front cover which is something I can not find anywhere and is something that I am actually really interested in.
As well as selling advertising space from the paper that also sell it from their website. I can't find any prices for the internet but considering how many hits they get compared to how many read the paper I can see it being slightly more expensive.The Friday Paper.
The Lancashire Evening Post is the first local newspaper that I have looked at that is daily, which is something I know A Manx paper will not be able to do as there simply is not enough news here to produce a paper 6 days a week. I am going to look at the paper which has the pull out section of what is on first and then look at the second one that is an issues with very little pull outs.
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| November 2nd 2012 |
This is the front page of the paper and it includes an article about 'Britain's Most Wanted' this is a title that immediately is going to attract your attention, as you would consider Britain's most dangerous man to be slightly dangerous and would wonder were he has last been seen ect.
There is also advertising on the front page for 'Strongfields The Jewelers' and there is one advert in the top right hand corner and one in the bottom right hand corner. There is also an offer 'When you subscribe freeze the price' stating that if you subscribe to the paper the 6 days a week that it is published it will only cost you 41p as appose to 60p and you will get a £10 love2shop voucher, again this is to attract readers. At the bottom of the page they also have a advert for their free LEP football app. Which advertises their website and their attempts to try and attract those people with smartphones such as Apple, Android and Blackberry. The second page of this paper goes straight in with the community feeling the article is about charity children and how they have packed 5 boxes for the Lancashire Hospice There is a very cute image of the children who look like they are all under 4 and the 4 staff. This is something that as a community people would be proud of.
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| What's on November 2nd 2012 |
The 'What's On' section is 40 pages long and when you pull it out of the paper is makes it considerably smaller.The paper when it is all together is 88 pages, so to remove 40 for a pull out reduces the size by almost half. The content of this section varies from reviews, whats on at the theater, band reviews, a property section which is something that I am quite shocked about. I was not expecting a 12 page section on property of the week and local houses that are up for sale, although I suppose that it is something that is going on but I judging from the front of this section you would think it would be more based on film, music, books and reviews on these kind of things.
There is also another 8 page section on Apprenticeships, which is a good place to put it, the section tells you all about what an apprenticeship is and which ones are available and shows a lot of images of people working within their specific field and the success that can happen throughout an apprenticeship. There are also adverts for 'Young Entrepreneurs' which is ran by the paper and is asking the local school is show them their potential business skills by putting together a enterprise initiative. They are awarding £500 to the winning school which is something that will attract the students and it is advertised in an area that some school children who are interested in business apprenticeships are going to look at.
At the end of this pull out there is a 4 page section called the 'What's on Listings' which advertises everything going on over the weekend (because this is only published on a Friday) in the pubs, clubs, theater, leisure and shop sales. This is something that local people are going to look at first before they decide what they are going to do at the weekend, it is a way in which local business can get word out to people through a source that they know has a solid reputation.
The second half of the paper includes deaths, birthdays, holidays, home services, class fields, class fields for motor, and local and international sport!
This is the first local paper i have seen that covers international sport as well as local. This could be because it is a daily paper, it is current. As it is published betweek 11am and 1pm 6 days a week it is possible for them to include some of the days actives sport wise both national and local. All of the other papers I have looked at so far have all been weekly which means that it isn't really possibly for them to produce anything about the sport because people will have lost interest in it 4 or 5 days after it has already happened, especially on a national scale.
The Thursday Paper.
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| November 1st 2012 |
This is the second copy of the Lancashire Evening Post that I have and the reason that I have done this because the paper above has a pull out section about what is going on in the area, where as this paper doesn't. This paper is only 72 pages long as appose to the other one that is 88 pages long. Both issues are the same price 60p, they would make slightly more money on this issue as it is 16 pages shorted which lowers the cost of printing, however this small amount is hardly worth reducing the price on certain days and it makes up for the days when the paper has more content and it costs more to produce.
The front cover of the paper has a different headlines 'A Catastrophic 200 NHS jobs face axe' and 'No if's or butt's is our pie the best in the UK?' there are also two community based stories on the front of the paper 'Olympic Athlete's shopping run' and 'Casper finds his way home at last'. The 2 stories that are from the community will attract readers and it lets them know what is going on within the community and this is something that they expect and enjoy from their local paper, I mean who wouldn't want to be part of a community that helped find a lost dog.
The layout of the offer for getting your paper cheaper is still in the same place and this is something I imagine will be on the front of every issue as it is an on going offer throughout the year. The offer for 'Strongfields The Jewelers' is still on the front page in the top right hand corner and this is something I imagine is contracted to appear on every issue of the paper. Something that I failed to mention in my analysis of the other issue is that under the main part of the masthead there is a sentence is read that reads 'North West daily newspaper of the year'. It is not in very big writing but it does stand out on the musky white paper and also against the blue text that it is underneath. This is something that the paper should be proud of, and defiantly something that they should share with their customers.
As I started to read the paper I realized that it is just the same usual community based stories as in the issue above and in the other local newspapers that I have looked at.
The front cover of the paper has a different headlines 'A Catastrophic 200 NHS jobs face axe' and 'No if's or butt's is our pie the best in the UK?' there are also two community based stories on the front of the paper 'Olympic Athlete's shopping run' and 'Casper finds his way home at last'. The 2 stories that are from the community will attract readers and it lets them know what is going on within the community and this is something that they expect and enjoy from their local paper, I mean who wouldn't want to be part of a community that helped find a lost dog.
The layout of the offer for getting your paper cheaper is still in the same place and this is something I imagine will be on the front of every issue as it is an on going offer throughout the year. The offer for 'Strongfields The Jewelers' is still on the front page in the top right hand corner and this is something I imagine is contracted to appear on every issue of the paper. Something that I failed to mention in my analysis of the other issue is that under the main part of the masthead there is a sentence is read that reads 'North West daily newspaper of the year'. It is not in very big writing but it does stand out on the musky white paper and also against the blue text that it is underneath. This is something that the paper should be proud of, and defiantly something that they should share with their customers.
As I started to read the paper I realized that it is just the same usual community based stories as in the issue above and in the other local newspapers that I have looked at.
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