Thursday, 8 November 2012

Target Audience


Target Audience

The target audience of a newspaper is the most important aspect of putting it together. Without a target audience you cannot build up the language, style, content, etc. as you have no one to suit it to. A target audience is the main group/type of person that you will be aiming your product at. To do this I need to come up with an idea of the type of person I will be aiming for and how I can use this to tailor my newspaper to represent my target audience.

My target audience firstly will be aimed more at adults, roughly anyone over the age of 18. This isn’t to say that anyone younger couldn’t read it as these people will make up a secondary audience, but the content will not be orientated towards them.

Apart from the age range, I expect my audience to be educated and have an interest in the news. The class I would be aiming at would be working class and middle class, although I am not looking at being a middle class paper, similar to The Guardian. To do this I have considered the pricing of my paper. High end papers often pass the £1 boundary, but the local papers that I have looked at are not as cheap as tabloids (around 20 – 35p) and are around the 40p – 80p price range.

From looking at my local paper and others, the main topics are usually local politics, for example plans for the area, buildings or they are of public interest, which include stories such as accidents, fights, deaths etc. It is rare that a story is positive, much like any newspaper (negativity is one of the main criteria that fit how “newsworthy” something is according to studies carried out by Galtung & Ruge). Many connect more with negative stories because they can empathise, especially if they knew that this story was local and happened close by or possibly to someone they knew personally.
Links to information that I have read:


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