Newspaper front cover

Commentary about my Newspaper front cover

I chose to do a front cover for The Sun. The audience for The sun newspaper is a less educated, working class type. The less educated, working class would tend to go for the bright, colourful images that stand out and that will grab their attention. The Sun is a less political newspaper and the audience will buy it generally to hear all the latest gossip and the ‘big news’. Based on the fact that this is a very cheap tabloid paper costing only 30p, means that on average more people tend to buy it. This means that the paper must stand out and must be interesting and must use informal, easy to read language because a large range of people read it and it needs to be understandable.

First of all, the main image, which takes up most of the page, is a very dramatic, eye-catching, shocking image. It show’s a youth kicking a policeman and retaliating in a violent way with all the other youths behind him. The fact that the youth is being violent towards a police man can come across as very shocking to the reader; it’s something that wouldn’t usually happen. This will then grab the reader’s attention and make them want to read more about it to find out the details of what actually happened. I decided to make the image the main focus of the paper because it will easily grab attention.

The main heading, ‘Looters attack’ really stands out and has large, clear writing. I chose to give the paper this heading because it goes very well with what was going on in the riots; it also connects very well with the image because it shows the looters attacking the police. It is an easy to understand title and considering the fact that the language of the sun is aimed at children of around the age of 8, it needs to be understandable.

The sub-heading, with red, eye-catching font, placed just above the image says ‘Police struggle to keep yobs under control.’ I used the colour red because it fits in with the bright colour theme of The Sun. Red is also a symbol of danger so Red fits the story very well. I chose to use the word ‘yobs’ because it is an informal, slang term and will engage with many of the working class readers. The word ‘yobs’ gives everybody reading, an idea that it was just youths involved with the riots, however as a matter of fact statistics show that it was a large amount of twenties to middle aged people involved too. But I decided to use this particular word because I am representing most of the rioters as young people. People are more interested by the fact that it is young people because it seems much more horrifying and shocking as to what the youths of today can be like. Even though it is not a fully correct representation, that’s how I’ve chosen to present them.

‘The police struggle’ is a phrase I’ve used in the sub-heading. The use of the word ‘struggle’ is a negative thing towards the police and suggests that they didn’t have enough police out while the riots were happening. Even though the front page is mainly blaming the ‘yobs’ – youths of today, the fact that the police are struggling also could lead people to blame the police and become angry because more police could have been out there while all of this was happening. However it could also lead people to feel abit of empathy towards the police and be angry at the ‘yobs’ even more because the youths shouldn’t be doing what they are doing and the police are finding it very hard. The audience of The Sun, like to read news which gives them a boost, gets them angry and gives them something to talk about. The horrifying image, the word ‘attack’ in the main heading and the shocking sub heading all lead the reader’s to feel this. 

On the right hand side of the image I have decided to put three main bullet points all focussing on the riots and an introduction to the whole story which can be read inside the paper if they buy it. I decided to include these on the front cover because people might want to read the first paragraph to see if the story is worth reading. Even though the eye-catching front cover should persuade them to buy it anyway, the extra paragraph and 3 main bullet points gives the reader more information. I used white font to make it stand out on the page because the image is very dark.

Overall the audience is a less educated, working class type. I’m representing the looters/rioters as violent ‘yobs’. The genre is a tabloid paper and the ideology is blaming the rioters – the youths.