Virtual School. Information Technology. Lesson 15.

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Desk Top Publishing Newspapers II   Now it's your turn to produce your newspaper! Because this is practice in using dtp you must produce a final version printed on paper, though if you save your graphics and text separately as I've suggested you could produce a print version and a Web version for very little extra effort. If you want to produce a great piece of work of GCSE standard you should try to produce two newspaper styles from the same basic information but designed and edited differently for each newspaper and each audience (see note at the end). First make these decisions: 1. What will be the news source? - school/local; genuine from existing newspapers; online sources. 2. What will be the topics for news articles? - local, national or international news. 3. What other articles (features) will be suitable? - entertainment, glamour, the arts, sport, personalities etc 4. What will be the source of your illustrations? - you could scan existing pictures, cut out newspaper pictures or use online sources. Sketch out your layout on your dtp program pages. This should be like a grid, with perhaps 3 or 5 columns and perhaps five rows. A headline could go along one row crossing several columns, a picture could cross several comlumns too. Allow space for a "masthead," which is the name of the newspaper title. Use 9 point type for the body text; headlines and subheadings may be much bigger. Allow space for pictures and captions. When in doubt refer to a real newspaper, looking at the design features they use - borders, rules (straight lines dividing text and graphics), use of colour, text in bold or in larger sizes, headlines and which type face they appear in, columns per page and where this varies. Now read your news sources, choose which stories and which features you will write about, choose appropriate illustrations and set them into your page. Don't leave any blank spaces! Make sure the text and the graphics fits the space you've allowed in your grid. Change the text length and the picture size rather than the shape of the grid. Try to make your page look more realistic than the story in lesson 14 and more like the real newspapers you see around you. If you think you have made a successful page or pages, evaluate your work by comparing with real newspapers and by asking other people and recording their comments. You may then be in a position to start or contribute to a class, school or village magazine. Most existing editors would welcome any help you can give!   Note Two newspapers compared. This requires you to know some of the differences between tabloid and quality newspapers. Read, say, The Daily Mirror and also read The Daily Telegraph. Find the same article in each newspaper and look at the different ways they are written. Write notes on the following topics:  Subject or topic  politics and economics or about people and their lives Treatment  serious though with humour or popular / sensational Headlines  small size long length or large size short length Description  names first, descriptions after or descriptions first, names after Names  formal or familiar Vocabulary  formal, with long words and complex sentences or familiar, with words quite short, simple sentences, common use of jargon Quotations  reported speech or direct quotations Illustrations  more text than pictures or more pictures than text More information on using and writing newspapers is available from The Newspaper File by D S Grey and A Hayhoe, published by Cambridge University Press. Back to Overview