Thursday, 24 September 2015

Researching Institutions

Now you are getting beyond the first prelim task and production process and you should be looking at moving on to audiences. Below are some links to websites where you can research the institutions at your leisure:

Northern and Shell - http://www.northernandshell.co.uk/

Owned by Hearst Corporation: http://www.hearst.com/magazines/index.php

A check list:

What magazines are published by the institution? (you can cut and paste or screenshot this)
How do the institutions categorise or define the target audiences for their magazines?
Age group?
Gender?
Social Group?
Interests / Other distinctive features?
Description of the type of person who would be in their target audience?
Which titles does the institution provide for a mass audience, and which for a niche audience?

Can you find examples of circulation figures for the company’s print magazines? 

Here are also some examples of what previous students have posted on their blog in the past. As you can see, there doesn't need to be loads and loads of writing, just enough to show a good understanding!
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Bauer Media Group was founded in 1875. It is a multinational media company headquartered in Hamburg, Germany which operates in 16 countries worldwide. It used to be called 'Heinrich Bauer Verlag KG' which was abbreviated to 'HBV' and sometimes shortened to 'H.Bauer'.

Bauer has been managed by four generations of the Bauer family. It started in a small printing house but now it is grown into a worldwide publishing and media company.The Bauer Publishing Group comprises 300 magazines worldwide in 15 countries as well as televisions and radio stations.

Bauer started publishing magazines in the UK with the 'Bella' magazine in 1987 and soon became Britain's third largest publisher. Bauer  further expanded in the UK with the purchase of Emap Consumer Media and Emap Radio in 2008 and then they became the UK's biggest publishing group. Bauer's subsidiaries is Bauer Radio and Box Television. Although Box is also owned by Channel 4.

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SpinMedia is a company and blog network based in Los Angeles. It owns a community of pop culture websites including Buzznet, Idolator, and Stereogum.

Buzz Media was founded by Anthony Batt, Marc Brown, Kevin Woolery, and Steve Haldane under the name Buzznet.Batt and Brown started a blog in 1999, and by 2006 Buzznet had a total of nine people in the Los Angeles, California area.The Buzz media name was created as the company started to acquire more pop-culture and music blogs.

 After the print version of the magazine finished, it rebranded itself as Spin Media in March 2013. At that time, Steve Hansen became its chief executive. In April 2013 it acquired Vibe magazine. 

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New Musical Express, created by Theodore Ingham, is aUK weekly pop/rock music magazine, published since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and then moved towards a magazine format during the 1980s and 90s, changing from newsprint in 1998.

It was the first British paper to include a singles chart, in the 14 November 1952 edition. In the 1970s it became the best-selling British music newspaper. During 1972 to 1976, it was associated with gonzo journalism then became closely associated withpunk rock through the writing of Tony Parsons.

The cover on NME always features a famous artist. Aritists such as Kasabian, Lily Allen, The Prodigy and The Kings of Leon have recently featured. NME also holds its won award show, the NME awards sponsored by ShockWaves hair gel. There is also an NME music channel and an NME radio station. The magazine also has a website to view information and the magazine online.

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Tuesday, 8 September 2015

Posting my first blogs

Ok people, the time is quickly approaching where we need to be posting our research part of the coursework onto our blogs. I do not expect you to have finished the research section for a few weeks yet, although there is still a lot of work and research we need to do! What I am showing you is the very basic requirements to achieve a C grade, you need to go above and beyond for an A grade!

The moderator will expect at least 30 posts from now until your finished project. If you want an A grade, this number needs to be more in the region of 40 - 50 posts! This should show a variety of media technology (hence the need to learn about Prezi). So let's just break it down to what you need to be thinking about at the moment...

Magazine Front covers:

Generic conventions Prezi presentation.

Analyse AT LEAST 1 magazine front cover. How can you analyse the others? Think about the comparison e have done in class, or any other creative way you can imagine! Look at the examples provided.

We are now moving on to look at contents pages. Over the course of the next few lessons you are going to work in groups to design a front page and contents page and begin to create a school magazine to test out the software and your research so far. This is only practice - but very important practice! You can blog and document the process, but the more creative the better!

You need to find an example of a contents page in your genre for Friday as you will analyse it to post on your blog next week.

Remember: by the end of the week we need some finished items to be adding to your blog!!!

Happy blogging :)

Mr A