Web Publishing Evaluation
The file-sharing journalism process started off with research skills.
My strengths were being able to browse the internet to look for relevant points
and quotes about why file-sharing should be legal. This helped with the class debate
as I also did independent research to back up the reasons with facts and
statistics. I found quotes from Artists (Lilly Allen and 50 Cent) about their
opinion on file-sharing which was helpful to put in my article. The websites I
found useful were The Guardian.com and the Independet.co.uk this was creditable
because there were similar articles about file sharing. In the same way I found
the hand outs useful because it gave background information about how illegal
file-sharing began in the early 2000s.
However my weaknesses on my research skills were not being able to
find a lot of information about why file-sharing is good as there was only
information about why file-sharing is illegal while I was looking for
information. The website Wikipedia and other sites that didn’t look genuine
were not suitable to use for my article because the information given about
file-sharing did not seem dependable; especially Wikipedia as anybody can go to
the site and change/update the information whenever they want.
My journalistic and writing skills had a mode of address which was to be
informative, factual and to be written in third person. My target
audience/publication was both genders (young adults aged 18-30). I chose to
target both genders because I thought it would be a great way for most people
to be aware of the file-sharing issue. I researched both gender magazines and RollingStone
magazine was what I used as place where I would choose my article to be
published as it is a global magazine which is broad based with music genres. Additionally
I think embedding quotes from what Artists have said into the article made it more
reliable, also when I was writing I made sure both that both sides of the
argument on file-sharing was mentioned. I did this because while researching on
RollingStone magazines way they put their information together in their
articles. They had embedded quotes and it was written formally.
On the other hand my weaknesses on my journalistic and writing skills
were the lexical choice as it was low/medium lexis. I didn’t put language devices
such as rhetorical questions in the article to make the article a high lexis.
To make it more formal and should have spent more time writing up the article.
My strengths on InDesign are that I was able to do basic things like
adding a border and changing the font size, colour etc. In addition I have
learnt how to crop images on InDesign and move them around the page, and I was
able to put in a pull quote to make the article more conventional. The pictures
I used were relevant to the article as I got images of artists that were
mentioned in the article. I kept the background of the article white because
while I did research on different magazines I looked at specific RollingStone
articles layouts. The designs were kept simple with a white background so I
decided to make my article similar to the RollingStone articles.
However my weaknesses on
InDesign was not knowing how to add a second page without the first page being
misplaced, also I did not have the patience on InDesign while creating the article as the software was a bit confusing
and I had to meet the deadline. In the same way I was not good with layers on
InDesign because I ended up with many layers and it got muddled up and my text
looked packed on the page.
My web publishing skills were good because I was able to publish a
welcome note, a draft of the journalism and the final piece of the journalism
on my blog to show the work I have done in Media Studies AS.
The audience feedback was positive. One person said “I like the fact you have both sides of the
story and it is such a controversial subject to talk about.” I agree with this as I made
sure I had both sides if the argument in the article. Then the person said “I think there should be more colour on the
report and put the pictures of the artists respectively where they are
mentioned to make it look more professional” I agree with the
criticism that there should be more colour, but disagree because I did a similar layout to
RollingStone magazine article. I did this so my target audience was the same as
RollingStone magazine which is both genders. If I added more colour it wouldn’t
fit my target audience. I also disagree about moving the pictures near the
quotes of the artists because I wanted the pictures to be at the beginning of
the article so the audience can automatically see who’s being mentioned in the
article.
Another person said “it is a very interesting and informative article, I enjoyed reading it”
but then they said “i think it needs to be colourful in order to
attract people’s attention and try to change the layout next time so the text
doesn't look to crowded” again I agree about making the article more colourful, but I
disagree because I wanted to keep it sophisticated and not childlike. I agree
about changing the layout as it looks too crowded. This was a problem I had
when making the article.
For future projects I will consider using more
conventions of page layout and magazines like drop caps and clear margins and
columns, also to put more colour to attract the audience.
My targets for improvement
are to improve my journalistic and writing skills by using high lexis to make
the article more professional and legible. I will use a variety of language
devices such as puns and rhetorical or direct questions to keep the audience
engaged while reading. I will also try to use fewer layers on InDesign to make
the layout of future articles more organised to avoid making the article
crowded. Ultimately I will give more time
for planning when making articles in the future to organise the layout of the
article.
I got a grade B for the evaluation and my teacher said "overall this is well written and really reflects well on what you did and why, your strengths and weaknesses. Well done.
