Apologies For Apparent Pessimism

in reply to my previous post, I'd like to clarify that I am definitley not a glass half empty guy. I try to be much the opposite. It was just when i wrote my evaluation it was very spur of the moment - thinking about it more, there are positives that i have gained from the experience, mainly being the discovery of Newspaper Club. I think they're really doing a great thing, allowing avid writers and journalists to have their own publication. although archaic in it's choice of publication, i think it's very forward moving, more so than blogging - it's great knowing there are people that want to preserve the physical aspects of media e.g. newspapers, cds, vinyl, etc. If everything does become digitized life would be a very predictable and monotonous experience.
I believe a large part of the fun in media is the idea of collection - there is something about having many or all products from a particular company or practicioner that gives people a feeling of faith and respect which in term rewards them with a positive feeling of accomplishment.
although an overused example, Pokemon cards are a great way of describing this phenomenon - i've never actively tried to collect something as much as them. When i was young they were pretty much a currency of their own - if you had a good enough card you could probably trade it for someone's lunch.
I think that this avid follower behaviour is in everybody, and being able to get something that requires physical effort to aquire makes things so much more of a reward, thus being the reason why there are still big-time collectors of older mediums of publications - because they're rare, the quest to acquiring them is often very interesting and worth it, usually introducing the person to new things on the way.
In comparison to simply logging in to Blogger and checking your RSS feed, doing so requires zero effort. you might jump for joy at the release-date of Avatar on DVD but it wouldnt be anyway near as much fun as knowing the date will be released in next week's issue...
The hype that builds up to these things can sometimes only be created by forms other than the internet. as a newspaper doesnt update itself, you need to wait, and in that time that you're waiting, you get excited with anticipation - chances are, on the internet, if some page has advertised upcoming information on release dates, it would have been leaked elsewhere before, making users tension get pacified too early, dumbing down the interest and revisitability of a page.

So. This is why Newspaper club are definitely doing the right thing - although they're an interesting and unorthodox amalgamation of online "we-media" and offline physical media, it still works in a way that delivers users that priceless enthusiasm - i get the feeling that printing off your work in big batches and publicising them would acheive you far more success than using the internet. A: because there is'nt the maddening requirement of advanced HTML programming, And B: because it saves you spending a long, long time trying to gain recognition for your work over the net - instead, you can garantee that if the front cover is flashy enough, someone will definitley read it and possibly even be up for getting hold of the next issue...

Introducing me to Newspaper Club has opened a big new door to me, i definitely feel that i will be using their services again soon - this time for a personal project with no set brief but my own.

Proper Evaluation

how well does it meet your original intentions?

initially, my intentions were to have a newspaper with a true cultural feel - picking up on the most off-the-radar things out there - music, film, art, photography etc. but in the end, a lot of people wrote about things everyone already knew about (as mentioned by our teacher, Nick), for instance many people were up for just talking about Twitter, Facebook and Myspace - so many magazine have already talked about this. It's been done to death and everyone knows what they can be bothered to know. We could've have found some very cool things by pushing our research as much as possible - just through websites like Vice.com or even wikipedia you can skip constantly through hyperlinks always finding something new and un-covered by anyone else, taking you to new little blogs and other pages with a very cliquey following - if magazine like Mixmag, ID and Dazed can easily find out about things going on underground why cant we? we may not find any way near as many cool things but we'd definitely find some - i think we were trying not to voyage out of our comfort zone but most of the time that is very neccasary - if I do something like this again, i'll bare this in mind and make sure something i write about is completely fresh.

When I presented my ideas for a visual they were accepted with open arms. by the end, our magazine bore no resemblance to those intentions at all. I don't know what happened along the line to make it look so studenty. it must've been people overruling others - this seemed to happen a lot. not maliciously however, just by lack of communication (i'm guilty too) and people just seemed to forget what they had planned... Shame considering I was constantly told that i'd be doing the art direction too. In earlier posts I have documented visual styles that would attract our student demographic and fit with our media magazine/newspaper genre.

How does it look?

I think it looks poorly composed and generally shabby. it looks as though it has been created on Word. It was. But surely it shouldn't have been - i think we should have been taught how to use real layout software (which we had access too as well) and been made to stick to it. There is no colour cheme, no gradients, no changes in text color, hardly any regard to measurements/placements (spacing/padding/borders etc.) and that has created an un-ironic looking product that genuinely does look incomplete.

The logo could have been better - i think it was far too DIY and needed more professional flair, coming in different sizes for places among the magazine other than the front page. The exam tips at the bottom are completely un-noticeable. they should've been placed elsewhere - maybe across the page like a stand out quote..

Overall, if i was a student that this magazine was marketing to, i would not be motivated to read it. I probably would avoid picking it up, fearing the inevitable layout issues and odd/bland color scheme.

How pleased are you with your contributions?

I'm pleased i guess. I got people to actually take in what i was saying about layout and imagery and demographics/target audience etc - i think only a bit went in though, but i suppose that counts on some level.

Giving advice and proofing people articles was probably the biggest impact i had in the end and maybe helping to arrange where the articles went too. 

I was pleased with my article. It was fun trying to write something that forecasts things to come - it required a lot of research into new and up coming aspect of media e.g. practitioners, software, methods, conventions, etc...

How effectively do you think YOU worked in your role and others worked in theirs

I tried to write as best as possible to allow pretty much any reader to understand what the article was about - i had to scrap a lot to get it on one page but fortunately it was only a fairly small part. Doing so changed the overall meaning of the article though, meaning it needed to be renamed. Others worked well too - their articles could be narrowed down very easily due to the content - mine needed as much detail on conventions/eras as possible to paint the picture needed as it was all very visual.

What could be learned from this experience?

Dont swap a final film project for a newspaper one. HAHA joking!jfdkbne 

To be honest. I haven't learnt much. I wrote what i pretty much already knew and everything everyone else wrote I had a brief knowledge of too. As for layout I gave Adobe a go but no one wanted to use it so that was to no avail. I found out about some interesting looking authors on Zeitgeists and some great musicians and artists - however, left to my spare time it wouldnt have taken long to find them anyway, i'm frequently sourcing out new material for inspiration in my own artwork and film making, OR blog writing.

However I have also learnt about the vitality of communication and democracy in situations like this one so everyone gets a fair say - at first we all voted people into various groups but shortly after it seemed that our communication stopped and we weren't told when ideas put fourth were scrapped.

what had been learnt from previous experience?

• 
  
  Time management skills have increased 
  
• 
  
  Comunication skills have increased 
  
• 
  
  I have learnt about the structure of a newspaper company and also how to work more professionaly within a working enviroment 
  
• 
  
  I have also learnt how to get a product finished on time for a client

Everyone's assigned Jobs throughout the project

•Alex and Sam
email potential advertisers for the newspaper today

•Tim and James to work together
both doing wikipedia related articles

•Matt L
TV catch up article with tara

•Ash
Online video gaming

•Alie
Twitter article

•Philippa
How facebook affects social life

•Matt H
The audience move from Myspace to Facebook

•Hayden
Zeitgeist forecast

•Dave
Online gaming communities

•Loz
The evolution of music

•Alex
internet flash games article

•Sam
character profiles on Simon Panrucker and David Gauntlett

•Mike
continuing on blog feedback and reflection

composing the page order

Flat Planning (Extended project) from cmdiploma on Vimeo.
Here is a video / slide show along with the audio from the final flat planning session for our extended project (Newspaper - A2 media exam)
Audio recorded by: Kirk Kemp
Photos taken by: Kirk Kemp
Video by: Kirk Kemp

What I thought of the finished product...

the newspaper was a great idea, i believe it had real, true potential and we could've produced something great. however, instead of making our final FILM project, this is what was chosen to be done instead - this was very upsetting for me. I really wished that i could finish this course with a production left solely to me, unbound by brief, showing off all my creativity - I'd have used it alongside my marks and other films from the course to present as a sort of showreel. now i cant. i have to somehow impress whoever/wherever i aim to work with a newspaper - a pretty shoddy looking one too, showing off absolutely zero film making skill  (which is all i wanted to do in future) and only a minimal knowledge of layout creation - the layout was composed on pages with no default settings (an "autoshape" job).
I'd had sooo many ideas over the past 2 years of this course drafted up and blogged about for a final film production which i'd been hyping over the whole time and now it isn't happening - the only films i have to show are group productions without much personal input, or, unfinished ones.

Still. The stuff we covered wasn't bad. We all knew what we were talking about. Maybe we'll have a chance at getting a job in the local newspaper.

MediaMe Newspaper - finished product

Feedback Screen-grab Jenny Graham of Media Magazine

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