Research skills: I used many research sources for my piece of journalism and the most useful one was TorrentFreak. The reason being is because it gave pull quotes by 50 Cent, who was talking about file sharing and how it wasn’t a bad thing. Furthermore, it gave some unbiased information about file sharing, which kind of helped me have an open mind. There were also some websites that were not as useful as TorrentFreak, like GCDM because one, it’s got a really biased opinion on file sharing and two, it doesn’t have any examples /pull quotes from celebrities that have opinions on this subject, therefore, I thought it wasn’t a really useful source for my magazine page. Like I mentioned before, I got some pull quotes from 50 Cent, which was really helpful for my magazine page, as it clearly demonstrates why the artist supports people who does file sharing and, he also says it helps artists instead, because they are exposed to the audience more. In addition, the fact that 50 Cent supports this view illustrates that his point would be more valuable, as he is aware of what’s happening in the music industry and what the audience are doing.
Journalistic and writing skills: I have included many skills and good elements in my magazine page that has (in my opinion) made my work successful. I made my writing appeal to teenagers/ youngsters by using language that would make my work sound sophisticated as well as it being appropriate for my audience. My heading was a rhetorical question therefore, I thought it would catch the audiences’ attention quicker and make them think about the subject straight away, before even reading the text. I used third person for my journalism as I thought it would sound more professional and skilled. I used quotes from 50 Cent, which would make my piece of writing a lot more valuable and believable compared to ones that don’t have any quotes from an artist.
In Design skills: I think that, as it was my first time using In Design, I did a good job in meeting most of my criteria’s. For example, I have used columns to make my page look more like a magazine; I have used pull quotes from 5O Cent who is a very successful artist, giving his opinions on file sharing; I included a picture of 50 Cent which will make him identifiable to people who don’t know him (I didn’t forget the caption for the picture). I included a page number and the magazine logo ‘VIBE’ on the bottom right hand side of the page. I also used different font sizes for the heading, the sub-headings and for the actual text (making sure that the text was one colour and the sub-headings were another colour, so that it stood out). The font styles were big and bold enough for the audience to read, which also made my magazine page look more sophisticated.
Web publishing skills: Uploading my magazine page was very easy because all I had to do was to export the file and save it as a JPEG image. I realized that already, I have 65 views for my finished piece of journalism, which makes me very proud of my work. I haven’t got any comments yet for my work (on blogger) so one of my targets would be to get some comments from my friends and family.
Audience Feedback: I’ve had a few people commenting about my work to me and nearly everyone agrees that I have done a good job because I’ve included the skills I was talking about before. The fact that everyone pointed out my heading/ title and said that I’ve used a good style of font and size proves that I am good at laying out and presenting my work on In Design. Furthermore, they’ve mentioned that the colour scheme was good and that all of the fonts are readable. Some people have mentioned that, because 50 Cent was agreeing to the fact that file sharing is okay, it made my magazine page more powerful (as in valuable) because he is a well-known artist around the world. A lot of people also have changed their mind about file sharing because of my magazine page, which has made me proud as well. Some of these people now think that file sharing is not really a bad thing at all and that it shouldn’t be illegal. However, some people didn’t really like the way I was being biased about the whole thing, so next time I would keep in mind that I shouldn’t be that biased.
4 targets for improvement:
- Get some comments from friends and family on blogger
- Not to make my piece of writing so biased
- Maybe choose a better colour scheme because it doesn’t look that sophisticated
- Make my language (Lexis) appeal to a wider range of audience
