Factual Writing Copy Evaluation

Shania Carter

Fanzine

This is my favorite piece of work, I worked really hard on this and concentrated thoroughly to make sure my product and writing copy was of a professional standard. If I was to choose between the product and the writing copy I would say the product because it is more realistic and is the one I worked the hardest on. I have written articles like this as I am a Liverpool blogger so it was fairly easy to write in this style, although I still made improvements as some of the paragraphs were jumping around.

I tended to slip into a tangent where I wrote solely for my audience if I was to put my article on social media and therefore forgot who it was being marked by and in hindsight some of it wasn’t understandable to my peers. From a product point of view I didn’t have to write lengthy paragraphs so it was easier to put my audience into images and phrases.

After putting this article on social media, I got some incredible feedback, some stating that this is their favorite article of mine and that it was the best article they had read of anyone’s. It also allowed my followers to create discussions for themselves e.g. what was the biggest reason for the failing of last season.

After getting feedback of my article, it was well structured and although my peers don’t like football as much as me they found it humorous and interesting.

Product wise, this is the strongest thing I have created on in Design as I followed the structure to some existing Liverpool fanzines and then threw my own article, pictures, font and phrases into it. I think that the different fonts running through the page are the strongest point of the fanzine as it doesn’t look dull and shows me some versatility.

I decided to go with a big phrase on the cover as it draws attention to the centre of the page, there I can include the main story and it already has the attention of the reader.

Time management: For the writing side of things we had a week or so to write up and plan. I managed this well as it didn’t take me long to think of a ‘story’ and all the other paragraphs I wanted to include. This writing was similar to what I have done before so my first draft was finished quite quickly, this was a good thing because then I could improve and get feedback which could develop it even further as it wasn’t really a piece that made sense to others. Part of the reasons why I think this was a speedy written piece is because it was informal and I could write in a chatty manner, which was easier for me, it made sense to me and I knew exactly what I wanted to write about because I knew it all. In the product part we had a week and a bit to create the layouts, this took me the majority of the full week because I couldn’t find a design that worked to suit my ideas and what would compliment the article. Looking back at my research into fan fics I found that following a similar structure sped up my design work and I was able to find good fonts and work at a quicker pace to insert pictures. Sometimes I spend too long mulling over what wording I should use when it doesn’t really matter that much, that slows me down sometimes.

Throughout the writing of my work I didn’t really review how I was getting along until the end of each draft. I kept re reading the paragraphs to make sure what I was saying made sense and that I was being factually correct and witty – which was my aim. I don’t think not reviewing my work has had any impact on my overall fanzine piece because I feel that this is my best work and I had enough peer and tutor feedback to concentrate on this piece. I half did an assessment on how I could make sure that it stayed in the same tense and that I was always keeping in the same tone – e.g. it couldn’t go really serious in the middle and then end with a joke. Product wise I kept putting my fanzine into a preview so that I could check how it looked without the boxes, this was easier reviewing my work as I could see what worked and what didn’t and then correct the sizes of boxes. My assessment during production was quite critical but also I was getting frustrated that nothing was working until I found my style and planned the pictures and design.

From a technical standpoint I haven’t done anything different to anything I have done before. I created a similar article when doing the Page Layout unit alongside recipe cards and after reminding myself of the tools it was easy to create. On Photoshop it was more of the same too, I have resized images before. Using the images for my fanzine were sourced from the internet, and weren’t particularly that high quality even though they were resized to the box size. Despite not having outstanding technical qualities, I think that this piece of mine is close to professional standard and would sell if it was sold at a football game. One of the existing pieces of work that I can compare mine to is the Liverpool Way it is one of the best selling Liverpool fanzine’s and acquires design work as well as jokes and witty articles. I haven’t copied this but feel like my style of writing and design work is definitely on par and I don’t think I could do anymore to it to make it better, except maybe add a higher quality image and fill up the blank space around the masthead, although I like it like that.

This was the first out of the many articles I wrote and I think this came with the most creative competencies. Creatively I got to explore the language between football fans more and implement that in my work, I also got to use my tone and style in my work which I never get the chance to do in class. More the language side than the article itself is what I found more creatively interesting as that’s what makes it easier to write. From the written work I think that my creative ability has been good as I have been informal and formal and used different audiences to inspire my work. Productively this has been my most creative piece as I have been working more in Photoshop and making sure that my work there was the best to go on the fanzine. I also got to design most of the fanzine with the color scheme which mainly involved the color red, black and yellow as these are the colors for the kits. Deciding on the fonts was also a creative factor as I had to see what looked right and what style of font would also appeal on a sport magazine/fanzine. Luckily these created a good flow and didn’t look odd for the different titles.

Interview

This part of the writing copy for me was one I got on with pretty quickly. I felt that this part e.g. getting the answers was fairly easy as I knew a lot of people through Twitter and Facebook that were Liverpool fans and could answer my questionnaire. Social media was my biggest influence in getting detailed and personal responses because I knew that I would get some responses quickly and then choose the best ones.

I have previous experience of writing up an interview but this has been different by having multiple answers and by asking a numerous amount of people through a survey. Although it was easy collecting the answers, the layout was a struggle as I didn’t want it to run over two pages like a story or previous tasks. I also had too many answers to put underneath the questions and had to shorten this part. I also found it simple to put an introductory paragraph by looking at existing examples from my Liverpool magazine.

This is something I didn’t put on social media so I couldn’t get any feedback from there. From peers though I got the comments that it was a good simple question and answer and that I could improve it by extending the answers and setting the questions within the paragraphs instead of it being so structured.

I decided to set the interview around recent events and it was the perfect opportunity as Gerrard had retired from the England squad this summer. The questions were primarily aimed at Liverpool fans specifically rather than football fans in general, so maybe my questions should have been more open and a mixture of responses would have made the interview better in trying out different ways to write it. I pictured my interview going in a Liverpool magazine like the one I researched from rather than a normal sports/football magazine and I don’t think that this is a bad thing that I got carried away although I could have changed my audience, it felt better carrying on writing for the same audience and carrying a similar manner to the fanzine because I know so many Liverpool fans.

For my time management for this writing task I don’t think I did as well as I did on the last one because I didn’t get time to complete a second draft. I had a week to complete this task, I also waited out the week for all the answers to come through on twitter, Facebook and survey monkey which distracted me from paying attention to the answers I already had and making something out of them. When I had finished the introductory paragraph it was hard to find a way where I could include the best answers and fit it all onto one page, it was harder than it sounded. As I didn’t really plan this task it required more thought, there isn’t many reasons why I didn’t get this finished on time – maybe I thought it would be easy like the last task and decided to pace myself more. I think I should have made time for a second draft because I think it could have pushed my grade up more and made it a bit easier for myself to let the writing flow. The interview isn’t very long which makes it harder to write about and I spaced myself out too much which has then had a bad impact on the finished article. I slow myself down too much when I think that I have an easy task ahead which isn’t the case and that also impacts my work. This is one thing I will take into consideration for my next task.

I constantly kept reviewing this task throughout and thought this was the best thing to do as it was totally different to the fanzine entry. I didn’t do this to the last task and I think I was right to asses this one during the write up because I needed to make sure that I was doing it right and that I was getting it to the proper standard. This was also my opportunity to sit and think about the things that worked and the things that didn’t. Although the primary research was straightforward, I had to review that I was also sticking to the brief and get on with the task even though I was struggling. I wasn’t the only one assessing my work as my peers were telling me things along the way of how to put a tone to the writing in and to look at the fanzine to see if there was anything I could include regarding the questions and the paragraphs in between.

I didn’t use any images in this piece of work so that is something I can’t comment on. From a writing technical side I think that I have produced good work but not one that is professional. The technical bits of writing that I think let me down is the way I approached the questions as I wasn’t open enough and I didn’t take the time to arrange the questions. I think that one way to improve this is by looking at the questions again and thinking about how I could re word them and make sure that they fit a different audience, I could then change the paragraphs to make it suitable for other magazines. If I could compare it to the researched products I would say that it is not up to that standard and I don’t think I have worked as hard or pushed myself as much as I did in the fanzine task and I could have developed this further by adding images and extended answers in bigger paragraphs. Some of the answers I got from the questions were quite short so I still think that it was the questions that were the let down on the way that I wrote this out. I also wouldn’t want to contradict myself in this part by saying that the research part was a breeze whilst the rest wasn’t but that is the truth and the research side of things was better than my writing this time.

I think that the only way my creativity was shown was by throwing myself into the research and getting responses from all corners of the internet. I think I also had to be creative when putting myself into a journalists shoes and not being the fanzine type again. In this written task I haven’t been as creative as previous, as I have stuck to one style I have liked – mainly because the production and the written work alongside it was some of my strongest work and the one I was best pleased with. This was a good chance for me to get creative and properly equal with existing products to match up with their standards the whole way through. My favorite question was the criticise one as I got so many different responses and ones that were opinionated too. If I hadn’t been bad at planning out this interview I could have included more answers and taken the time to develop them to see what different formats the interview could have taken. I think that my wording has pretty much stayed the same too although I have got a bit more formal it would have been easier to stick to the same register all the way through.

ObituaryAlthough writing this was quite morbid I actually enjoyed writing this from a different point of view. Although it was weird to picture writing about Gerrard being dead it was interesting to explore the different styles in which obituary’s were written – example Gary Speed’s obituary. I also got to talk about Gerrard’s life story and re research the bits of his life that were the most significant and how I could portray them without being the ‘crazy fan’. In some parts it was quite hard trying to not make the paragraphs jump around as there was so much that I wanted to say that didn’t follow each paragraph correctly. In a weird way it also made you appreciate why you like your celebrity and why you chose to write about them because you couldn’t imagine them being gone. Alongside the fanzine this has to be my second favorite piece, especially in the formal way that I wrote it, I used a lot of big words to try and big it up, although some of it wasn’t that necessary.

It was hard not to elaborate on certain points of his career as I didn’t want to dip out of the professional style I was using. I tried to not make the article jumpy and tried to talk about his life events in order although the main points of his career are at the beginning whereas the points where he first started at the club etc are towards the end. I think that this was a good way of doing it because the best parts of his career are what people talk about first.

This was also one of the hardest things to write because it was writing in the past tense and it has to describe something when that person is still alive. But also it was good to highlight some parts of his early career that some people may have forgotten, like the early trials and how he almost didn’t join Liverpool. I decided to use some big words as I thought that if I was to be formal the bigger words will fill that space and it is also nicer to use words like that to compliment someone or appreciate them. In hindsight I don’t think I have done too bad with this piece, I made a joke that it would be emotional writing this – it wasn’t. I also added a quote at the bottom, it was a legit quote but I just had to change the odd word to make it sound like he had passed.

For this particular task I didn’t get it completed in the time frame, perhaps I was being too lazy and relaxed about it, thinking I could get it done quickly. It was quite a short task and compared to the others it shouldn’t have been so hard to complete in the time that we had. After reading Gary Speed’s obituary it seemed pretty straight forward in the way his career was talked about and the length of paragraphs there were. It helped me by looking at a similar football obituary to understand how to make the importance of someone sound so professional, I got the first few paragraphs written quite quickly as there was a lot to be said especially as I was focusing on recent parts and the best parts of his career. It was also easy to get off to a quick start because I know so much about him, although then trying to find bits to put in afterwards was a slow process as there was so much to cram in.

This was a piece that I didn’t review on and I don’t have a reason why I just didn’t asses what were my good points throughout the article and the bad ones too I got on with it. As I knew what I was working with and had researched this well this was my quick start. I think that I should have reviewed my piece towards the end because that’s when I was struggling to think of ways I could carry on the same flow. If I had assessed my previous projects I think that they would have been better with another draft and that they would be more professional. If I’m honest the only only reviewed on was the fanzine because I was so passionate in getting that right and the others I wasn’t so convinced about. Comparing this to my interview I think that this is much better as maybe I am back in my writing comfort zone.

For this obituary I haven’t used any new tools but for writing I feel that I was in my comfort zone as I like writing in big paragraphs and also one person or subject rather than numerous things at one time. The existing work I used to help me with this obituary is former footballer Gary Speed. In ways he had a lot in common with Gerrard career wise and the things that he achieved. As his life was based around football this made it easier to compare the two people –especially as I didn’t follow Speed in his career. If I was to compare my obituary to the one written on The Guardian I would say that mine was similar because of the layout but I have included all the moments that an obituary would have. Although I am not a proper journalist I still feel like this is a professional standard and my writing has got better over this project.

I don’t feel like I have been creative with this piece because it isn’t one I could experiment with the language or the register. I think the most of my creative ability has come from how to put the best parts of Gerrard’s career into the right sentences and not write from a fan perspective. I also think that the first three paragraphs show my good creative ability, as they were my introductory paragraphs and didn’t really relate to any significant points until the middle of the article. The quote that I used was in the present tense and I had to make it sound like it was a memorial quote which did have to show off my creative skills as I had to change some of the words around but not make up a quote – which was fairly simple to do. The main creative ability that I think showed in this obituary are in the main paragraphs as they carry the same level of professionalism and also I had to think of sentence starters for each paragraph to not be repetitive. Not being repetitive was also quite hard i.e. not starting a new line with he or Gerrard. You have to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and forget that you are a fan or that you know the celebrity really well because you are just talking about the career highlights – celebrating that persons life.

Tabloid

The tabloid article was another tricky one to write because you don’t know whether you’re going to be too informal or formal. Writing for an audience of a social grade C you can’t use some of the words you did for previous tasks as you have to keep the language simple. I used the same quotes from Gerrard, Ian Ayre and Brendan Rodgers from the promotional article as I was writing about the same thing.

It was important to get the who what where and how in the beginning as that is what a regular tabloid starts their stories off with. Considering this is for sport it was tricky to find a good tabloid that I could focus on especially as I didn’t have the copy with me. A lot of tabloid sport readers will be familiar with who Gerrard is because he is talked about a lot in newspapers so I could include phrases like ‘Kop Skipper’ and his surname rather than his full name. I did look at tabloid articles online where Gerrard has signed previous contracts and this was a help in what to base my introductory paragraph on and how to word the other paragraphs around it.

The tabloid article is also quite short and there is not a double spread unless it is a really big story or a preview of a game. I think that this is a decent amount of writing if it was to appear in a tabloid. Apart from it being tricky in the formal register it was easy to work out what to write about as the most important bits were at the beginning. I didn’t ramble on as the whole article makes sense I think that it was better to have a quote in the middle because it breaks the article up and is a different tone to the rest of the tabloid. Once I had started writing it was easy to sit into the register and just freely write, I also tried to be humorous as it is not a serious issue and also I feel comfortable writing like that as that’s just how my writing works. I tried not to rush into the quotes too because they wouldn’t be meaningful without the right paragraphs and a line or two between them keeps a keen structure and doesn’t go off into a tangent which I normally do. Some of Gerrard’s past career highlights are also included as it is important to remember why he has signed the contract and to elaborate on some of the points helps keep the article growing and also you can get more said. Adding an extra bit near the end is what keeps people reading as they are getting two stories in one and get more background information although it is only a short bit of it. I didn’t jump paragraphs in this one which I was afraid of doing before because I knew I had to keep it in an order and I was looking back at the researched tabloids to make sure I was doing it right.

My time management for this writing task wasn’t great again because I also felt lazy on this one and because we were coming to the end of the writing tasks as ever I thought it would be easy – nor is this justifiable for the lack of effort. Although some of the paragraphs were easy to write up I wasted my time re reading them rather than finding a way I could get the extra paragraphs to a right length and or include the right information. The time management throughout this project has gone up and down –when the research was done up until the writing tasks I was getting things handed in on time and was wanting to add more, whereas this time it has taken me longer to find certain words to include and write out of my comfort zone at certain times. I aimed to complete the work in the shortest time as possible so I could get another draft in and improve it to the standard of some of my other work, I still compare others to my fanzine as I feel the standard has dropped. I can say that I have been writing out of my comfort zone but this project was supposed to do that although I haven’t improved.

As I mentioned earlier I kept re reading parts of the article which slowed me down and although I did review throughout it happened to slow me down which I see as a bad thing. Reviewing my work seem to have become a problem towards the end of the project, I wasn’t becoming bored with the writing tasks I was wanting to improve it there and then rather then at the end and work towards a second draft. In a way this work was similar to the fanzine as you could include some informal language and picking out this part is where I think you can asses the work I have produced. As I had used the quotes previously it wasn’t necessary to review myself on these – there wasn’t much reviewing on this so it is hard to comment. To make it better I would have reviewed this with my tutor for a second draft and also looked at my other work for a comparison- I think this would have helped early on by comparing previous work as then I would have made this a lot better and chosen better quotes or paragraphs. The audience review also kept me going because I had to remember who I was writing for and about who this is where I think it was acceptable to add in the slight humor as tabloids are never normally serious at the best of times.

The technical aspects of my work include the main body of the text because this is also where most of my creative ability fits in. To use existing products in comparison I would use the story in The Mirror when it was written about Gerrard signing his previous contract extension. As it was a web version there wasn’t much on the article itself and only about three paragraphs to compare to the one I produced. I think because I was writing for a different audience and a different setting i.e. not the website that I had to include more and expand on some of the things to fill the space that would be in a newspaper. The quotes that I used were from the Mirror’s website article so that is a similar comparison to make, a major difference is the layout the small details could include the way that the paragraphs are laid out or that there is no pictures. For this particular writing task I wanted to focus on the print rather than worrying about a picture. I didn’t space my paragraphs out in this one because I wanted to see what it would look like in a standard tabloid/newspaper style. I also created a layout to go alongside this particular piece, as I thought it would be fitting with the way the article is written. For my product I didn’t do anything different technical wise than I have before so its hard to comment, I used a lot of different fonts to the fanzine although I think one or two were the same. I don’t think I will be able to replicate what I did with the fanzine as I pretty channeled everything into that.

I am going to concentrate on my product for the creative ability. I followed a similar layout to The Mirror’s front page with the positioning of the masthead and so on. As I am focusing on Steven Gerrard I decided to make the tabloid cover all Liverpool related with a side story to former player Luis Suarez who I wrote a little about in my fanzine entry. Again, with the color scheme I wasn’t totally imaginative because I used the colors of the kits, red, black and yellow – it is a style I feel comfortable using and one that works on anything e.g. my fanzine cover. Some of my creative ability also comes from the fonts, I thought that I could use the fonts to compliment the story like a Broadway font to show off the ‘Dazzling New Contract’. I also went into Photoshop to create some of the side stories like putting a caption on an image. The image quality was better after saving it as a JPEG.

Promotional I wrote this piece when Liverpool were actually on the cusp of offering Gerrard a new contract. I was back to writing in a formal manner and I was enjoying it actually I think this was also because I was using quotes alongside it. I have seen so much of this type of writing as footballers are signing contracts all the time so I have a pretty good idea. Also with this being sports related it was easier to find quotes and find things to talk about especially as Gerrard has been at the club for so long. It was also quite simple to make the first two paragraphs up because the who what where how and why, were written straight away. I think that the quotes were also a major part of how the whole piece came together because it breaks the text up without being a pull quote. I also think that the ending looks like it has been cut short as it just finishes talking about the Premier League trophy. I guess this could also be classed as a good thing because it leaves a cliffhanger as to will he/won’t he get the Premier League before this contract runs out. The article also goes in reverse order because the beginning of his career is at the end this was mainly to put all the important information first – this is what existing work is like.

This was an article I sent to my peers on social media and they loved it again. Although this was different to the fanzine the feedback was much the same many hoping that the contract was real. None the less it was still nice to get some more positive feedback i.e. “your writing is very professional.” My wording is also similar to the obituary – I used the online thesaurus to look at potential words as I didn’t want to be informal but then use words that people wouldn’t understand. I also got told that this was a good solid piece of work and from my own point of view I could see this as if it was an actual journalist piece. For a promotional piece I think its important to include as much of the celebrity as possible and show the emotion of what the album/contract means to them. A lot of people refer to him as just Gerrard so it was appropriate to use that throughout the majority of the paragraphs. I was also taught not to use surnames if you haven’t already introduced the person so I made sure that every ‘character’ was listed. The quotes are recycled from last year and they were fitting because it was the same instance signing the contract.

For the time that we had for this I managed it well and got the article written on time and didn’t feel like I needed to do a second draft. I’m thinking that because I knew what I was writing about and had the structure in my head I felt more relaxed at getting this one right and or better than the previous ones. The only major factor that was the difference between the others is that I knew for certain what I was writing about and what bits you should and shouldn’t do like ramble on. It is also better to write all the important stuff at the beginning as you have everything you want to say there and then and then you can continue with the paragraphs you feel fit in properly. Also with this it was a case of short and sweet paragraphs to get a message across and this didn’t take much time as I had already done something similar with the tabloid article. I connect with a lot of Liverpool fans and I felt like I was writing for them so it was kind of important to understand and portray the emotion from the quotes of Gerrard.

This work was a review in progress, it sounds stupid but I was unsure whether to act as the club because I was writing on their behalf which I didn’t really want to do or used to doing. Despite that, after each paragraph I kept checking what I said was what I wanted and that it made sense, I didn’t check that my other paragraphs made sense in the fanzine because they made sense to me but not if I was to present it to other people. I said before that this was another work that I was proud of because I have researched it previously – before this project and this helped a lot because I could compare it during. I wasn’t comparing it to what Liverpool F.C had written but what I had written when a player had signed a contract so that I could be critical of myself and then put it on social media where people can be critical of me. It was straightforward to write after all the blogging I had done however I also needed a review from my tutor which helped boost my confidence along the way to create a good piece of work. I think that because I had produced good work before it had spurred me on to keep up the standard outside and in the project. With the fanzine it was something to compare it to as sometimes your first work can be good or bad.

For the technical side of things I don’t think that much has changed from my previous work and because it has a more formal register it is easier to look alongside my obituary to see if there is any difference within the way it is written. I also don’t think that there was a big thought process into this writing as some of the paragraphs were similar to what I had written in the tabloid and I sort of copied that style to this one which reminded me of how to keep the paragraphs flowing and have them in an order because you can’t have them jumping around when there is something as important as a press release. I did add a picture to this press release and added it as it would appear on a website mainly from what I’ve seen on the Liverpool website. This was quite simple to do as I just added some shading and blurring in Photoshop, as there isn’t pages of information it would have looked silly having a picture somewhere in the middle as it just flows through nicely with the short paragraphs. For the image I really wanted to emphasize the You’ll Never Walk Alone as it speaks a lot of words to people and because the so called contract would appeal and speak to a lot of people it made sense to have the Liverpool motto included and it also includes the fans.

The creative part of this work has to be the work on Photoshop as I didn’t really do anything impressive. I chose the gates to show the message as you walk through the gates to enter the ground it is a poignant message that most Liverpool fans use in their daily lives and the audience obviously wants to be a major part of everything to do with the club and the player that has been there the longest. This project as a whole has been about creative writing and overall I feel like this hasn’t been my most creative piece because I have written like this over and over so it sunk in that there was a same strategy to writing and how you could use the audience to inspire your work and make it better time and time again. As I didn’t do a second draft this is the raw product and I am happy with it, not because it is extravagant in creative terms but because it shows off that I can do a range of writing in different registers and when improved, my work definitely improves and you can see a difference. Sometimes it takes me once or twice to get something I’m happy with and there is sometimes a time where the simple things like changing a few paragraphs around can make the reading different too, I did this in the fanzine and it made the feedback better from my peers and so on which made me feel better about the next task.

Fanzine – Finished ProductFor this task I set out to achieve something that would connect with the fans and be myself so that it would have the feel and look of an actual fanzine. As I have said throughout this has been my favorite piece to make because I could write as me not someone acting and not someone pretending to be a journalist. My intentions were to create something that was unique and would excite the fans, make them laugh but highlight certain points, because this was something I wanted to put on social media and get a good reaction from there too as well as being happy with it myself. I would say that my product is better than my writing because the design work is something that you look at first and then decide if you want to read what’s inside. The specific details that I like about the product are the fonts, I think that they work well with the theme of the fanzine i.e. edgy. The fonts also don’t clash and work with the color scheme, some of the fonts also represent what each of the parts are saying, the fonts are used for different purposes and readers will pay attention because it’s not all just one tone. I wanted to emulate that this was all about Liverpool through the years and celebrating how great the club still is, this is why I used a picture of Gerrard from 2008 and the club badge from around the 1970’s which was fitting with my written work because you want the design work to lead you on and remind you why you support the club.

The audience for the fanzine was the fans of your chosen celebrity. I had connected with these fans before on social media so I felt that I had a stage set for me. To feel included in your audience you have to be part of the audience, from social media people see me as the most humorous person and therefore if I channel that my writing will compliment my personality. You also have to not pretend to be someone you are not, if people read your words as if you are chatting to them normally 9 times out of 10 they will sit and read it. The audience has been a major influence in this because in sport without the fans there is nothing. With the context in what I am writing in you have to fully understand your audience and makes sure that comes across in your design work too, this was similar in Critical Approaches, if you didn’t know what your audience liked and disliked there was no point in writing/making your product.

Most of the content for the fanzine includes moderately long paragraphs filled with puns and the odd joke. The fanzine also also has a mix of my personality and facts to make it accurate. The stock image I used was from the BBC Sport website, I decided to only use the one picture because I didn’t feel there was a need to have many images dotted around. I decided to use an image where Gerrard was playing because the majority of what I talk about is him in play. The picture of Gerrard also has a look of frustration and or determination you can take it how you want to. There was a few issues in finding the right picture because some websites took you off to different articles or the picture was too blurry to use, when running out of time on the fanzine it became a struggle because I needed something that would break up the text –although the tone of the writing was relaxed, there was also a lot in the paragraphs and you would need a breather. There are a lot of different styles in my work and some of them represent my personality where others test my journalist skills like the obituary and tabloid. I have always compared my fanzine piece to the rest of my work because I felt that it included the majority of my writing skills but also I had to set it out like a journalist would so there was a mix.

Comparing my fanzine with an original product I would have to look at all the sports fanzines, some of the fanzines that I looked at are from the 80’s in the significant times for football, as these date back it is harder to compare the writing. I wouldn’t say my writing is eccentric but it is quite crazy and I had to tame myself in terms of remembering my audience and who else was reading it. I did forget about the professional practice part as I was in my zone, much like if I was writing for my blog, because it wasn’t anyone from the sporting world reading it I wrote things that other people wouldn’t understand, in a way I was being quite selfish because I thought of myself as only I would be re reading this and not tutors or peers. I have used some writing skills as I have had to amend my language and compromise having to take some paragraphs out, one of the main writing skills for this piece was having control, otherwise I would have written way over the limit, by changing paragraphs around and cutting some out I could see clearly what I was writing and whether what I was going to write would work or get boring, probably the latter.

For the production part I had to use In Design again, I had to transfer the skills I has used before for the page layout unit, some of which I had forgotten. Once I had learnt the art of inserting pictures again and resizing in Photoshop the more layouts I tried the faster I got. Some of the production was a little frustrating because I couldn’t find a layout that suited my work and it was annoying me that I had to flick between the two software’s to finally achieve getting the picture to the box size. When writing the height and width and putting it in Photoshop, the measurements kept changing and the picture went way out of proportion to the extent of being blurry which didn’t feel right going into my product. With the fanzine cover I think that choosing the right fonts also helped compliment the design work. As the color scheme was predominantly red it was easy to do the masthead and having a tabloid beside me to compare the style also helped. Mostly some of the skills were just getting things into place and getting the right sizes which did take some patience because you either moved it too far or too close. Those aren’t big skills but ones that require the effort to make sure it is right.

The improvements that I think need to be made for the fanzine is firstly the writing, hindsight is a good thing and realizing upon that, that maybe I should have written it a bit smoother because it does come across a little jumpy and random in the way I start it. To improve this I think having a more specific introduction would have been appropriate - to also explain how the article is written so people can get a feel of my input before they read it. Online articles that have fan inputs don’t tend to mellow their way round things like I do although if I had just said it how is then the article would have been written in merely a few sentences so to compare to existing articles I think I did the right thing in setting it out longer but for my own improvements that is one of the priorities. On the design side of the fanzine there is a lot of white space especially on the masthead, as you can only fill it with so much it was hard not to over crowd it too as I already had the badge and price on there. For an improvement I would maybe add a faded picture of Gerrard into the background to fill the space, on one of the fanzines that I researched it had a banner of former players faded into the background which looked really effective alongside the bold writing and the main body. In comparison to this and my own work I think that I should have paid more attention to the ones that I researched to further outdo myself and make the design work better than some of the professional longstanding fanzines. The other improvement I would make is at the time I thought I was being funny however reading it now makes me cringe because even though the facts are in there, there are some things that needed not to be said because it’s not really professional nor does it make the article any better. For improvements on this I would make sure that I re read what I say and take time to question whether I should actually put that in, I think I wrote like this based on my audience on social media and what they know is my personality however this piece was about the fans so that’s what I opted for. These are quite minor improvements to be made but they could end up really boosting my end grade and or definitely copying professional standard.

Interview – Finished Product

My intentions from the start of this was to create a simple question and answer that could be printed in the side of a sports magazine like a quick read rather than over one big page. From the answers that I collected I wanted to put the most detailed ones in to elucidate the fans which is what the interview purpose was. I also wanted to make this one more professional so I could show my writing skills more clearly and get a head start for the articles ahead. I was expecting to achieve a longer interview with more answers to each question but it was found to be easier just having a few which also broke it down more which wasn’t a bad move.

The audience for this piece again is the fans and other football fans if the interview was to be put in a sports magazine. It was fairly straightforward to write for the audience because I could be more formal which was better in creating a flow in the piece rather than trying to be humorous. I think that I couldn’t be too specific with the audience in this one because it was a structured question and answer which seems quite bog standard however when you delve into the audience properly there will be people my age and older that would be reading the interview so in that respect I don’t see the harm in doing it like that. The audience wasn’t the main vocal point in this one as I just wanted to concentrate on the improvements from the fanzine i.e. having a proper introduction. Sometimes the audience can have a big influence on your work and other times you have to keep them in your mind but focus on the writing first.

The content I gathered for this copy is via my own knowledge, the other side of the content is the fans responses. I decided not to use any photographs, which would have been stock images because I didn’t have time to finish off the piece and also positioning the photograph would have been tricky due to the layout of the copy as it is written out in a similar style to a tabloid. The problems that I came across the most was trying to find an appropriate answer to put into the final piece, some of the responses were from other football fans, so the other side of my problem was my questions being too open for Liverpool fans, the responses from other football fans were quite harsh and the solution of that would have been not to answer the questionnaire as every other answer was no.

The overall style of this piece is pretty standard, there are different variations to show an interview and I have gone for the typical question and answer. The style of the other pieces is pretty much the same as there is nothing fancy. This piece also doesn’t go into too much depth like other pieces e.g. the fanzine or the promotional written work. This type of question and answer doesn’t require a lot of detail which is why I think that a standard view isn’t so bad especially when thinking back to the audience and the intention of the structure. Comparing this to existing work this is more like one of the quick question and answer sessions you see, an example of existing work like this is in football magazine Match Of The Day where mini interviews are conducted and shown at the side of a page. Based on existing products I think that this piece is an easy comparison because I have seen it and know there have been many versions of what I’m talking about. Professional practice also includes stock images and photographs normally at the top of the interview to show you who the interview is about the images used are also aid for the audience especially the young audience if they have only seen the player in the football strip.

The majority of existing sports interviews include the answers with the questions so it is not a typical question and answer layout. My interview has lots of little short answers because the fans have answered the questions whereas when you see sports interviews on websites it is normally just between the interviewer and the sports star. Comparing my work to this, my work is only a little different because of the layout and because the audience was slightly different as the fans sort of ran the questionnaire. When basing a comparison on this type of work, most of the existing work does not have fan involvement. The way I have laid mine out is the best way because I had to show the name of the fans and the question they had answered. The questions are also a lot different compared to the ones looked at in research as they are based on fan responses as it would be near impossible to sit and interview Steven Gerrard. The language between my work and existing work is also quite different because the existing work has more of an informal register, probably because it is more personal hence one to one.

The production part of this work didn’t require any physical technical abilities as I just wrote this piece. The writing side of production had to be well thought out and structured, a bit like working out the layout. The writing was fairly short but there was still ten questions included in the interview. As the tasks have been ongoing there hasn’t really been any problem with the end product it is just getting started on trying to get a good head start. It was sometimes a little tricky however to write in a different register, e.g. in some of the work I was able to elaborate on the points made, I think it was also hard not to include my own opinion or write in the order I had been used to in previous tasks because there was a structure. Also from the writing technical point of view, from the previous tasks I could pull out any improvements and use them in this piece i.e. introductory paragraphs.

The improvements made to this piece is firstly introducing a new layout which is mixing the interview questions along with the answers, this would require further research into this type of article style but also into the field of mine and find something similar in sports terms. The second improvement I can think about is improving the register, there was times that I felt that I was switching registers, in the introductory paragraphs I was using a few more bigger words and then towards the questions it switched towards a chatty tone. At times I get the feeling the question and answers are too short and blunt, I think for an improvement the questions could’ve been more open to allow longer answers which would have made the whole interview longer too. The last paragraph rounds off the interview pretty nicely as it concludes everything that has been said. If there was an improvement in the final parts of the interview I would say there should have been a more concluding final question and or add a few more answers as it just shows one at the moment. In the interview I whittled the questions down from 10 to 6, this seemed a good idea at the time because there wasn’t many good responses I could’ve included and they didn’t really explain much, in hindsight this makes room for an improvement as I could edit some questions on survey monkey and get more responses that way, I could also get more responses by branching out from Liverpool fans into the wider football community. I think I should have also used social media a little bit more because the work I produced was based on the responses of survey monkey only, this may have been easier trying to get a couple more solid answers so that I didn’t have to write so much around it. The only thing that I think lets the answer part down is only having one part answers and also not structuring them in a way that is more flowing. The main reason I decided to do the question and answer is this type of way is because I had written a lot of more paragraph type pieces, with this there are more points of development and ways to improve the overall tone etc. still keeping the same questions and answers. I think my tone was fairly reasonable in the manner that I wasn’t entirely bias as I just wrote down the key points in his career that would be used in any interview.

Obituary – Finished ProductThe intentions for this particular obituary was to just celebrate the life of the celebrity and highlight the prestigious moments of his career. Writing an obituary from a personal point of view I wanted to make sure that I had written in a good enough manner and had written in everything in his career that people would remember him for as I would remember him. My other intention was to create something that could have potentially happened in the future i.e. lifting the Premier League trophy because his death will obviously be someway in the future. Tying in with the first intention I didn’t want anything to be morbid about it like involving the actual scenario of death as I feel that would change the meaning of the obituary altogether however you had to mention that he had died. My other intention was to raise the tone of the writing and not exactly have posh words but including bigger words to show off his career it was also to show how much of a high profile persona he was.

The audience for this writing is the fans but also to the wider football community as he was also an England footballer. After researching quite thoroughly on specifically footballers obituaries it was then easier than I thought writing in a non bias way as I was just writing out his career. Like the other pieces the audience didn’t really have an influential effect as I wasn’t really directly writing for them or to them I was writing for every football fan. There isn’t a gender or demographic specific for this piece like you would expect for newspapers. In other pieces in this project the audience was projected more as it also accompanied a platform like a magazine or a fanzine etc. whereas this could appear in a lot of places so you have to get the audience right and the writing accessible so that everyone can read it.

All of the content is my through my own knowledge apart from the quote that I took from the Liverpool website and tweaked because it is an obituary. I should have added a picture in however the way I wanted to write which was very formal I didn’t really feel that it was helpful. The photograph would have also been a stock image and therefore it would have been tricky to find a good quality image that reflects the good quality of work. The content is also fairly formal because it is not a piece of writing people are familiar with when writing it or reading. The content of knowledge I had gathered over the years had helped me when writing this because I knew where his most significant events would fit in and didn’t have to go back and research what he had already won etc. The content is also not much different to what you would see in a magazine, however the use of the words in the copy makes it that bit different. The only major problem I came across when writing this was making it too similar to existing obituaries, like Gary Speed’s, so therefore the paragraphs are a little out of sync, which doesn’t look good for the copy however I didn’t want to style it like existing products and be a copycat i.e. having a personal input.

The overall style of the work is in a formal style, the words used are not your typical everyday words and the overall register of the obituary is not something you see or read very often. Comparing to other things I have written there is times where I have been personal and others where I have been allowed to explore with my language it was even tricky to find words for starter sentences as I wanted to keep a style of starting a new paragraph with a new word that would be inviting to the readers. Comparing this to existing work I wouldn’t have said that I had copied any of the styles but I have made it quite similar in some parts of the layout e.g. having his career highlights towards the end of the obituary. The other part of the overall style I am pleased with is being able to write for a bit in the future without switching persons like I did occasionally in other work.

The obituary I researched first was ex footballer Gary Speed. The obituary described his characteristics and personality before moving on to his playing style and how his career ended before he died. In my work towards the end I wrote about Gerrard’s plans for the future and the other things he did in his career that he should be remembered for. In both existing work and my work it was important to put the most significant bits of his career at the beginning of the obituary as it is what people will remember the most. The written obituaries aren’t written like they are shocking or explain in detail the death as that is something the media would do. In the researched obituary, throughout there was quotes which I think helped understand the emotional level although some of the quotes were from previous years. In my work I had the feeling of getting all the career highlights down first and then having a quote at the end to sum it all up although I think it would have been better to use a quote from a manager that had worked with Gerrard more to get a bigger understanding to the audience about how big of a player he is.

Like the previous part of writing there wasn’t any practical production in this just the writing ability. I wanted to focus on the writing ability more because it was something I wasn’t familiar with. It was quite morbid to start with however once I had researched and read what an obituary was like I was able to get writing normally. Before writing this piece of work I didn’t really know alternatives of words so I had to use the online thesaurus to help me a little. It is also fairly a long piece of writing as there was so many things to say about the life and career he has. I decided to start writing a brief description of what his career was and then go into the more deeper effect he had on football.

If there was any improvements for this piece of work I would say my first one would be working on my sentence starters, there was times where I started two or three consecutive paragraphs with the same word which can look a little unprofessional as it looks like I have run out of ways to show what I’m writing. In an attempt to change this I would research sentence starters and incorporate them into my work to add that extra bit of variety. Not so much of an improvement but if I was to write this again I would try writing it in a different register, as maybe there could an extension to connect with the audience on an emotional level. There are some things that I could have taken out and extended like how his injuries played a part in missing a big spell of his career, as it gets the impression of “I remember that.” Reading some of the paragraphs again they can be a little jumpy which I have had to be careful with in previous work, in an improvement case I would plan beforehand the paragraph structure so I know the order I am writing in and that it makes sense. With the wording as well it was a little out of my comfort zone and maybe improvements throughout the piece would have been better. Shorter sentences might have also worked as they raise the emotion around the writing which is achievable given the nature of the topic. Shorter paragraphs may have also been something to look at as there is a lot of information packed into one paragraph which is a lot to take in at once. If I was to write the whole obituary again I would tweak the last paragraphs and word them better, as I think the tone slightly alters and gets a little lazy as the register turns to what I would say rather than keeping it at the same level. Likewise what I mentioned earlier, I also would have added a couple more quotes in and around the highlights of his career to raise the significance and also show off how much of an impact he has had throughout the years also with different managers. I would also experiment with writing in more detail about his England career rather than just focusing on the club as he did do a lot for country too, this was a major chunk I missed out on as it would’ve extended my work and given me more to talk about, adding more quotes and combining sentence starters etc. all the little improvements that would have finalized the work.

Tabloid – Finished ProductMy intentions was firstly to stick in the same register the whole way through by keeping in check the environment I was writing for and making sure that the language was intended for the right purpose. My other intentions were to tone down the style of the writing but also not have a personal input as much. These intentions were more like objectives in the way I had conducted them by setting out what I wanted to achieve for this piece. I had already researched and read how different columnists write which sometimes includes mixing facts and a slight bit of opinion. My other intention was to not make this work manipulating in any way, making the readers believe something that wasn’t true therefore all the quotes and facts I have used are proven true. The main objective for me I guess was to not copy any style of work from existing products or from previous work I had done this was so I could create a fresh piece with fresh quotes and build on my work on my own.

The audience for this differs slightly than the other pieces of work because I was writing for the working class social grade so I couldn’t use some of the words I used in the obituary. The audience demographic was also pretty much the same as fans of Steven Gerrardwould still be reading it in the newspaper. Researching the work for this, there was no audience divide in any of the writing, which helped myself as it gave me an opportunity to think how I could write from a neutral perspective. It didn’t really bother me thinking about writing for a certain social grade because I already knew I was accommodating my writing for everybody like I had done in previous tasks. Without being too gender specific I think that most of my writing would have been read by males because of the way certain bits of the newspaper in the sports section are conducted i.e. male columnists. The audience weren’t really influential because I wasn’t really thinking about what I was saying could cause offence to other football fans.

The content was again my own knowledge as I know so much about him. The quotes I also pulled from when he signed his previous contract so it was still keeping the same flow. There isn’t much factual content except the outlines of the contract like the initial who what where how and why to start off the piece. Choosing fairly informal quotes kept the same tone to the work as I didn’t want to change the language halfway through. As I designed a tabloid cover I didn’t feel that there was a reason to include a stock image on this part and also the design of the cover tells an introductory story. I didn’t have to gather much content for the tabloid cover other than a couple of side stories, which was easy to build upon due to recent events that were happening around that time. The copy that I had to write in was that I as a journalist didn’t know that the contract was being signed and had to write on the knowledge I already had which was easy for me as I knew it all.

The overall style of this work was to keep it as much formal as it was informal and to not cross any of those two. From a production point of view the style of the work is fairly bias due to the fact that I made the cover based around Liverpool which raises two problems, firstly contradicting myself and secondly making it like a fanzine cover because of the Liverpool related stories. The overall style of the writing hasn’t been broken down into paragraphs however I felt that I wasn’t going to write a lot so I kept it compact. In this style the writing looks ok all as one but you wouldn’t know it was being written for a tabloid copy. I also think that having quotes separated on the page takes away the mouthful around it and in this copy and style it is interesting for the audience to read in this way and see other people’s views. As a improvement in the style I would not include my own sort of jokes as it doesn’t really fit with the rest of the style i.e. informative writing.

The existing product I researched for this task was The Mirror, I bought actual copies of the papers and also looked at sports stories online. To compare in the early stages, I would say my work obviously isn’t as good as the proper journalists out there although there is similarities in including the who what why how and where because everybody knows who to portray that information in a formative manner. During the research I made sure I look at a variety of sports stories, especially ones not written about my chosen celebrity so I could see if there was any differences. The ending of this tabloid approach looking back isn’t the best ending as it ends on a cliff hanger as I end it with Jamie Carragher retiring. In existing work the news story is rounded off fairly promptly I maybe could’ve extended my work by adding a quote at the end to summarize the work as the quote has to stop somewhere. From the research I looked heavily at existing Gerrard stories and The Mirror newspaper was my preferred choice so I looked at the way they wrote up Gerrard’s last contract and that helped seeing the way quotes were used and how I could make the information not seem boring and make the whole piece a little more interesting as these types of stories are written almost everyday.

The production part of the tabloid cover was again quite frustrating as I had to work between Photoshop and In Design to achieve the right size boxes and pictures to complete the design. In the end after a lot of measuring it was sorted, the only downside to the tabloid cover was that it clashes with the fanzine cover of just having Liverpool related stories rather than a newspaper which would have a number of stories on the cover. The production was also longer than I thought as I couldn’t really decide on the layout, nor the color scheme which made it quite tricky considering I had all the color schemes in front of me. The pictures are a little stretched because the size on Photoshop and the size on In Design kept changing a little this also made it tricky because changing the size meant getting a different sized picture when I had already resized it. Although the production was successful in writing ways too so I can’t complain too much. The writing side I would say wasn’t that easy but I felt confident writing it, I think it helped knowing in mind what I wanted to write and already thinking of sentences to include. The writing isn’t that spectacular because it doesn’t expand into more information or offer personal opinions which I would’ve liked to impose at some point towards the end though it didn’t feel right doing so.

There are certain improvements that I would like to see done to the piece, firstly I would change the style of writing, this would be by changing the tone to one tone so that it is informal or formal language not just me – as the journalist trying to be funny in between some lines. The improvements I would also like to make is in the structure because there are short sentences and then full paragraphs which looks a bit mixed as it starts of with more title sentences – I mean by this that the first few sentences sound like headings rather than going into the full story. Small improvements to the piece would be adding in a couple of images as it could make the writing look less dull, it would also add to the reaction I am trying to put into this writing e.g. the elation from all parties including the player, manager and managing director.