...: Year 10 Print Media: Your brief

Tuesday, 25 October 2011

Year 10 Print Media: Your brief

Egmont UK Ltd
Dear Student,
Egmont UK Ltd are always on the lookout for new ideas and pride ourselves in the role we have already played in launching many children’s magazines to the market.
We are currently working on a project to reignite the success of womens’ magazines by attracting a younger audience. We are aware that most womens’ magazines are aimed at females aged 16 and older due to their content, such as Cosmpolitan and Glamour.
At Egmont UK Ltd we already offer a magazine for younger ‘ladies’ with our successful title ‘Gogirl’ magazine.
“Go Girl is a girl's best friend! Filled with fun activities, cool quizzes, friendship tips and everything girls want to know about their fave celebrities, it's all a girl needs. Go Girl is funny, friendly, informative and entertaining.

The magazine is packed with posters of their fave stars, perfect puzzles to keep readers busy for ages and lots of quizzes so girls can find out all about themselves. There's gossip on all the coolest TV, pop and movie stars, celeb secrets, hilarious embarrassing stories, fun photostories and friendship features.

Go Girl is the coolest lifestyle magazine for girls aged 7-11 and showcases the latest fashions, hot new products and competitions where girls can win once in a lifetime experiences. It's an inclusive club that every girl can be part of and will give every girl a fun, exciting experience in a safe, colourful way.

Every issue has a great free gift and the website adds another layer to the Go Girl world. It's an all-girl party of friendship and fun!”
We now want to bridge the gap between these magazines and are looking for ideas for a new magazine aimed at females 11-16.

We recognise that it is important to respond to the concerns and identity of our modern culture and as such we are not interested in reproducing the out of date representations which have previously been such an important feature of lifestyle magazines.
We are also keen to use technology to respond to new lifestyle habits of the young, building on such successes as the iPod.
We are planning a launch of a new girls’ magazine for a monthly publication starting in the autumn, ready for the new high school audience; and here is where you have a chance to become involved. We would like to commission new designers for this first copy to give us some ideas about how we can target our audience and also use new technologies to engage them.
Remember we want our new magazine to keep all the successful codes and conventions of womens’ magazines whilst offering something fresh and relevant to the lives of our young target audience in the 21st century.
You have one week in which to research, plan and prepare and then you will be asked to complete four tasks to help us draw up a short list of entries for our final selections.
Remember to:

• keep your responses sharp and to the point

• use diagrams and illustrations to support your ideas

• use successful codes and conventions

• target your audience
We look forward to receiving your entry.
Yours faithfully,

Fi Mayll
Editor in chief

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Why Media Studies IS an academic subject.

Every now and then, Media Studies gets what is ironically called “a bad press”.

Even after a general election in which the media played a pivotal role (television debates, the 24-hour news feeding off the corpse of Gordon Brown after his accidental on-mic comment, the on-screen worm during the debates etc.), even after all that, Media Studies gets described as a “Mickey Mouse subject”.

It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so serious. We live in a mediated world, a reality constructed around us and constantly filtered through the media. Although you might experience some of reality directly (in an unmediated way), your response to that reality is inevitably informed by your exposure to the modern media. When you see yourself in the mirror, do you not judge yourself by the standards of beauty and style laid down by the fashion and beauty industries?

When someone is innocently taking pictures of kids playing in the park, are we suspicious that they’re up to no good? In our relationships with each other, do we take people at face value, or do we make judgements based on the way we think they should be? When we desire consumer goods, why is that exactly? Why do we want things? How does that happen?

We get soundbite politics – because of the media. We get personality politics – because of the media. We learn to act the way we do – because of the media. We learn to talk the way we do – because of the media. We get turned on, we get excited, we get angry, we laugh and we cry – because of the media. We became convinced that Gordon Brown wasn’t up to the job – because of the media. We panic about vaccines, medicines, food, drink, sunshine – because of the media.

To understand how things happen, why they happen, and why they keep happening is, for me, a fit subject of study.

None of this is to mention the skills you develop in Media Studies – skills in writing, editing, analysis, research, design, publishing, video and audio editing/mixing, project management, people skills etc. – which are incredibly useful and incredibly transferrable. One of the things you often hear from the media who give Media Studies a bad press is that, “Anyway, there are no jobs, there are too many people coming through and they won’t get jobs in the media.”

Well. Either it’s a Mickey Mouse subject, or it’s “too hard”, a demanding and impossible industry to get into. Which is it? It’s like saying you shouldn’t study Physics because you won’t get a job at CERN; or that you shouldn’t study law because you won’t get to be a “top barrister”. If you study English and you don’t do so at Oxford or Cambridge, what are your chances of getting a “top job”?

The transferrable skills you learn in Media Studies will equip you for working life, whatever you end up doing. And most of you will end up doing several jobs.

So. Next time someone scoffs at Media Studies, ask them this: when did you last go a day without being exposed to the media, in print and on screen? When did you last have an opinion of your own making?

Next time someone calls it a Mickey Mouse subject, ask them this: who owns the Mouse? What other companies do they own? What was the turnover of this company last year? Which member of the board of this company is also a member of the board of another huge company? How does one business relate to the other? How influential are they? Who are their competitors? How does this competition benefit or harm consumers? What ideology does the company who owns the mouse try to impose upon the world? Why do they do this?

Mickey Mouse subject?

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Tuesday, 25 October 2011