Analyse the Different Ways in which a Local Newspaper Represents the Local Community.
Jenny Patten
Analyse the Different Ways in which a Local Newspaper Represents the Local Community.
I chose to analyse the Maidenhead Advertiser for this assignment. The foremost thing I noticed about the paper was the smaller scale of the stories. Stories that a national newspaper wouldn’t even consider as newsworthy make up the bulk of the reports in the paper, “Help Tackle the Trolley Menace”.
Another general point I noticed about the paper in comparison to a national daily, was the positive slant on most of the stories. Nationals select negative stories to report because readers are more interested in tragedies than achievements. The local paper, however, reports on achievements in the local community such as, “A kickboxing class at the Maidenhead Rugby Club has proved so popular …..”, or, “Bishop drops in to say thank you”. I think this is because the local paper is circulates in a smaller area than a national paper if therefore a negative story was published about someone in the community their neighbours/local shop owners/friends in the area would read the story and it may anger/upset/worry them. In comparison if a national paper writes about a car crash in Ipswich 98% of the readers will not know the people involved. I think therefore that local newspapers represent the local community members in a more positive light in the interests of the people in the community.
