The Watford Observer has a yellow strapline just below the title, the use of the yellow is useful as its colour makes it stand out from the rest of the page. In addition to that that strapline contains relevant information such as the date in which the paper was issued, price and the papers website, this is useful as it’s all grouped and the reader doesn’t have to look elsewhere for that kind of information.
The yellow colour of the strap line, can be called useful in away as in can attract the readers attention. This is because the strap includes the date of which the newspaper is published, the newspapers website and the price of the newspaper. By putting all of these in the yellow strap it means that it can group all the key information in one line.
All the stories with a suitable amount of writing on seem to have a negative coverage. The small story at the bottom of the page is about a suicide inquest where, the person pictured killed himself. This does support the claim the negative representations in the media to create some form of an eye attraction to the audience as they wish to find out what happened. As well as that, the caption underneath the picture is about a dog that was attacked by another dog, and was subsequently put down. While this story does show negative representations it also aims to create some form of sympathy for dog owners, as this can happen to any dog owner, it also raises the awareness the dog owners should bring up their dogs in the correct manner so they don’t attack other dogs maliciously.
As well as that the use of negative words such as ‘Murder trial’ draws the attention of the reader as even though the audience would much rather read positive and encouraging stories of the community, bad news is usually much more popular to read. In addition to that at the bottom of the page there is another negative story of murder/suicide, this in addition to the main story backs up Galtung & Ruge’s news value theory that negative news receives more coverage then good news.
On the other hand however, the paper does try to bring a sense of togetherness and a community with the small of the two girls together as they prepare for their first day back at school after the summer holidays. This creates a feel good factor about the community. In addition to that point at the bottom of the page you have a promotion from the local MP in Watford, this too does create a sense of togetherness as he is trying to appeal to all ages and genders for one and two he is trying to make it seem as if the local community can trust him with any worries and concerns they may have.
The picture of the dog that was mauled by another dog does spoil the layout of the front cover. This shows a big difference between local and national newspapers as national papers would make the picture fit the layout of the page, where as in this specific news paper the inclusion of the picture ruins the rule of third thus making the columns uneven.
In addition to the point mentioned above about the layout, if you look at the picture of the suicide inquest, there has been some poor Photoshop editing. If you look closely enough at the picture you can see they have slight cut out some of his head too. This may be due to numerous of factors such as, the Watford Observer and local newspapers are unlikely to have as much time and money to put into projects, meaning that the few members they have may have to spread their time appropriately and therefore can’t spend as much time on some news stories as they would wish to.
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