NEWSPAPER ANALYSISFront Cover

Manchester Evening News

CharactersPropp identifies that there are specific characters that appear in narratives, this theory can be applied to the characters featured in the main story on the front of the Manchester evening news newspaper. Three characters which Propp identifies are the hero villain and victim, the hero in the story is the mother who is asking the public to help find the person who was driving the car when the hit and run accident happened. The villain is the unknown person who was driving the car and the victim is the mothers son who is fighting for his life in hospital. This main story on the front cover follows conventions for characters as it includes three of Propps characters he outlines in his theory.

On the front cover there are two images of females, both of whom look very glamorous this is representing women in a sexual way which is conventional for gender representation.

Narrative events

The main story's narrative follows Todorov’s theory of the 5 stages, the story begins with Todorov’s second stage which is the disruption in the equilibrium outlined by the victim being hit by a car and ‘flung’ in the air. Stage 3 is also outlined by the mother realising there has been a disruption and taking action by trying to find the driver.

IconographyThe masthead of the newspaper is an iconic newspaper design as it uses bold black serif font and is recognisable to the readers.

The small images of newspapers used are iconic for the city of Manchester as we can see the word football and Manchester has two famous football teams Manchester united and Manchester city. The small newspaper at the front says city life, this refers to the nightlife and iconic club scene in Manchester.

SettingThe main story shows a CCTV image of a street in Manchester, we can see the setting is in the city as it looks like a working class area as we can see a bus stop at the side of the road and shops.

Technical codesThe Guttenberg principle has been used effectively on the front cover of this newspaper as the masthead has been placed in the primary optical area where the readers attention will be drawn first, the weak fallow area does include the main story however as the image is large and in the middle of the page this means the story will still be read and it doesn’t matter that its placed in this area.

The main image uses the rule of thirds as the subject of the image is in each third, as the car is in the left of the frame and the victim is in the right third. The rule of thirds shows how dramatic the image is, also the symmetry used is unconventional as the villain and victim are on either sides this is outlined in Levi Strouses theory of binary opposition.

NEWSPAPER ANALYSISSecond page

Manchester Evening News

Characters

Narrative Events

Iconography

Setting

Technical Codes