21st january 2009

This lesson we had looked at the sheaf. The sheaf is a student newspaper at the University of Saskatchewan.

Website used: http://www.thesheaf.com/
In the sheaf we had looked at:
*Distribution

* Purpose

*Content

*Policy

*and funding of the sheaf

The Sheaf is distributed weekly and is distributed to all of the colleges on campus and is also available from stands situated along main traffic areas.
Its purpose is to inform and entertain. It focuses on issues of life on campus, in the city and the province. The Sheaf is also a forum for discussion on a wide range of issues that concern students, and also allows them to input into the newspaper.It is written for students, by students. Most of their staff are student journalists and it tries to stay in touch with its audience and offers insight into university issues through a student perspective.

The Sheaf is split into two main sections;

*News and Opinion - News stories, letters, features, opinion and classified

* Social life in and around campus - Band interviews, CD reviews, plays, night scene, humour and special events.

It also publicises student events occurring on campus.

The Sheaf's policy is that The Editors have the right to veto any submissions they deem unfit for the newspaper. They will decide if the article or artwork would be of interest and benefit the welfare of the readers. They will not publish racist, sexist, homophobic or any other articles of this nature.

Using the sheaf as an example to give us an idea of how to form our magazine and the kinds of things that we may want to include in the magazine, in our lesson, in our groups we looked the things we would take into account when forming the magazine. We had looked at:
*The target audience
*The title of the magazine
*The content
*The price
*Distribution-How often? How?
*Advertising
*And censorship/ editorial issues

For each of these points charlotte and I had decided:
*To aim the magazine at students in St Marks year groups 7-11(12-16 year olds)

*The title of the magazine would be called the gospel as it relates to the school

*For the content we would include things such as opinion polls, news around school, sports, activities/school trips, ask the teacher (this is a way for students who are not very confident in asking for help/advice to teachers face to face, they could send their questions to be put into the magazine, and answers to them).

*The price of the magazine would be 60p- so that it is affordable for the school students.

*The magazine would be distributed every half term, and they would be sold via form time, at the front office and in the school library.

*The kinds of advertising that will be included in the paper are things like further education, the Harlow Youth Council (HYC) and Young Essex Assembly (YEA) - this is run by students that are elected into the HYC and YEA, and sports adverts. We chose these types of adverts because it relates to the students.

*There will be no form of discrimination in the magazine or any gossip.