Task 2 & 3

NME, Old and New analysis

PPC - Press Complaints Commission

PCC - Press Complaints Commission

PPC (press complaints commission) is a self regulatory company that has often been deemed ‘toothless’ for criticizing the company that helps fund them. PCC is funded via Levy from newspapers. PCC’s first step in writing any wrongs would be adjudication with due prominence. Journalists and columnists go by a ‘Publish and be damned policy’ which basically means publish an article at your own risk. So if a journalist were to write quite a controversial article such as Jan Moir’s article on Stephen Gately, you need to be prepared to pay the price incase of public upset. However many journalists and columnists do this and say the article is ‘In the readers best interest’ to wriggle out of any accusations. The PPC covers the following areas of complain: Opportunity to reply, Privacy, Harassment, Intrusion into Grief and Shock, Children and Children in Sex Cases, Victims of Sexual Assault, Discrimination, Financial Journalism, Confidential sources, Witness payments and Payments to Criminals. However overall PCC have no legal power whatsoever.

Music Press Representation

Record labels

Beyonce Analysis

In the four videos we looked at by Beyonce, ‘Crazy in love’, ‘Single Ladies’, ‘Halo’ and ‘Telephone’ various messages are trying to be sent across to the user. In ‘Crazy in Love’ the video has a very glamorous and quite sexy feel to it. This with flirtatious dance routine helps the theme of falling in love be put across well because it all seems exciting and chaotic. In contrast ‘Halo’ sends the message of being in love rather then just falling in love. So it is more intimate and clean. The contrast of black and white throughout the video helps achieve this sense of cleanness and romance. Close ups of the couple in ‘Halo’, Beyonce in particular helps to show this message of her being in love and we can capture a image of her facial expressions. ‘Single Ladies’ however is a bit more spunky and fiery. A message that she’s not going to be messed around by a man is fairly evident when she says ‘if you like it you have put a ring on it’ implying that you had chance and you wasted it. So in the video she wants to come off as a strong female character and these fast, fiery dance routines help show this as well as keeping a sexy feel she is so famous for.

From the videos we have looked at you see different sides to Beyonce. Such as sexy, young, fiery and glamorous woman. In more modern videos there is a feeling of her settling down and she comes across as more gentle and the video ‘Halo’ is more romantic then sexy. As she has developed in life, so has she and we can follow this through her videos. However she is still Beyonce and will always be sexy and sassy regardless of age and when she does ‘Telephone’ with Lady Gaga it is almost making a statement saying she is just as sexy and sassy as also somewhat rebellious and aggressive. A more naughty side to Beyonce then we have seen perhaps in other videos on this scale.

Different sides of her in various videos such as young and cheeky in ‘Crazy In Love’, powerful and strong in ‘Single Ladies’, elegant and Gentle in ‘Halo’ and aggressive and rebellious in ‘Telephone’ all show different sides to her. If you look at the words i used to describe her character in those four videos there are some quite contrasting words. Yet this is such a clever thing she has done because it seems real. No one person has just one continuous side to them, there are always different sides good or bad. This is one of the reasons Beyonce has become so big, it almost lets fans into her life and see all the different sides to her we don’t see behind the scenes. Also it creates mystery because you have to think, are there anymore sides to her we are going to see? So each new single and album is eagerly awaited for.  We can see other examples of this with Lady Gaga. If you look at her earlier videos such as ‘Just Dance’ and ‘Poker Face’ She comes across as a lot more sexy and ‘normal’. However when we look at her later videos such as ‘Bad Romance’ and ‘Born this Way’ she has changed dramatically. She has become a lot weirder and more eccentric and her characters in videos still seem quite mysterious, much different to her earlier videos.

Beyonce has now created an alter-ego called Sasha Fierce. This persona represents Beyonce as more fun more sexual and more aggressive. She is a symbolic representation taken over by the devil to obtain success. This is going to be very appealing to the male audience with this new ‘more sexual’ role. She is supplying a demand that a male audience requires for many female artists to be reach to a male audience. However not just males are going to enjoy this. Female audiences will enjoy this new ‘Aggressiveness’ and ‘Fun’ and exciting side to her as she comes across as a strong female icon.

Younger people are more likely to be influenced by her and similar artists as they are modern and very current. Going by the ‘effects theory’ then you’d think there would be many people, mostly younger females that would be influenced by her clothes, makeup and personality.

NME Analysis

The NME Story

Magazine History
The first magazine was a gentlemen's magazine. All images were drawn with no cameras and no DTP. The magazine was very rich in text and there would be no girls inside the magazine or mention of. IN 1885 a ‘Good Housekeeping’ magazine was set up which was aimed at women and told them how to keep their husband happy. 1897 saw the introduction on Vouge magazine which has very similar conventions as today. e.g. topics on fashion and lifestyle and that hasn't changed as the needs of women remains the same. In 1955 a magazine more for teenagers came out called Marilyn. Like today it appealed to the youth of the time with topics on current things and photos of celebrities. When Nova came out in 1960 we can see that it actually showed the change in women's roles from previous decades where women were completely inferior to men. Men's magazines always had specific topics such as Auto Trader that was published in 1975 and other magazines of this type has topics of football and fishing. In 1986 Arena magazine, a general lifestyle mag focused on men came out. It stared photos of men on the cover but eventually resorted to woman. It had its own representation to girls almost like the ones you’d see in magazines today, young, slim, perfect teeth and skin and at the time white women. !996 saw the first black model on Vouge apart from health and fitness mags who had been doing it for ages.

The NME Story

NME was founded in 1952 and was a non glossy magazine in tabloid format. NME was owned by IPC. The journalists for NME wrote about pop and were generally very pleasant about
the bands and artists. Morris Kinn, the first editor was first to feature in the singles chart. NME grew ever bigger and was massive in the 1060’s. A cosy relationship with bands still remained.
In 1969 the NME audience had changed and become self aware teenagers. Soft drugs had turned to hard drugs and ‘Love’ and ‘Peace’ resorted to violence. A new spiky attitude was taken on and harsh articles were winning the audience again. New young writer Charles Shaar Murray wrote for OZ prior to NME. The new influx of writers wrote in a similar way to ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine, loud fast and funny. At age 26 Nick Logan began as editor and brought in an uncluttered cover and made the paper more hippier and so that it questioned proposition. In 1976 there was an advert for ‘2 young hip gunslingers’ to cover the punk scene. Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons joined and changed the direction and tone of the magazine. So when they reviewed bands they would either be at your throat or at your feet. NME was one of the only places to see punk. The magazine liked The Clash and Sex Pistols. The magazine had a strange politically correct attitude, the Stranglers song ‘Peaches on the beaches’ didn't impress Burchill however contrastively Generation X was too clean. The next movement in NME was that new editor Neil Spencer was to redesign the paper. Not so long after Kent, McDonald, Burchill and parsons were out and new talent needed to be brought in. NME started to see a decline in readers after Nick Logan went to Smash Hits and the Face magazine started to cover the booming Romantic scene. This left writers such as Barney Hoskins and Paolo Hewitt wondering what to write about. Paul Bourney decided to write about Manchester Fall, Buzzcocks and New Order. NME had a new double act, Morley and Penman. NME had started to become politically intellectual. The writing style of what they wrote was deemed as very important. Philosophy and culture were being covered in the magazine. The publication of an article on youth suicide was a very daring piece and very audacious and was to a very small audience but it meant a lot to this audience. Not many other publications aimed at the youth could do this. In the mid 80’s NME was supporting red wedge, Labour movement, lots of people out of work due to Tory government. IPC were very unhappy about all the political content in the magazine. 7 years after Spencer left NME was involved with the Hip Hop wars. The question was Hip Hop, Soul or Rock? Many thought Hip Hop was just a fad and asked, ‘Why have black artists on the cover?’ NME appeal to a white audience and consequently two thirds of the audience left. IPC were not impressed and took control leading to lots of journalists leaving overnight. So IPC got in Alan Lewis, a populist editor after higher circulation. The mag was instantly nonpolitical, less ‘hip’ and more middle-of-road (MOR). Morrissey was being put on the cover for almost any reason.  However after putting Morrissey on the cover stating he was a fascist John Harris effectively ‘Killed the dad’. 12 years later Conor Mcnochols got Morrissey back on the cover after all the years of Morrissey not speaking to NME. So many magazines had folded and yet through all the struggles NME had faced it survived, being a chameleon and changing tastes with the audience. Everyone had their own period of NME that they loved.