Hello from Team Anactoria, and welcome to our pitch!

We would like to present to you our concept for a new, fresh newspaper, The Notion! The Notion, in accordance with its name, will be a paper focused on opinion- and features-based reporting, rather than attention-grabbing headlines. When it comes to news reporting, we will be as unbiased as possible; however, the focus of our paper will be on witty editorials and innovative features, and this is what the bulk of The Notion's content will consist of.

When it came to determining our target market, we decided to aim The Notion at urbanites - young professionals/students with high levels of intelligence and left-leaning viewpoints. We believe that this section of the population is currently expanding, especially with the growing numbers of university graduates, and also that there are few (if any) newspapers currently on the market that cater explicitly to them. To this end, every column and feature that we selected for inclusion was chosen to appeal to our target market; we considered a wider-ranging strategy, but decided instead to focus on securing our target market on a long-term basis.

We recognise that The Observer will be our main competition in catering to our target market; however, we would like to differentiate ourselves in several key ways. Firstly, our focus on opinion-based editorials will set us apart from the typical broadsheet; we aim to provide disquieting and thought-provoking viewpoints without succumbing to overly-emotive language. Secondly, we plan to make The Notion less overtly highbrow than The Observer - although we will still respond to serious issues in a serious manner, we will also focus shamelessly on celebrity gossip and trashy novels, as we believe that much of our target market has a strong interest in these. And thirdly, we will aim to be as 21st-century in our coverage as possible, with a strong focus on internet-based reporting and a more magazine-y style.

For the paper itself, we have decided to go for a Berliner-size format, with a magazine-style front cover that draws the reader's attention immediately; here is our planned front cover for the launch issue: http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/3378/notioncover.jpg (we apologise for some of the text being a little hard to read)

Whilst we recognise that this is a tense time for newspapers, with both the NOTW and the Times embroiled in phone hacking scandals, we at The Notion do not believe that this ought to be of great concern to us. We have no interest in engaging in tawdry and immoral behaviour to generate a profit - in fact, the very concept of our newspaper, with its focus on features- and opinion-based reporting rather than emotive 'scoops', would seem to preclude it. We want to engage with the public rather than taking advantage of them, and we want to approach the issues we write about in an upfront and opinionated manner, rather than spreading deceitful rumours and illegally-obtained information.

However, this does not mean that we will ignore the issue when launching The Notion: we will instead open up a dialogue about it, holding a press conference to discuss the issue, and we will be entirely open throughout about our reporting techniques. We don't see our paper as being a 'replacement' for the NOTW in the slightest, but we recognise that any paper that is set up now will be tainted with the same brush, and we will make it our mission to win the public's trust. We see it as our duty to use reputable sources in all instances, rather than discarding reliability for a cheap scandal. Moreover, we will hold ourselves accountable to our readers, and if we were to be implicated at any point in any reporting scandal, we would hold our hands up and address the problem head-on.

We have come up with a wide range of possible columns and features for all sections of the paper. Whilst this list is by no means set in stone, and there are many other exciting possible features that we would like to include, we hope that this gives you a good idea of the direction in which we'd like to take The Notion. We'd also like to note that although this list might seem a little light on the 'news' aspect, this is solely because it is such an unpredictable element, so regular columns wouldn't work so well in that section.

MAIN PAPER
News/politics
Along with the typical news reports, we have several ideas to involve both politicians and members of the public in the writing of The Notion. We would include a weekly column written by a member of the public who feels very strongly about a current topic, along with a feature in which 2-3 MPs give their opinions on a political issue. We would also feature a 'backbencher of the week' page, highlighting the achievements of a less-well-known MP or MEP. Lastly, we would have a traditional 'letters to the editor page', but alongside this, we would feature tweets from the public on various issues.

Lifestyle/travel
We would include a brief lifestyle and travel section after the news & politics, to offer something lighter for our readers. In this section, we would feature a lighthearted 'What's Hot and What's Not' column, showcasing the latest lifestyle trends. There would be a double-page section for celebrity gossip, highlighting 'must-know' pieces of information for our readers. We would also include travel writing from real experts - such as the lonelyplanet writers - and our central feature would be a Secret London-style column (ie. a compilation of the best secret spaces in a carefully-selected city).

Sports
In the sports section, we would of course include the typical score/game overviews, but we'd like to make our sports coverage stand out from the crowd a little. We would include opinions on sporting controversies from leading figures, and also a permanent column for somebody who has a vast knowledge of a range of sports. We are toying with the idea of including a 'tactics page' - a page for sports enthusiasts to express their views on what they would do if they were managing a team. Lastly, we are planning to feature a 'Section For The Uninitiated': a page to explain a different topical sport each week for those readers who aren't sure how it works. (For example, during Wimbledon, we might have a page explaining the rules of tennis and tennis definitions in easy-to-understand ways, along with a review of a Wimbledon game from somebody who knows nothing about the sport.)

Other
We also have a couple of other ideas that we're very excited about incorporating into the main section of our newspaper. Firstly, we'd like to include a games section - games such as Sudoku, crosswords, etc. We'd also love to include an 'archive page' - that is, a page from a newspaper from a long time ago, perhaps highlighting a piece of interesting but forgotten news.

SUPPLEMENTS
Although we feel that we have covered quite a lot with the main section of our paper, we don't think any Sunday paper would be complete without supplements. We've picked out four broad topics that we feel would appeal to our target market, and here are the features that we're hoping to include in each:

Culture
In the culture supplement, we'd like to fuse music, TV, and film coverage. We would of course include the typical reviews, but we'd like to show off our music credentials a little by including an indepth track-by-track review of one album each week. We also want to feature a weekly column for artists/directors/musicians to explain their inspirations. We have some more humorous ideas as well, to mesh with our stated lighthearted approach - firstly, we plan to include a weekly satirical review of an 80s B-movie, along with a feature mocking one of the worst TV programmes of that week. We're also interested in including something similar to tvtropes.org - picking out several tropes and analysing them as they relate to various current films and TV shows.

Books
In the literary supplement, we'd again like to contrast serious literary appreciation with humorous commentary. Along with the traditional reviews of current books, we'd like to feature two indepth side-by-side book reviews: one commenting on a classic work of literature, and the other on a trashy romance novel. We're planning to include a short story by an up-and-coming writer, and we're also hoping to do something with fanfiction - for example, picking out the most ridiculous fanfic summaries we can find, and dissecting their literary appeal.

Technology
In the technology supplement, we again want to merge traditional forms of reporting (app and game reviews, etc.) with more innovative features. We want to include a weekly 'This Week In Japan' column, showcasing the most bizarre inventions from the most technological country in the world, and we'd like to have cracked.com-style list features, tying together technological innovations with little-known facts. We also want to feature Let's Plays of various retro videogames - though we wouldn't be able to show these in their full glory in our paper edition, we would include screenshots and commentary to give a flavour of the online content.

Fashion
For the fashion supplement, we're planning to go fairly offbeat rather than sticking to traditional fashion coverage. We'll include such things as weekly trend updates, of course, but we're also planning to have an Unexpected Fashion Inspiration in each issue. We'll feature ways in which the current fashion show trends can be translated into a high street budget, and we'd like to include interviews with celebrities who have somewhat atypical tastes about their fashion influences. We're hoping to set up a 'street fashion' blog featuring photos of fashionably-dressed strangers, the most striking of which we'll include in our supplement. Finally, we'd like to include a weekly 'trend evolution' feature - an article documenting the rise/fall of a selected fashion trend, and the the ways that trends evolve into one another.

Internet
We've mentioned several net-based initiatives in the list above, and we'd like to expand upon these. The net will be a central part of our marketing scheme, and we plan to maintain an ongoing Twitter presence to keep up with our readers. We'd like to make use of Youtube, for example in screening the full versions of the retro Let's Plays we'll feature in our technology supplement. We also hope to liveblog many events and TV shows, and as mentioned, we'd like to keep up a 'street fashion' blog featuring photos of fashionable non-celebrities.

To give you a taste of exactly what's in store for readers of The Notion, we've prepared three sample articles for your enjoyment. Each article was written by a different reporter, to reflect the diversity of talent on offer from our newspaper; however, we hope that you soon come to recognise the overarching writing style distinct to The Notion!

Op-ed: EHRC Proposes New 'Compromise' Policy

Unlikely Fashion Inspirations #1: Tilda Swinton

Extended Review: 'Born This Way' (album) - Lady Gaga

We've given you a lot of information so far, but we haven't really explained our choices in great depth, so with no further ado, here's some information on why we made the choices we did.

Throughout this task, we have been consistently focused on our target market (young urbanites - single, educated, and modern), and what we believe they would like to see from a newspaper. We chose this target market partly because it's the demographic that we fit into, and so we could envision a paper aimed at this market more effectively than one aimed at other demographics, and partly because we don't believe that this market is fully catered for by the newspapers currently available.

We decided early on in the process that we didn't want to go for a traditional tabloid, and that the writing style for The Notion would fit in better with a broadsheet format. However, we went for a Berliner-sized paper for two reasons - firstly, it would be far more practical, especially when it comes to attracting young urbanites, and secondly, it doesn't run the risk of being intimidating or offputting. We also decided to make The Notion a very net-friendly paper - rather than putting online readers off with paywalls, we want to embrace them as part of our central userbase, offering online-only content such as Youtube videos and liveblogs.

The features-based format was something we were set on from the very beginning. We believe that it is the features that make the paper, and we were fiercely against going for 'scoop-based' reporting; we don't want The Notion to be seen as a 'replacement' for the NOTW in that sense. Whilst the news coverage is of course crucial to The Notion, it is the features that will transform it into a viable paper with its own target market, and so we focused on offering a diverse range of original and carefully-considered features.

We chose 'The Notion' as a name for two main reasons: partly because it is innovative - more traditional names such as The Sentinel would have risked making it sound like an old-school newspaper, and we wanted to get across a more modern feel - and partly because the word itself reflects our lighthearted, opinion-based reporting. We considered several styles of front cover, both traditional and innovative, but we finally settled on a magazine-style cover on the basis that it is both eyecatching and modern. As far as we're aware, there's never been a newspaper cover like it, but for us, this only reinforces its charm - it will gain readers simply by standing out from the crowd.

When it came to the tone of the articles that we'd like to see in The Notion, we decided to emulate the French feuilletons - "The tone of its writing is usually reflexive, humorous, ironic and above all very subjective in drawing conclusions, assessments and comments on a particular subject" (Wikipedia). Our vision for The Notion is that it will be a less intimidatingly highbrow version of The Guardian, fused with a more intellectual/less trying-too-hard-to-be-cool T4, and we believe that this writing style (which hopefully comes across in the sample articles we've provided) will reflect that.

The market needs a newspaper like The Notion. Witty, smart, and fabulous, it encapsulates what the modern reader wants: it's not afraid to be intellectual, but nor does it shy away from being entertainingly lowbrow. For too long now, the nation's Sunday newspapers have been split firmly into two camps, but we don't believe that anybody benefits from labelling readers in this way - readers who enjoy intellectual political coverage might also want to immerse themselves into celebrity gossip. The Notion marks a daring attempt to bridge this gap, offering a trashy-chic view of the world that sets it firmly apart from both The Observer and The Daily Star.

Thank you very much for reading our pitch! We hope you've enjoyed it, and we'd love to hear any questions you have about our plan for The Notion.

Does anyone have any questions that they would like to ask?

I think the pitch was very well presented.

However do you not feel that there are so many topics, which perhaps be overcrowding?

Wow, I love both the name and the concept Ana and co, my question is would you have any promotions such as maybe vouchers for places like HMV or NV to promote the urbanite target audience?

Hey guys, great presentation and fantastic concept.

I was wondering if the paper will be in support of any particular political party?

Also we know that your target market - the "urbanites" are young opinionated people, so how will this match up to your more unbiased approach?

Thanks for your question.
We have tried to make sure that a vast amount of topics are covered in this newspaper. As you can see, we have split our newspaper into sections, which cover different aspects of what is going on in the world right now. We don't see it as overcrowding the newspaper, as it is important to showcase different elements of what is happening all over the globe. We have tried to make sure to not overdo each topic, and cover what is actually important. Most Sunday newspapers actually cover a wide variety of topics, and if we hadn't too, people that may only be interested in a certain topic could choose to pick other newspapers over us.

Hope that answers your question!

Hi Kevin, & thank you so much for the nice words!

We would definitely be very into cross-promoting with places like HMV, and perhaps also with some summer festivals. Although we recognise that as a startup newspaper, we might find it difficult to gain such promotional opportunities, and we might have to 'start small', we would work as hard as possible to find ways to get in contact with as many people from our target market. We'd also use the internet as much as possible in promoting The Notion - we'd make use of viral marketing, maintaining an active presence on Twitter and other social networking sites, and also more traditional focused ad-based promotion.

It does answer my question thank you, however, I think you are right that you should not over do each topic however I think it's important to say both sides.

I quote your article on Lady Gaga:
' "Government Hooker" - The introduction sends shivers down my spine. Very seductive and original in its own way. 8.5/10'

I think readers would like to know what's bad about it as well as good. (It clearly isn't perfect, as you didn't give it a 10.) Do you not think it's important to say other things other then essentially 'it was great'.

Or am I missing the point?

Thanks for your question!

Well I could see the point if I did just say "It was great", but I went in depth as much as possible with each of them, whether they're highlighting the flaws or not. You will probably see from most of the other songs that I have showcased their pros as well as their cons. I can tell that Government Hooker is an amazing song, but it isn't to my favourite genre of music, so since this is a very opinionated review, I guess I just had to rate out of what I think of it. Obviously the whole world doesn't agree, but the review is just based on my personal opinion, as is the whole newspaper very opinionated as a whole, which is what differentiates us from the other newspapers.

Hope that helps!

Thank you for the compliment and question!

We feel that it's important for our paper to be impartial when it comes to politics, putting each party through the rigorous scrutiny of our opinionated writers and columnists. However, we have stated that we believe our readers are likely to be more left-leaning politically, which we believe would naturally match up to our writers. So whilst The Notion doesn't support any particular party, it does have a political statement to make, and definitely comes down towards more liberal, leftist views.

To address your second point - while we feel it's important to be unbiased, that definitely doesnt mean unopinionated. The whole concept of The Notion, and what we feel sets us apart from the rest, is just how opinionated our paper is. Our features all come from opinionated writers at the top of their game in fields, presenting their takes on the controversial topics of the day. We don't want to patronize readers by having a fixed point of view - we believe that the excitement is in the argument.

I hope that answers your questions!

In most of them there are no cons despite the songs not all getting 10/10



Most of them don't contain cons, I am not trying to be mean, I am sure you have reasoning behind this but I would please like to know.

Just a question but would you consider giving away free copies of Hip Replacement as a supplement in the magazine?

Brilliant presentation! Very well done indeed!

Hi Amroussi,
Thank you so much for the questions and the interest in our paper. I fully understand your point, but I don't think it's always necessary to point out specific flaws in a song to justify not giving it a 10/10. I'm sure there are many songs that you enjoy throughout and couldn't pick out flaws in, but that you wouldn't necessarily give top marks to.

Robbie was just selecting his very favourite songs to give 10s to, but it's clear that he enjoyed almost every song on the album - he just enjoyed some of them slightly more, and he was using the rating system to demonstrate that. Whilst in an ideal world, he would of course have gone into all aspects of every song, it's also important to note that real newspapers have strict word count constraints, so he wouldn't be able to do that for every song.

I'm sorry, Kevin, but we're committed to offering Coffin Dodgers as our 'mature' supplement for the foreseeable future.

Okay I understand, thank you

Thank you so much - we're so pleased that you like the concept!

Is there any way you could make the cover easier to read? I think it could be confused for some sort of magazine as it doesn't really look like a newspaper.

Hello, and thanks for the question! We wanted The Notion to be fresh and young, so we took the decision to deviate from the normal newspaper cover style, and more into magazine territory. We feel our target market appreciate striking images and visuals and that the cover really sets the newspaper apart. Obviously it would still be printed on newspaper style paper, and would be sold alongside newspapers in a store, but the difference in cover styles adds a quirky touch.

And I also want to apologize for the slightly blurry cover. That was down to technical problems in trying to find a suitable way to present the cover into our pitch and would obviously not look that blurry IRL - it would be much clearer and easier to read.