Hello and welcome to the pitch of the DS Apprentice Final for Team Carlisle!

I have separated our pitch up in to several points, each of which discuss a different aspect to the paper! I hope you enjoy.

Title of the Newspaper
After a brainstorming session, we decided that the best name for our newspaper would be The Sunday Scoop. The name, in my opinion, is ideal for a replacement for News of the World as a weekly tabloid paper. Using the word Sunday could obviously be seen as being a bit cliché, however I can ensure you that ‘The Sunday Scoop’ could really be the next big weekly tabloid paper.

The Sunday Scoop is a brilliant name because of the accuracy behind it. It really reflects on what our tabloid paper plans on doing and when supported by the motto, “The truth and nothing but the truth” we have a mixture for success.

Type of Newspaper
To fill in the space left by the News of the World our paper will be largely a tabloid paper. A tabloid newspaper is a newspaper, which gives the news in a condensed form with illustrations.

Target Market
Our target market and unique selling point go hand in hand. After the controversy regarding the phone hacking and News of the World, the British public lost a bit of trust in today’s media. The Sunday Scoop hopes to regain some of this by making it as honest and factual as is possible. Instead of biasing it towards one side of the argument, we will be reporting the facts and nothing but the facts and therefore our target market is very much the people who were offended and more importantly let down by the News of the World scandals.

Types of Columns
There will be four main areas in The Sunday Scoop with some bonus features at the back. The main area, which will take up about half of the pages, is the weekly news. Anything that is of importance in the media will be included in the weekly edition, however everything will be of a certain level of quality, rather than some of the articles used to fill up papers such as The Sun. Some examples of the weekly news section are:
- Worldwide Events ie. Natural Disasters
- Politics
- Current Events
Then there will be smaller areas of the sub-categories Sport, Reality TV, Celebrities. Each summarise a different section of the most popular media. Although thinking big may be a bit of an exaggeration, there is most certainly a demand for all of these things, rather than having to buy a newspaper for one bit, a celeb-gossip magazine for the next part and so on.

There will also be several mini-special pages, which will cover one or two pages each. The ones I am most assured about are a “Recipe of The Week” section & the obvious quiz section.

Find below a sample article which would be included in our 'Reality TV' section for this weeks issue.

The Final Four Revealed!

Last night's episode of The Apprentice saw candidates Susan Ma, Helen Milligan, Tom Pellereau and Jim Eastwood make the final stage of the process. Natasha Scribbins, unfortunately, fell at the last hurdle when Lord Sugar pointed his finger in her direction last night. His reasons: she has lost her spark and didn't put her degree to good use to help her team win the task.

The two teams were tasked with setting up and branding their own, unique fast food restaurant. Venture (Susan, Natasha and PM Jim) went with Mexican food while Logic (PM Helen and Tom) went for strictly British. Venture floundered completely and averaged a measly 4/10, Natasha failing to use her skills in Hospitality to save the task and Logic came out on top with a respectable average of 7/10. There was no treat, however Helen and Tom's win earned them a coveted place each in the final.

However, Natasha was not the only candidate to make big errors in last night's episode. Jim, during his pitch, claimed that 60 times £7 was £4,800, Helen and Tom claimed Columbus was British and Jim, Susan and Natasha failed to realise that "Caracas" - the name of their restaurant - is in fact the name of the capital city of Venezuela.

The boardroom was, as usual, a bloodbath with Lord Sugar claiming that Caracas' food was akin to his son's dog's vomit. Susan and Natasha went all out gunning for Jim, Natasha claiming that Jim's manipulative approach didn't wash with her, while Susan too advantage of Jim's 0-2 loss PM record. Jim, however, fought back and used Natasha's degree against her and claimed that is why she should be fired. Unfortunately for Natasha, Lord Sugar agreed and she was sent packing. Not before spending a bit of time discussing Susan's strengths and weaknesses after he had already summarised causing Ma to think that she was the one going to be fired. Ma struggled to hold back the tears and couldn't even smile when Lord Sugar told her she was in the final.

Next week, it's the interviews! One of the final four will become Lord Sugar's new business partner! Tune in on Sunday at 9PM on BBC One to watch it all unfold!

Launch of the Paper
After the News of the World scandal, the trust the public has does not favour towards the media. This controversy will obviously make it so much harder to launch a paper. That is where our ‘squeaky clean’ image will come from. I feel as if the whole ‘unbiased’ side to the truth will allow for a great amount of sales. The public do not like being lied to; this has been made pretty clear in both the past few weeks and on a larger time-scale too. People like to know what’s going on, and don’t like being lied to. So what we have done is fused the two together.

The launch will still be a very tricky business, to guide ourselves away from the News of the World image we plan on avoiding the controversy, the scandal. I can promise you right this second that there will be no phone tampering, no hacking, nothing. Although exclusives are important, by building a strong reputation we can then maintain and sustain a great relationship with journalists and the British public alike.

Evaluation
I will now explain to you why you should choose The Sunday Scoop!

I’ve already mentioned the main sales point. Honesty. It may only be one word, but in reality it speaks volumes. The Sunday Scoop is one of the only tabloid papers, which documents the truth and nothing, but the truth and this is why I feel as if this could be a top paper.

The promotional strategy our newspaper has comes in two sections.

First of all, I plan for the paper to capitalise on the failure of News of the World. The empty slot it’s left in the media market. We will be able to push the paper as a paper, which has learned from the mistakes the predecessor has made and develop almost a perfect paper. We can develop this image as an honest, unbiased paper and push it towards the future of media.

The second strategy will be to hand free editions out on the first few releases in cities such as London, Newcastle, Glasgow, Cardiff & Manchester. Handing it out at popular train stations we can go for an approach that will be beneficial for the future sustainability of our paper. By handing out free copies of the paper we are then able to give a name for ourselves and when after the third, forth or fifth edition we will be able to have a following which will determine our success on national sales.

Another important aspect for the release of the paper is that people love to try new things. The market research I did showed that with a simple ad-campaign papers can establish themselves in chain stores such as WHSmiths, Asda, Tesco’s and Sainsburys.

Thank you for reading my pitch and if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Is there any kind of front cover of sampel for us to see? No-one buys a newspaper that isn't eyecatching.

Unfortunately not.

The only software I have to make a front cover would be Paint, and I have to say it'd probably turn out to be more of an eyesore!!

Unlike the other team, unfortunately I had a very limited time span to do it (I was out for over 24 hours during the the just under 3 days to do it. Plus I was alone, because one member was AWOL, one members computer broke and one member doesn't like me so didn't do anything and left any group conversations they were invited to!

I would've loved to have been able to provide a front cover, but I can't - sorry!

Wow! That is very impressive that you have done this great pitch by yourself

Cheers! It also didn't help I missed all of yesterday due to a Ke$ha concert!

Anyway, thanks for the praise of the pitch.

Your welcome!