Journalism Now Article: The features and format of the i newspaper

@TheIPaper
i is a new kind of newspaper, aiming to provide readers with an entertaining and concise daily briefing for just 20p on weekdays and 30p on Saturday
 (Description quoted from their Twitter Page)

The 'i' paper is Britain’s only concise quality newspaper; its format and style is distinct from any other newspaper. The layout presents a very modern and interactive approach, similar to the latest technology of an iPad. The 'i' is divided into six colour co-ordinated sections: news, views, TV, IQ, Business and Sport. Although it is a compact version of ‘The Independent’ newspaper it covers a large scope, supplying the reader with an informative daily briefing. This is extremely useful for those who want to keep up to date with current affairs, despite battling their busy schedules. 

There are many features within the ‘i’ whereby dedicated readers will be able to instantly know where to retrieve information on their interests. This is because the page formatting of every edition of the paper is identical. An exclusive feature to the 'i' is the matrices, such as: ‘The News Matrix’, ‘The Opinion Matrix’, ‘The Business Matrix’ and ‘The Sport Matrix’. These provide the reader with a summary of the day’s current news within that genre, whereby each story is sectioned off into a box format; creating the illusion that you can interact with it and slide them around as though you would with an iPad. It has been advertised on ‘The Independent’ website that the ‘i’ is available for download on the iPad, this shows that they have collaborated with the ‘apple’ market and intentionally created a paper which appears as an interactive representation. In the iPad advertisement the ‘i’ is described as: “Digestible, Portable, Indispensible”, this is an appealing concept for an audience of iPad owners or travellers.

The feature found on page 24 is ‘Panorama - around the world in 10 stories’, this is another unique element to the ‘i’, it brings to light key stories from all over the world. Once again this relates back to the brief and interactive box layout, where the stories are straight to the point. There are other features in the ‘i’ which encourage the use of technology, there is a section titled ‘@i’, which engages with the readers to text, tweet or email in their views with the potentiality of them being published. In addition, the ‘i*spy’ feature which is categorised into two sections: ‘blogosphere’ which provides readers with an insight in to a newsworthy blog post and ‘Twittersphere’ which publishes popular or interesting tweets from MPs, editors, consultants etc. 

There is a clear distinction to the reader between fact and opinion. Compared to other newspapers, the ’i’ gives journalist’s views a grey shaded background. This has a similar resemblance to a speech bubble; reiterating the fact it is their opinion.

The last page of the paper is filled with games and puzzles; this offers an entertaining purpose, and is a light hearted way to end the paper. Conclusively, the ‘i’ is good value for money; it is packed with newsworthy stories. Although it is succinct, sensationalised media is minimal and the regular features keep you informed of news within the public interest.