- history of –
- Industrial Revolution
- Hearst and Pulitzer
- Yellow Journalism
- expanded audience
- bias and bully pulpit/politics
- LCD newspaper – lurid, photos, headlines, splash
- Jack the Ripper – case study – news and sensationalism
- telegraph and technology
- format, structure and elements (ie Inverted Pyramid, sections, front page, what is newsworthy, etc)
Assignments:
Newspaper Scavenger Hunt
Brief Quiz
Front page mockup
What is the Inverted Pyramid?
Before the end of the 19th century, stories were almost always told in the traditional, slow-paced (let's say long-winded) way. Whether they were fairy tales or newspaper accounts, they began with a signal that something important, useful, inspiring or entertaining was about to begin (“Once upon a time”). The narrator, or storyteller, started at the beginning and continued to the end, leaving the outcome until the last (“And they lived happily ever after”).
That changed with the invention of the telegraph, and a new way of newswriting was created as a response to that, for a number of reasons:
Expense - sending info via telegraph required much time, expertise and infrastructure that added a great deal of cost to the usage
Errors - lines could be damaged, info lost, signal corrupted, misinterpreted, interfered with in a number of ways, which necessitated faster, shorter messages with the key info front loaded (the who, what, where, when_ - the why would have to get
Inverted pyramid checklist
When you write an inverted pyramid news story, use the following checklist to make sure that you have done it correctly. (This section comes from JPROF - the website for teaching journalism)
Information should be presented in descending order of importance.
Leads- one sentence
- 30-35 words maximum
- lead tells the most important information in the story and gives specific facts
Second paragraph- expand or develop some idea introduced in the lead
- should not drop the story into a chronological narrative
Attribution- All major information should be attributed unless it is commonly known or unless the information itself strongly implies the source.
- Don’t dump a string of direct quotations on the reader.
- Direct quotations should be no more than two sentences long.
- Direct quotations and their attribution should be punctuated properly. Here’s an example:
“John did not go with her,” he said. - Elements of a direct quotation should be in the proper sequence, as in the example above: direct quote, speaker, verb.
AP styleAlways. Check numbers, dates, locations, titles, etc.
Check the following- pronoun-antecedent agreement
- it, its, it’s
- “it is . . .”, “there is . . .”, “there are . . .” structures; avoid these. They are passive and vague.
- Use the past tense, not the present.
- Comma splice or run-on sentence, such as
He picked up the ball, he ran down the field.
Sally does not know where he is he is not here.
These are grammatically incorrect. - Plurals -- don’t make them by using an “apostrophe s”.
Short paragraphs -- any paragraph more than three sentences is definitely too long; any paragraph that is three sentences is probably too long.Wordiness -- have you checked for too much verbiage, redundancies, unnecessary repetitions, etc.Name, title -- When you put the title before a name, do not separate them with commas, such as(WRONG): Game warden, Brad Fisher, arrested the trespassers.
When the name comes before the title, the title should be set off by commas.
Brad Fisher, the game warden, arrested the trespassers.
Transitions -- use them to tie your paragraphs together. Don’t jump from one subject to another in a new paragraph without giving the reader some warning.Don’t copy the wording of the information sheet.Names -- check them once more to make sure they are spelled correctly.A Few Example Notes
Why Is the Newspaper So Successful through the 20th Century?
1. Cheap form of entertainment and time passing.
2. There wasn’t much competition for much of the 20th century
3. Newspapers got more advanced and more interesting –photos, reports from around the world, techniques for writing would improve, etc.
4. Newspapers are portable, disposable and you can “forage read”- read bits and pieces – it is designed for piecemeal reading – sections
5. Newspapers were regional and applied to the population of a specific area.
Why is the Newspaper Industry Dying Out in the 21st Century?
1. Internet beats Newspaper for speed of delivery of news
2. People are getting lazier at reading – the Internet is more “fun” and “screeny” rather than “texty”
3. Internet news feels free – newspapers cost money
4. Internet allows for a more modern way of interacting with the info – video, audio, talkback (www.digg.com), drilling down, widening out, etc.
5. Audiences are shrinking, and therefore ad revenue is shrinking.
Rats Langis costs about a buck
The New York Times costs about a buck.
Why are they the same price?
Answer: advertising pays for the costs of the paper.
