Students need to understand the functions of different sections of the newspaper. One useful site to do that is the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s “Walk Through the Newspaper” site which takes students through the following sections of the newspaper:

• The different kinds of news
  Get acquainted with the different kinds of news and news stories.
  

• The different levels of news
  Familiarize yourself with the different levels of news stories.
  

• Editorial and commentary
  Learn the components of the editorial and commentary pages.
  

• Sports
  Acquaint yourself with the components of the sports section.
  

• Comics
  Familiarize yourself with the comics section and the nationwide distribution of comic strips.
  

• Business and stocks
  Learn about business news and stock market listings in the Business section.
  

• Advertising
  Get acquainted with the different kinds of advertising.
  

In analyzing the typical newspaper, students could then examine aspects of newspaper design and layout by comparing different newspapers, using even on-line versions, although the differences between the original paper versions are more pronounced. They could identify the uses of certain typeface/type styles, the font size and nature of headlines, the “grid” (the number of columns, the size and number of pictures, and how the news is organized in a paper. They could also identify instances of design that are effective in terms of ease of reading versus less effective in terms of hindering their reading.

Photography

Photography also plays a major role in news reporting. Photos should function to aptly illustrate the content and gist of a story. On the following PBS site, Jeff Mermelstein, an award-winning photographer shares his thoughts on photojournalism, particularly photos he took of Ground Zero that appeared in The New York Times and elsewhere. The site contains two photo editors commenting on Jeff Mermelstein’s photos, as well as a photographic tour with Jeff as he talks photos in different parts of Manhatten.

Click here for a PowerPoint presentation of various design features, “Attracting Readers Through Effective Design” by Michael T. Shepard.

Shepard cites a study on how readers process information on a newspaper page that employed devices tracking readers’ eye movements (“Eyes on the News”, by Dr. Mario Garcia and Dr. Pegie Stark, Poynter Institute for Media Studies).

• Readers process photographs 75 percent of the time
  

• Readers process headlines 56 percent of the time.
  

• Text is processed only 25 percent of the time.
  

• Larger photos attract more readers — pictures 3 columns or wider are processed 92 percent of the time.
  

• Mug shots are processed less than half of the time.
  

• Informational graphics are read 73 percent of the time.
  

Jim Miller identifies instances of effective versus ineffective newspaper design on the Air Force Reserve news

Effective Newspaper Design

Photographs and line art draw readers into the newspaper and entice them to read stories from beginning to end. Varied camera angles, leading lines, dramatic cropping, and dominant and supporting photos stop readers in their tracks. Photographs feature no more than three people to identify. Good stand-alone on the job photos usually focus on one person showing most of his or her face.
 
Layout and design elements step readers through the newspaper on an organized, easy-to-follow path. Headline, photo, art, and copy placement follow conventional newspaper or magazine form. Reader "speed bumps" (spot color, screens, pull quotes, drop heads, and other devices) are infrequent to provide impact when necessary.

Ineffective Newspaper Design

Photographs include close-ups taken from too far away, feature a cast of thousands, and look like they were taken from a speeding car. Cropping is an agricultural term. Pictures in a photo feature are as close to the same size as possible so readers will view each one with equal dismay. The editor omits cutlines entirely or merely lets readers guess who is in the picture. Line art does a better job as filler than as a magnet to stories.
 
Readers jump from news to feature to editorial, to news to feature to editorial, to news to feature to editorial, and so on. Readers struggle through numerous page jumps, copy set wider than the eye was meant to scan, paragraphs that contain as many sentences as possible and a mine field of dingbats, fillers and trapped white. Headlines are all caps, down style, flush right and centered—all under the same department heading. Graphic devices, such as spot color, are applied in much the same manner as a 5-year-old putting on lipstick for the first time — messy and lots of it.

Students could also analysis the use of various formats or design features employed in newspapers or news websites. Students could go on the Newseum site of daily front pages from 193 papers from 27 countries and could compare differences in newspapers’ or websites’ uses of picture sizes, organization of sections, uses of certain fonts/typeface, the number of columns, mastheads, headlines, graphs, charts, and ads.

Students could analyze the quality of photojournalism on the Newseum site, “Photojournalist of the Month,” examining the photos of award-winning photojournalists.

For further reading:

Newton, J. H. (2001). The burden of visual truth: The role of photojournalism in mediating reality. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Genre features

Students could also examine the genre features employed in a news report. For example, while stories typically follow the traditional expository format of the “5-w’s”: who, what, where, when, and why, writers may employ narrative to frame their stories in an unfolding narrative sequence in an attempt to engage their audiences. Many reports often begin with setting the scene in which the reporter describes himself in the context of an event or story: “I’m walking down the street of a quiet, suburban neighborhood in which everyone knows everyone else. No one ever believed that one of their neighborhoods would have committed such a horrific crime.” This use of what Norman Fairclough (1995) describes as the “narrativization” of the news focuses more on the dramatic aspects of new events and less on analysis of ideas or larger institutional forces. However, newspapers readers often are more engaged with such stories, particularly because they are familiar with this genre format on television news, another instance in which television has changed the newspaper.

Essay: News as narrative/uses of narrative form

Drawing on their analysis of the narrative development in stories or novels, students could then analyze the story development techniques employed in news stories, which build around the dramatization of the unusual or extraordinary aspects of a news event. For example, they could determine how the story “sets the scene” through placing the events in a particular context or setting. They could then note the use of language such as repetition of words (“it was very, very dark that night”) or asides (you wouldn’t believe what happened next”)—devices employed by storytellers to build suspense in their audiences.
Lesson: Traci Garnder, Novel News: Broadcast Coverage of Character, Conflict, Resolution, and Setting

Writers may also employ the genre of the editorial or op-ed essay, or letters to the editor, as distinct from the news report/story. In doing so, a writer employs various genre features by clearly formulating an opinion or thesis regarding an issue and provide supporting evidence or data to support that opinion or thesis. Students could analyze the effectiveness or persuasiveness of an editorial in terms of the clarity and the quality of the argument. .

Students could also examine the degree to which an editorial or op-ed essay clearly formulate their argument and opinion, as well as providing supporting evidence or research. For example, some op-ed pieces formulate an opinion, but provide little evidence or research, assuming that their audience will simply respond to the opinions, as opposed to considering the evidence or research provided.

For newspaper editorials:

Headlinespot.com: Opinion/Editorials
Toad.net: Websites for Journalists

Webquest: writing editorials on the role of imperialism in Africa
Webquest: creating a newspaper on the Protestant Reformation
“You Be the Editor:” making editorial decisions about specific stories

Another genre includes the political cartoon. Students could analyze examples of political cartoons in terms of the techniques employed — exaggeration of physical features, visual portrayal of an issue, parodying of language/social practices, and portrayal of a certain attitude or stance:

Slate: Daryl Cagle’s Professional Cartoonists Index
The New York Times cartoons
Cartoonweb.com

Webquest: analysis of political cartoons

Studying the language use in news

Students could also study the use of language in news. Applying semiotic, poststructuralist, and critical discourse analysis, they could analyze the uses of:

• categories/labels to describe participants
  

• syntax: active vs. passive
  

• formal vs. informal verbal style
  

Writers also employ language or style in certain ways that reflects their orientation or objectivity. Writers may use metaphors or hyperbolic language to describe an event in a manner that represents a particular attitude toward s that event. For example, in writing about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, a writer may describe one side’s bombing or attack as an “incursion,” “deadly destruction,” or “massacre,” descriptions that reflect increasingly stronger beliefs or ideological orientations towards an event. Click here for a Webquest analysis of news coverage of different perspectives on the Arab/Israeli conflict.

Students could note patterns in the language use of a story and then infer the writer’s particular perspective or ideological orientation toward an event. This includes the types of categories or labels employed to describe participants. For example, in describing a protest march, a writer may describe the participants as “vocal protestors” or as an “unruly mob,” different categories reflecting different perspectives. They could also examine the uses of syntax, for example, writers' uses of the active versus passive voice. Writers who wish to portray participants an assuming an active role will place the participants in the subject/topic position. In reporting on a protest march, the writers may state that “The protestors charged the police line” to focus on the protestors as active agents. Or, they may state that “The police line was charged by the protestors” to emphasize the role of the police.

Students could study uses of language by creating their own parody of news articles similar to those found in The Onion, a parody of current news coverage.

Students could also infer the nature of the intended audiences in terms of the level of an audience’s sophistication or prior knowledge. Writers may include or omit certain information given their assumptions about their audiences. And, they could determine whether a writer is attempting to gain an audience’s identification with a certain beliefs or perspective.

For rhetorical analysis methods in analyzing the news:

Why and How One Would One Conduct a Rhetorical Analysis?
Rhetorica: Press-Politics Journal
Traci's 23rd List of Ten

Click here for resources on feminist rhetorical analysis.

Students could compare language use in the different stories about the same event. For example, tabloid or weekly newspapers may employ sensational/dramatic language, as compared to more “objective” language in mainstream newspapers. Students could compare the following two stories on an attack by an Islamic Jihad group on Israelis in Hebron that resulted in the deaths of 12 Israelis.

The first report appeared in The Sun, a British tabloid:

TWELVE Israeli civilians and soldiers were killed and 15 injured yesterday when Palestinian gunmen opened fire on people leaving a prayer meeting.
 
Extremists from the Islamic Jihad group also hurled grenades after worshippers left Sabbath prayers at a shrine in Hebron.
 
In the carefully planned ambush, soldiers rushing to their aid were also shot in a 90-minute fire fight. An Israeli spokesman said the Palestinians had carried out a “Sabbath massacre” threatening peace hopes.
 
The Israeli regional brigade commander was among the wounded.
 
Troops hunted for the terrorists, and TV reports said a gun battle erupted as soldiers surrounded a Palestinian home.
 
The Israelis were emerging from prayers in the Tomb of the Patriarchs, a shrine in central Hebron revered by both Muslims and Jews.
 
The gunfire came from a nearby hilltop area. Earlier this week a Palestinian gunman killed five people — including two young boys — on a West Bank kibbutz.

The second report was from The New York Times:

Israel Weighs Response After 12 Killed in Hebron Ambush
By JAMES BENNET
 
EBRON, West Bank, Saturday, Nov. 16 — Twelve Israelis were killed here Friday night when Palestinian snipers ambushed Jewish settlers walking home from Sabbath prayers and then attacked the policemen, security guards and soldiers who rushed to the rescue, the Israeli Army said.
 
In a gunfight that raged for more than three hours as Israeli rescue workers struggled to evacuate the wounded from a dusty, exposed alley, the commander of Israeli forces in this divided city was one of those killed. Fifteen people were wounded, hospital officials said. How many of the dead and wounded were civilians and how many were security forces was not clear early this morning.
 
After midnight, blazing white flares dropped by an airplane drifted over Hebron, illuminating the otherwise dark city. Sporadic gunfire echoed off the stone houses as soldiers in battle gear hunted the killers and their accomplices.
 
Soldiers shot dead at least three Palestinians whom they identified as the killers. Lit by the flashing lights of emergency vehicles, two bullet-riddled bodies lay in the dirt near the site of the ambush as soldiers continued to search nearby houses.
 
Bloody army gear, including a knapsack and a camouflage blanket, lay bundled to the side of the lane that became a killing field. A jeep belonging to the border police, its bulletproof windows cobwebbed by gunshots, was loaded onto a truck.
 
Over the mosque loudspeakers in Gaza City on Friday evening, Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack. Leaders of the group called it a blow against occupation and retaliation for Israel’s killing last week of Iyad Sawalha, a local leader of the group in the West Bank city of Jenin.
 
Israeli officials held the Palestinian leadership of Yasir Arafat responsible. "The pattern is very clear now," said Gideon Meir, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry. "Every time either an American emissary comes to achieve a cease-fire or Israel eases up on the conditions to make life easier for the Palestinian population, there is a terrorist attack. The Palestinian leadership is holding its own citizens as hostages in order to implement its political aspirations."
 
In an enclave surrounded by barbed wire, cement blocks and soldiers, about 450 Jewish settlers live inside Hebron, surrounded by 150,000 Palestinians.
 
The attack Friday night began on Israelis who live just outside Hebron, in the settlement of Qiryat Arba, the Israeli Army said. It started after they had finished praying at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, sacred to three religions as the tomb of Abraham.
 
In a small group, the worshipers walked under a bone-white moon from Hebron's Jewish enclave along a road that winds down into a gully planted with olive trees, still in the Israeli-controlled section of the city. The road then climbs uphill past Palestinian houses toward the gate of Qiryat Arba.
 
Accounts of the attack varied slightly. But Israeli officers here said that at 7:15, snipers began shooting from the gully, firing at the worshipers and at a border police jeep that was accompanying them.
 
As security guards rushed from Qiryat Arba, 200 yards away, the Palestinians fell back down the narrow alleyway, drawing their pursuers into what soldiers said appeared to have been a carefully planned trap. The guards came under withering fire and grenade attack from close range as they entered the alley, soldiers said.
 
Israeli soldiers, led by the local commander, arrived at the scene and also entered the alley. Officers here said that it was then that the force's commander was shot.
 
June Leavitt, a resident of Qiryat Arba, said her daughter, Miriam, 17, returned early from praying at the tomb on Friday evening. "She had a bad feeling," Mrs. Leavitt said.
 
She said the family had just sat down to eat when the gunfire erupted. "It took a long time to evacuate people, because there was a lot of fire," she said.
 
The Jewish area of Hebron was already marked with memorials to Israeli soldiers, settlers and visitors shot dead as they walked, prayed and played here. But this attack was the most lethal on Israelis in Hebron in the two-year-old conflict.
 
Israeli forces have repeatedly seized Palestinian areas of the city, only to withdraw eventually, to the settlers' consternation.
 
Just Friday morning, a senior Israeli military official said the army had succeeded in securing Hebron and other southern West Bank cities, and as a result was easing restrictions in those areas. "We succeeded to clean these cities of terrorists," he said, referring also to Bethlehem, Ramallah and Jericho. He said the army still needed to concentrate on the northern West Bank cities of Nablus and Jenin.
 
Israeli officials immediately labeled Friday night's attack the "Sabbath massacre." The killings evoked a notorious ambush in Hebron in 1980, also on a Sabbath eve, in which six Jews were killed.
 
Hebron has been a flashpoint for decades. In 1994, a doctor from Qiryat Arba, Baruch Goldstein, originally of Brooklyn, fired on Muslims at prayer there. He killed 29 and wounded 150 before he was beaten to death.
 
In 1929, Arab residents of Hebron went on a rampage against the city's small Jewish population, killing dozens. That riot began on a Friday afternoon and lasted into Saturday.
 
Early today, hours after the attack, officials said the Israeli Army conducted a helicopter raid on Gaza City, striking a metal shop. No injuries were reported.
 
Friday night's violence, the deadliest Palestinian attack in three weeks, came as Mr. Arafat's Fatah faction was in negotiations with the militant group Hamas to achieve a limited ban on suicide bombing. The ban would apply only to attacks within the pre-1967 borders of Israel, not to attacks on soldiers and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
 
But Islamic Jihad has not taken part in the talks, and leaders of the group interviewed Friday night said they rejected any such ban.
 
"We're going to continue resistance everywhere," Sheik Abdallah al-Shami, a political leader of Islamic Jihad, said by telephone from hiding in the Gaza Strip. "We are not committed to any kind of agreements."
 
He said of the Hebron attack, "We are congratulating the Islamic world — all Muslims — for such a successful operation."
 
Even Palestinians who oppose attacks in pre-1967 Israel overwhelmingly support attacks on settlers and soldiers in the West Bank, regarding such violence as lawful resistance to occupation.
 
Israel does not recognize such distinctions between its citizens on either side of the 1967 boundaries, and, officially, neither do Islamic Jihad nor Hamas, which consider all of Israel as occupied territory.
 
One of the most hard-line political leaders of Hamas, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, said on Friday night that Hamas would reject even a limited ban on killing. "All of it is Palestinian land, and all of the land is occupied," he said. "We're going to hit everywhere."
 
He added, "Why are our people being killed at the same time the Israelis are living in security in Haifa and Tel Aviv?"
Egypt has been mediating the factional talks, in hopes of achieving a bombing ban at least during the run-up to Israeli elections, which are planned for late January. Mainstream Palestinian officials have warned that violence now would help right-wing Israeli candidates.
 
Hamas and Fatah representatives met in Cairo this week. Saeb Erekat, a close ally of Mr. Arafat, said before Friday night's violence that it was "premature to jump to conclusions" about the talks, but he called them significant.
 
Also speaking before the Hebron attack, the senior Israeli military official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity, called the mere fact of the Cairo meeting "very important."
 
He said Egypt was eager to calm the conflict, hoping to douse one source of popular discontent in Egypt out of concern that the Bush administration would fan another one with a possible war on Iraq.

The story in The Sun emphasizes the bare-bones events of the killings; it also included two large photos of the events. In contrast, the New York Times story provided a sense of alternative versions of the event as reflected in the statement, “accounts of the attack varied slightly.” It also provided extensive historical and political contexts for the events. While these two stories reflect differences in audiences, they also reflect different code systems. The code system in The Sun’s coverage emphasizes a narrative recounting of events with little sense of the institutional forces shaping the event. The New York Times’s coverage emphasizes the competing institutional forces shaping the event, forces that its readers may have more knowledge of or interest in given their own institutional status/knowledge in society.

By analyzing language use, students can then determine writers’ rhetorical strategies and the underlying ideological orientation of a particular story as reflecting the larger perspective or bias of a newspaper or writer.

Activity: On-line Writing Role Play

To study rhetorical strategies employed in writing, students could participate in a writing role play at an on-line chat site such as nicenet.org or tappedin.org (see Module 1). Students select an issue that concerns them in the school context — for example, differences in funding of school athletics based on gender or the censoring of certain books/magazines. Or, they may organize a role play around a political campaign/election. They then assume certain roles associated with this issue or election. They then adopt a role and write messages or on-line messages targeted to other roles in an attempt to persuade them to support their position or cause. They can also write letters to the editor of the newspaper. At the end of the role play, a panel of students assuming the roles of school board members or voters make a final decision based on the messages they have received. Students adopt the roles of a television reporter and a newspaper reporter and seek to determine what is going on in the role play by posing questions of different roles and then posting summary “news flashes.”

The purpose of this activity is to provide texts for students’ analysis of writers’ use of rhetorical strategies and arguments within the context of a shared activity or community. Because they are familiar with that community as constructed through language, they can analyze how language is used to construct roles, establish status/power, gain alliances, seek others’ identification with one’s cause, influence actions, and project certain persona.

After completing the role play, they reflect on:

1. intentions or purpose in writing the message — what were you trying to say to your audience and what were you trying to do (the speech acts you were performing such as asserting a position, making a request, attempt to persuade, threatening, challenging, etc.).

2. perceptions of the intended audience you were addressing: their own purposes or agendas, status/power within the role play, alignments to groups, or beliefs in your ability to perform certain acts.

3. use of language/style to create a certain persona or role that would appeal to this intended audience (see the references to language use in the handout--the mock grant proposal for an inner-city ice cream stand.) This includes the use of various slogans or euphemisms — “big government,” “Washington,” “corporate greed,” “liberal,” “it’s your money, not the government’s,” “accountability,” etc.

4. use of rhetorical strategies to gain the intended audience’s support or identification with your cause/beliefs (establishing a shared relationship — “As a loyal constituent who has voted for you in the past . . . ; as someone who has made significant financial contributions to your campaign . . . ” This includes creating various categories that audiences may or may not identify with and then equating those categories with certain positive or negative practices. For example, “you the people” is used to seek identification with voters in opposition to “big government” whom people are supposed to dislike.

5. use of evidence or support for your arguments, opinions, or generalizations — the degree to which your arguments were valid and employed any supporting evidence versus misleading or distorted evidence.

6. the extent to which your messages did or did not influence or shape others’ actions, beliefs, or opinions and reasons for those effects.

7. which roles in the role play your perceived as assuming the most power or influence

Module 10: Word document

Newspaper or Print News

Teaching the News Itself

Analysis of Newspaper Sections and Functions

Differences in Types and Uses of News

On-line News

Web-based Political Lobbying

Weblogs

The Web and Politics

Editorial Perspectives

Newspaper Ownership

News Bias

A Teacher Teaches about Bias

Studying and Producing Classroom / School Newspapers

Television and Radio News

Characteristics of Television News

Selecting News Stories

Accuracy / Completeness of News Coverage

Television News Development

On-line Television News

Sports Coverage

Coverage of Political Issues and Campaigns

Creating a Television News Broadcast

Teaching Activity: Analysis of a Local News Broadcast

References