The Newspaper Medium

Newspapers serve different purposes and audiences. Read Chapter 17 and pages 469 to 476.
Complete Activity 1 and 2 on page 471.

Edited Copy

Your edited copy of the news articles need to be downloaded. The highlighted text in yellow means that this section needs reworking. This could be either spelling, sentence structure or rewriting the conclusion.

attempt-at-real-article
Ten of Australia
indesign-paper2
Libary staff at Marist Regional College are planning big things in March
lake Lane
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indesign newspaper mockup

Newspapers have limited space for advertising and news stories. In this exercise we are going to use the template provided to work out where to put the news stories written by yourself and the students in the class, where to put advertising, weather, the index and any other information that you would normally put in a newspaper.

http://intranet.mrc.tas.edu.au/Topics/Divisions/media/Pages/Templates.aspx

Indesign Tutorials

Please go to the following link and register in Acrobat so that you can download files.

https://acrobat.com/#d=bjfKd*QQaFuxgKJW5Lghrw

Writing the article

To help you write the news article, refer to Chapter 17 in your media book and pages 487 to 490. These pages will provide you with tips for writing a good story. Have your first draft prepared by class on Monday.

Writing a News Story

You can write just about anything to make it a news story. Today we took Kiahn Ryan as an example.  Kiahn gave us some details of what happened between a spider, her car and her family. From this we created a news story.

Who – Kiahn Ryan
What  – Kiahn did not put on hand brake after reversing car
Where – In home driveway, Howth
When  – Earlier this morning
Why/How – spider distracted her

Learner Drivers Narrow Escape

Seventeen year old Kiahn Ryan of Howth had a lucky escape this morning.  Kiahn a learner driver and high school student was practising her reversing out of the family driveway. Unfortunately, Kiahn was not alone as a potentially venomous spider dangled before her and distracted the young student. Kiahn was warned by her sister to get out of the car which she promptly did, however, she forgot to put on the hand brake. The car rolled backwards and as the sisters desperately yelled for help, Lisa Ryan, the girls’ mother was able to prevent a serious accident. Kiahn said that, “It was an awful experience” and suggests, “people regularly check for spiders.”

• We can take that same story but give it a different angle – this time concentrating upon the spiders

Spiders Infest Cars on Coast

An influx of venomous spiders believed to have arrived from South America on a barge have infested the cars of Howth residents.  There have been reports of several accidents involving cars and the spiders causing panic attacks. Local resident Kiahn Ryan nearly lost control of her car when a spider dangled before her causing her to panic, jump out of the car and forget to engage the handbrake. Spider expert, Blake Lang warned coasters to check for spider infestation and to report any sign of nests and eggs.

• The same story with different angles can fill up space in a newspaper.

Comparing Print Newspapers

The task we are looking at today is how various print newspapers place their stories and layout. To complete this task you will need to use the worksheet provided below.

newspapersurvey

Writing a News Article

In this assessment task you are going to write a news article that is based within the school. Click on the link below for full assignment details.

newsreport

Using Social Media to Report News

Task
Using the techniques of Who, What, Where, When and Why/How we will identify whether they have been used in the following online papers.
The Age,  The Advocate and The Guardian

Choose 3 stories from each paper and identify whether the 5 W’s have been used in the opening paragraph. If not when do they all appear. Underline where they appear.
You should be able to download the documents by Using Adobe Acrobat and converting to a PDF. Then you can us the underline tool in Acrobat to underline the 5Ws.

Social Media
Not only newspapers, radio, tv and online media report the news but also social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and blogs will contain news items. When Whitney Housten and Michael Jackson died, Twitter was the first media site with the news. Once you start observing media you will notice that we communicate messages all the time and the medium in which we communicate ranges from small pocket devices like mobile phones to ipads and computer screens to larger mediums like film. However, the public has much more access to create news than it did in the past. Anyone can write a blog and inform people about current events or general opinions. We will be looking at different ways of gathering news and comparing them to traditional forms of news gathering.

Writing Whitney Housten Story

Whitney Housten is what is called a story with legs. This story can just keep on running and newspapers, tv and online media can take all sorts of angles on the death of the singer to keep the story going.

The main story or when the story broke covered the five Ws. Who, What, Where, When and Why/How

The story starts with a Headline
Whitney Dead at 48

• Who – Whitney Housten (winner of 5 grammy awards died today)
• What – She Died at midday or early evening american time
• Where – A body guard tried to wake Ms Housten who was in the bath tub, but apparently already dead.
• When – On Sunday 12th Feb mid afternoon in downtown Los Angeles
• Why/How – Former Husband bobbi brown relationship sprialled into Drug Overdose  – Her career has been plagued by a failure to restablish herself as a singer.

A Tabloid Heading would read something like this:

• Drug Fuelled in Sleazy Bath Tub Death
• Distressed Whitney Ends Life
• Housten Parties Life Away
• Troubled Whitney drugged to death

Activity: Read a few online newspaper that are covering the Whitney Story. Grab the details.

Write a Headline and then two paragraphs (first paragraph covers the Who,What,Where,When,How and Why)

You can use these online newspapers to get the details.
The Age
The Australian
The Guardian (UK)
The Sun
The New York Times
The LA Times