Before you engage in discussion of these issues, make sure you understand what professional journalists consider the definition of news by completing the assigned reading in the following material posted in this week’s required reading:
⦁ “⦁ The Characteristics of News”
⦁ Chapter 1 of The News Manual
⦁ Chapter 65 in 21st Century Communication: A Reference Handbook and
⦁ Pages 5-8 of the Handbook of Independent Journalism.
Start by looking at what professional journalists at U.S. newspapers or U.S. broadcast and cable TV outlets have selected as the day’s news; you can find links to some major U.S. metropolitan newspapers under Course Resources > Webliography > General Journalism Resources.
Compare those headlines to the top news at sites like Yahoo News, Google News or the HuffPost.
Select three news stories and explain why they are news.
- Identify the news characteristic that was leveraged for the news angle in each story. Was it:
⦁ Timeliness
⦁ Impact
⦁ Proximity
⦁ Singularity or Oddity
⦁ Conflict or Controversy, or
⦁ Prominence?
- Identify the elements of news in each of your three stories by completing this worksheet for each one:
Headline:
Who:
What:
When:
Where:
Why:
How:
URL:
- Tie this information together by explaining why the story elements you identified made each one news.
- And if they’re news, connect what you concluded about the three news stories to your thinking about whether news media’s coverage of celebrities is too much, too little, appropriate, inappropriate, what?
- Make sure you support your explanation with information from the four assigned readings and the video listed above. Use in-text citations and a reference list in APA style or links like journalists would use in your post.
