Journalism Class - Wednesday November 9

[jerusalem-s.livejournal.com]

The cat has a frog, Spider has his coffee and all's well with the world, apparently. Spider's sprawled behind his desk, bare feet resting on the blotter and his laptop propped on his legs.

"Morning, class. Today we have an interesting exercise as well as the announcement that I've decided to expand our activities a bit. There'll be some shifting of computers and other technology this weekend as I have this entire department to use and we've been more or less keeping to this room. I felt it might be more productive to change things around a bit. More on that later."

Lighting a cigarette for himself, he waved to the students. "Today I want you to choose an article from today's or yesterday's headline at the The New York Times website. Again, the login is jerusalem_s and the password is fandomhigh. Once you've chosen an article I want you to go on-line and search for two other articles on the same topic. Please be certain they are not merely re-postings of the same article, by the way. Compare all three articles as far as differences and similiarites. As a great many sources simply lift from the wire services, you will get more credit for this assignment if you choose independant reports."

Grinning, he concluded, "I want to hear what you think about the various reports, how they could have been improved on or what you might have said in their place."

Comments

[jerusalem-s.livejournal.com]

"It's an interesting fact that newspaper readers average in age around 53 years. It's a daily habit, an inexpensive one and one that keeps you well-informed... but if you don't keep up with it, you can miss things. You can gain a very clear picture of a historic event sometimes, by going back to the various newspapers of the day and seeing how each one reported it and continued to report and what the various viewpoints and baises say about not only the reporters but the prejudices of the time." Spider gestured with his cigarette. "However, picking up just one paper or just one article will leave you with just enough information to hurt yourself. A newspaper is meant to bring you the news... but there's rarely enough information included for true context."

He paused. "And that was probably more lecture on the topic than you needed, truthfully."