The Guide to Teaching
 |
Using Newspapers in the Classroom
Date: Fri, 26 Dec 1997 16:52:53 -0500 (EST)
From: mgroarke@email.gc.cuny.edu (Margaret Groarke)
I am going to take the risk of responding to this long ago thread, because
I was too busy to do so during the semester.
I do an exercise with my Introductory American Government class in
which we compare the coverage of various newspapers. I ask the students
to bring newspapers to class. Here in NYC, we have four English-language
daily newspapers, one in Spanish, and in the surrounding counties a few
others (from Long Island and Westchester). The Westchester papers mostly
belong to the Gannett chain, which gives us an opportunity to see what
that is like. I try to bring in the Washington Times and Post as well, so
that we have the very obvious political contrast they provide.
I group the students so that each small group has a few newspapers from
the same date, and ask them to take note of what stories got top billing in
each newspaper, what kinds of stories they are (political, crime, celebrity,
international ....) and how the coverage of each story differs from paper to
paper.
This allows us to discuss political slants, catering to different customer
profiles, selling newspapers with sensational headlines, the relative
absence of international and national political news in tabloids, the
influence
of corporate ownership on media, and depending on the news, a variety of
other things. I used to do this whenever I got to media in the semester, but
now I try to do it early on so that they will read the newspapers more
carefully throughout the semester.
I first got this idea from Lowi and Ginsberg's _Analyzing Government_
a supplement to their American Government textbook, and have adapted
it for classroom use.
Margaret Groarke
Graduate School and University Center
City University of New York
{ Top of Page }
Copyright for the messages in this section belongs to their author.
Teaching Politics is published by William J. Ball (ball@tcnj.edu)
