Grade 11 English Elective: The Newspaper Name .....................

Task 1: Write a short appreciation of a newspaper of your choice.

Sample Homework Response

The South-East Advertiser is a 64 page weekly, distributed freely to letterboxes in the east and south-east suburbs of Brisbane. It is a Quest Community Newspaper produced in Wynnum by editor Ray Lamberth. Discussion will centre on the 2nd July 1997 edition, Vol. 16 No 27.

I buy few newspapers now but I do enjoy perusing the Advertiser once a week as it reflects life in my part of the world and reports on local issues. I feel it offers more relevance than the dailies. I learn the national and international news from the electronic media but a time delay on local issues is less critical.

Two issues dominate local news: employment and environment. The lead story explores the effects of the privatisation of the Cannon Hill saleyards, an on-going news story in the area. Taking up equal space on the front page is an environmental story about regular flooding and silting up in a Hawthorne park. A male resident is photographed commenting on the ineffectiveness of Brisbane City Council flood mitigation works. Then the page 2 story concerns the allocation of more police to the area and page 3 features the environmental effects of expanding the Gabba cricket ground into the adjoining school grounds.

Health is always a major issue in such local papers: page 2 reports on the closure of a 44 bed nursing home, page 4 features a local resident's battle with spastic quadriplegia and page 5 gives news of a new cardiac service at Greenslopes Hospital. Three pages of Letters to the Editor follow, then come brief stories on safety, education and parking restrictions. Two pages of local events and news from local groups then precede a one-off three page advertising feature on Health and Beauty. The regular real estate colour feature occupies the next twelve pages and seven pages of Life Scene advertising spinoffs follow then. Pages 49 to 59 contain classified advertising and then three pages of Sport close the edition. The precious back page is one white goods advertisement.

Being free, The South-East Advertiser lives by advertising so it is not surprising to read so much advertising. More than half the paper is advertisements. Cynics might say it is advertising spiced with local news. Even the "news" articles relate to the local businesses or thinly disguises local products and services. The paper's masthead tells its purpose.

The Advertiser serves a wide local area and by its long survival apparently serves a community purpose well. Its Sidelines cartoon reflects its commercial concerns - Darren Grant dramatises poor figures in an Annual Report. Whether residents could all be better informed and represented in a paper with another kind of emphasis remains only in the realms of possibility as, seemingly, advertising power holds the community's wealth. #

485 words

-----------------

An appreciation is not a summary. The survey above is intended to show the proportion of items and to identify the values of TSEA. Percentage values could even be generated to show the weight of these proportions. Make sure your piece evaluates your chosen paper.