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Welcome to the Year 11 Term 2: Newspaper Unit.
This unit will prepare you to critique newspaper genres like columns, editorials, cartoons, feature articles and news reportage, and to write a column.
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Week 1. What is a newspaper?
Select a newspaper and give an appreciation of it. (Refer to its layout, size, political views, appeal it has for you, favourite cartoonist, columnist, etc.) 200 words Click for model.
2. Photo-journalism (Pearman and Jones p. 47.)
Exercise 2: Photograph analysis worksheet. 8 questions. Critique a press photo.Click for model.
3. The topical Cartoonist (Pearman 42).
Exercise 3: Critique one topical cartoon. 300 words. See model.
4. Newspaper writing style
5. Professional issues
Exercise: Writing Task short report on one topic above. (150 words)
6. Write a column on a topic from the list. e.g law & order. Click for Advice.
7. Exam: Write a column of 500 words for a mainstream paper on an item of topical interest.
References
1. Name five world famous newspapers.
2. Name three significant persons in the history of newspapers and say why they are notable.
4. Name three qualities of a prize winning press photo.
5. Name three qualities of an excellent political cartoon.
6. What role does an Editorial have:in a paper? In the community?
7. What is defamation?
8. What duties do newspapers owe their advertisers?
9. List items in a journalist's code of ethics.
10. In what year did newspapers first appear
in Qld........... NSW................ VIC................NT................... TAS.................
11. Name major owners of Australian newspapers.
12. Does a paper have its first duty to its readers or its shareholders? What are some implications of your answer?
13. Would you agree that layout and selection of items is implied opinion about the relative importance of news items and that the Editorial is expressed opinion? Why?
advocate for the rights of individuals? Yes / No? Why? propose parliamentary changes? . . challenge readers . . suppress important facts . . set a high tone for debate . . incite racial hatreds . . proselytise for particular religions . . express minority views . . carry out surveys of public opinion . . act as judge and jury in criminal matters . . organise social events . . fight for the freedom of the press . . defend its own record Yes / No? Why? comment on the news? . . provide frameworks for understanding the news . . nurture enlightened values . . bring down a government . . repeat parish pump gossip . . interpret the course of a debate . . demean the reputation of Royalty . . indicate preferred foreign policy directions . . be strictly accurate . . reveal the addresses of leading citizens . . act as a voice for the ruling class . .
Newspaper Elective Second
Quiz:
Editorials
Role of newspapers in societ
Several reprints including Jefferson's views
Law and order:
"Police track troublemakers in security blitz on railways""Too soft on criminals" The Courier Mail Editorial 13/7/97
Unemployment
Knight's cartoon on Mars Pathfinder and Howard's search for jobs
The Constitution Convention
"The Bleak Picture" cartoon The Weekend Australian 14/2/98Nicholson's camel cartoon 14/2/98
Management in the Television Industry
Errol Simper column "Same tent, different ringmaster" 8/11/97
Lifestyle and Health Issues
Jill Margo "Take a deep breath . . .for life" 31/1.98Jill Margo "Wearing the pants ..." 28/2/98
Civil Rights
Martin Thomas " Of Easter pageants and farces" CM 2/3/98.
Critique a columnist 1
Achilles Heel column by Jill Margo 31/1/98
In her regular column, "Achilles Heel" Jill Margo addresses critical issues in leading a lifestyle. In her Weekend Australian column of January 31st, she offered a thoughtful reflection on the role of our lungs, even claiming that apart from other diseases, their health would be a predictor of longevity. The style is straightforward and the vocabulary simple for most readers. The catchy headline and the byline pick up her theme that sensible living with exercise and will lead to a longer life. She has an optimistic tone and offers advice that everyone could heed.
I enjoyed finding this article. It is amazing that we even need to be told how to manage our bodies yet the advice is so simple. This is a good example of lifestyle journalism. I will read her column in subsequent weeks.
Critique a columnist 2: Sample Answer
Critiqueing Errol Simper's column "Same tent, different ringmaster" in The Weekend Australian 8/11/97
Simper's column this week explores the effects of the dismissal of Channel Ten's expert programmer Ross Platt. Simper bemoans the sacking, showing that a change of policy rather than personnel is what is needed there. He has hopes for more from TV than its advertising agenda and so highlights the media with circus metaphor in his catchy headline.
Simper makes much of the central point that commercial television is driven by advertising and the shareholders' agenda. He even typifies TV as unbroken chains of commercials ... broken by "little slots of programming." This is the reverse of what viewers typically want and tune in to TV for however. It is good to be reminded I guess what the bottom line really is "when all the hyperbole and rhetoric is stripped away."
Programming, he says in Platt's defence, is a risky business: complaints about it come from many sides, it is financially risky and yet TV is meant to be for pleasing people. Simper's mocking tone takes the side of management for once to belittle the role of the programmer. It seems their decisions are of no consequence in the real agenda of TV - whether it be bland entertainment, a silly film or the fourth repeat of a series. "What brutal decisions these people must make!" he cries in mock horror. Yet the viewer must suffer what the company allows the programmer to screen within restricted budget. It is not the programmer's fault and so he take's Platt's side against Ten's management decision.
The details of Platt's policy approach is then explored: he is guilty apparently for pursuing an older more critical audience that TEN normally attracts, he preferred harmony rather than conflict and finally and even more difficult to rebut, he did not share the culture of the channel where he worked. Simper finds plenty of evidence for guesses about real reasons for dismissal in CEO McAlpine's comments in a interview in a Sydney newspaper. Programming in the circus world of media is all about money.
Finally in defence of Platt, Simper highlights some of his successful decisions, such as News at 5 p.m. which still rates well. That Channel Ten was only third on the national ratings in the previous week shows how serious Platt's loss to Ten is. In a final shot, Simper snipes that a mediocre third will probably suit McAlpine anyway - indicating that excellence is not important at Ten.
This regular columnist shows he has inside knowledge. He avoids taking the high moral ground like saying what TEN could achieve but simply implies that it could do better. Taking sides with Platt, he believes he sides with excellence. But he knows that TV is a circus driven by faceless Canadian financiers and that his cry for better will not be heard. This depressing tone is clearly conveyed to the reader. Whether readers can act on it (like calling for Platt's reinstatement, or protesting to TEN or not tuning in), is very unlikely. In effect it's policy not personnel that count, and policies remain fixed. #
544 words G. Smith 17/2/98
Tips for Writing a Critique
1. Give the source details: author, newspaper, date of publication.
2. Summary of the content of the whole column; overview its chief points; simply restate its central point.
3. Interpretation: Offer background on the issue selected. Comment on the craft of writing, the tone adopted, the worth of examples and any solutions offered, the choice of vocabulary, offer suggestions where clarity is needed, comment on the relevance of the discussion today.
4. Evaluation: Offer how it impacts on you, your opinion of its views, offer a rating of its worth to the reader of that newspaper, suggest how typical it is of that columnist or of that paper, situate the views along a spectrum of possible views on this topic, offer likely implications, outcomes or results of the views expressed.
G. Smith 1998
Review the columnists we've read this time for structure. Notice how:
Only in editorials, reviews and bylined columns are writers permitted to state their personal opinions.
A COLUMN
A column is a piece of writing usually expressing the opinion of the columnist - who's identified by byline and often by photo as well.
Some columnists always write on the same general area (e.g. politics, finance): others touch many bases. Sometimes a columnist chooses to do an interview or write a feature or a profile, rather than express a view.
(Education Online) (NIE Online)
Write your own column:
G. Smith 1998
Sample column on War crimes trials
A column is not an
editorial! Column Editorial singular voice; uses the personal "I" Uses plural: voice of the newspaper company allows personal interests, personal agenda permitted "in the public interest"; high moral tone; aiming for the
common good appeals, coaxing, cajouling "reasonable" tone; logic unPC but in good taste PC; mindful of sensitivies longer in length; longer paragraphs short; pithy; to the point;
Writing a column on the law and order issue
1. Summarise the incident(s) that set you thinking about the issue.
2. Explain the background/question the actions, motives/correctness of procedure, etc.
3. Link the incident to your opinion. Outline it more fully
Justify it. Persuade readers of its reasonableness, rightness in the circumstances
Apply it to today's society/readers' world.
4. Think up a suitable HEADLINE for your column.
5. Before writing: Clarify what issue and aspect are you focussing on:
A- Grade Sample Student Response:
Feeling safe on Brisbane's streets
by guest columnist Steve Dunn
Enough is enough. The public has a right to feel safe. The Queensland population these days is fed up with a legal system which all too often disregards the victim and lets the criminal off with just a slap on the wrist.
After the horrific fatal stabbing of a police constable in Sydney last week, the need for knives and other such weapons to be outlawed has become increasingly apparent. The sooner the anti-knives amendments to the Weapons Act are passed through Parliament, the sooner the people of Queensland will feel safe.
The outcry over this issue by women's self-defence groups and the Council for Civil Liberties has been enormous. Both movements are of the opinion that the proposed legislation is too optimistic and that it will be ineffectual. They believe that in addition to the fact that it will be widely ignored by criminals, it will also inconvenience law-abiding citizens.
It makes you wonder why groups like these feel the need to carry a knife or any concealed weapon for that matter to feel safe. If a woman or indeed anybody wishes to feel safe walking along the street, there are plenty of safer and more suitable alternatives to carrying a knife. Why not keep a can of maize or pepper spray? Or how about a high decibel help whistle? Then there is of course the obvious self defence courses or martial arts. Any of these options are far better than a knife which can often simply worsen a situation.
Another group of people affected by the legislation are property owners and rural Queenslanders. It is the opinion of this columnist that it could be absolutely ludicrous to expect farmers to surrender their knives. The legislation should be carefully worded so as to exempt farmers or at the very least give them special consideration.
The primary focus of the anti-knives amendments should be to combat the decreasing number of youth and gangs on the streets carrying weapons. Police officers patrolling the streets under the legislation should have the right to confiscate any knives from anybody if they see a reason for it.
Tougher penalties are also another step in the right direction of feeling safe on our streets. The youth crime rate is escalating in Queensland because minors know that under the current law, they are virtually untouchable. Police are powerless to stop them. The sooner the proposed legislation is passed through the parliament, the better off the citizens of Queensland will be.
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Notes by marker
Model Answer to Newspaper Unit Exam 11/8/97
This press photograph from The Courier Mail strives to make a clear point: the police are cracking down on crime on the Queensland Railways. The photo is taken from the point of view of a passenger alighting from a carriage in familiar Roma Street Station where, it is implied, one could be confronted by a search-and-enter police dog and its trainer and a mounted policewoman backing him up since she busily fills the background within the frame of the door.
The overall impact is intended to deter would-be offenders and reassure readers that the police have created safety for passengers. Cranitch's craft could make readers feel that the Qld police will protect rail travellers by selecting an angle upwards, looking up to the police, to create the impression of their dominance. Their serious expressions and postures are daunting and are intended to suggest a seriousness about this task.
Clearly the photo has only temporary effect as one realises that horses are not likely on city platforms and that such forms of security can be only thinly spread. The photo verges on the melodramatic.
TIP Use the technical terms: cropped, angled, framed, etc. Don't just describe - critique.
The Sunday Mail editorial of 13th July is heavy on rhetoric and thin on facts, appropriate to lazy readers on a Sunday morning. Entitled "Too soft on criminals" it plays on a clichéd theme that the law is not effective and protects criminals. The tone is pompous and the point of view is one-sided.
Drawing an absurd comparison between a zero crime policy in the world's great metropolis New York and the quiet Gold Coast suburb of River Downs, the editor suggests that the crime rate can be lowered to almost nil. The writer needs a more factual approach to prove such a point however. Although the current crime rate would concern readers, the Editorial offers very little in terms of a lawful solution by implying that vigilantes are best.
Evaluate its effect on readers. Assess its tone. Don't just summarise - critique!
Critiquing a political
cartoon
SAMPLE 1: "The Floundering Fathers" appeared in The Weekend Australian 14-15/2/98.
The Bleak Picture.
It is conventional to photograph participants at great events, and this cartoon shows the taking of the closing photograph of delegates to the recent Constitutional Convention as an opportunity to comment on its apparent success.
Participants and photographer (in traditional hood behind the tripod saying "Say Cheese..") appear on the unmistakable steps of Old Parliament House topped by the current Australian flag not standing in neat rows but splattered about the steps in considerable disarray. While the traditional stability and harmony of the 1930s style building frames the cartoon, the unseemly action lies on the steps where arguing, fighting and exhaustion by the delegates is demonstrated. No one will stop even for this picture of themselves but they continue regardless. History will record that they appeared but could not deliver.
The cartoonist's view is clear: the expensive Convention has produced few agreed models for presentation to the people's vote. In his view, Canberra again lives up to its reputation for producing a lot of hot air. Within its safe and traditional environment, their debate seems sterile and fruitless. The cartoonist highlights a widespread disappointment: just as our Founding Fathers founded Federation last century, this convention, promising to be a one for Founding Fathers for the 21st century, ended with a whimper and its participants could well be dubbed The Floundering Fathers.
The cartoon's message is clear; in may respects, the Convection did flounder because the people's direct vote for President was over-ruled. The prospect is indeed a Bleak Picture. (258 words)
G. Smith 23/2/98
Response to a political cartoon 2
Nicholson's five humped camel cartoon appeared in The Weekend Australian 14-15/2/98.
It portrays ARM President Malcolm Turnbull presenting PM Howard with the outcome of the recent Constitutional Convention. It is not a straightforward proposal but a five humped camel. Constitutional President Sinclair and Vice-President Barry Jones look on, amused and bemused.
The background is that the Convention was set up to propose a model to the Prime Minister to put to the people for ratification at a plebiscite. But the outcome is not one but five models. Again the saying is proved true: "Ask a committee and get a camel." Turnbull comes out a good servant of Howard as was the case in fact. Nicholson goes further however and pokes fun at Howard himself for being something of a camel: a Yes and No PM. He is depicted with big feet, two humps and elongated hose and face bristling with camel hair. He says: "I'll take it but it looks a bit like a camel." He should know - it takes one to know one!
I found Nicholson's cartoon witty and light-hearted. It focuses on the outcomes of the Convention. The prospect looks bleak indeed with a indecisive PM how having to decide the outcome were the elected participants could not.
G. Smith 23/2/98
SAMPLE 3: Critique one topical cartoon. 300 words Sample Answer
I have chosen to discuss Leihy's topical cartoon in The Australian dated.....
For once his cartoon is printed in colour which emphasises its importance to the readers as it acts like a photo placed high on the page and attracting attention to itself. A parody figure of John Howard returns from the lurid green crease at Lords after batting. A small crowd of Aboriginal protesters watch and heckle as they hold placards demanding he apologise. He takes no notice nor would we expect him to as, like every dismissed batsman, he seems preoccupied on his return to the pavilion.
Leihy has here hit the spot with a humorous poke at John Howard's overseas trip billed by the local press as no more than a cricket junket. Howard looks incongruous, craggy, small and ineffective within the vastness of the green oval and the classiness of Lords. By parodying our PM this way, Leihy carries on the tradition of political satire. Howard's silence in the face of overwhelming popular demand for an apology to the Aboriginal nation is here well satirised in the context of the overseas trip where he was conspicuously absent from the World Environment Conference in New York where other world leaders made pledges. Australia's special pleading to delay on environment controls is hinted at by Howard's incongruity on a green playing field.
SAMPLE 4. Knight's cartoon uses that day's news of the Mars Pathfinder mission to reflect on Australia's unemployment problem. The cartoon depicts John Howard's face on a renamed Jobs Finder Mission on a barren landscape littered by boulders and a trackless waste. Knight's clear message is that Howard's policy is as fruitless as the landscape. In case readers may not grasp the point, a talk bubble by the cartoonist clarifies this point.
Knight's humour achieves its goal in a provocative comment about the barrenness of current government policy. Howard comes from nowhere and his troubled expression shows he is lost. His small mission is dwarfed by his landscape. The cartoon is topical, appealing and intensely visual, including details of the machine and the newly discovered Twin Peaks. The cartoon is well constructed and very successful - no reader could miss the point.
Appreciate the cartoonist's craft: go beyond describing - explore the analogy, evaluate its effectiveness. Make judgements.
The well known strip cartoon, "Bustards of the Bush" (The Australian, ?January 1993), represents Prickly Pear (Paul Keating) in an intimate phone conversation like Charles and Camilla.
Using predictable endearments, Keating consoles the unemployed. But when the Daily Warbler newspaper publishes the captured conversation, Keating is furious. His tape recording has been found and his privacy has been breached. He is angry that his own affair with the unemployed (whom as leader of the ALP he is supposed to represent) is revealed. The cartoonist makes a powerful point not only about the risks public figures face about breach of privacy but about the party's drift away from its traditional constitutency, those needing protection in society. The clear and topical similarities with Camillagate are not lost on readers. His language is appropriately familiar and domestic yet the issue is public and topical (the invasion of telephone privacy). The cartoonist has focussed on a widely felt political perception with satirical effectiveness.
One hazard of public life is private exposure. But, the cartooon implies, it is worse to lose one's perception as a caring individual. Interestingly, newspapers do not take the high moral ground to protect such public figures and seem to accept that such breaches are inevitable and a fact of modern life. They retain the right to print such scurrilous "facts" pleading it is in the public interest and so are driven by sheer commercial interest.
The criteria stress Content, Structure, Language and Presentation.
1. Review all your corrected work and note where improvements must be made.
Make sure you have completed answers on the following:
2. Review the video "Reading between the Lines No 2: Analysing the stories inside a newspaper" and its worksheet distributed.
Review your notes taken on comments there by Claude Forrell, John Kelly, Peter Weineger, Vitali Vitaliev, Paul Burgoyne, & Kevin Childs.
3. Compare the features of examples of: news stories, feature stories, columnists, and running stories.
ASSIGNMENT
Grade 11 English: Newspaper Elective 1998
Assume you are a guest columnist for an Australian capital city daily.Review the three sources attached ("Police blitz" The Courier Mail 5/7/97, "Too soft on criminals" Sunday Mail Editorial 13/7/97 and "Law and order on a knife edge" The Courier Mail Editorial 3/3/98) and write your column clearly expressing your opinion on an issue within the law and order debate. Strive to be reasonable, constructive and informative.
Written by G. Smith November 1998
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