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Over the course of the year I’m working with our school’s journalism elective class, helping the students bring the school magazine online and instructing in critical media literacy.

Sample lesson plans and tools follow.

IN THIS CLASS STUDENS WILL

 

  • Begin to understand the highly competitive nature of the mediabusiness today
     

  • Learn about people’s declining attention spans
     

  • Examine in the competitive environment what gets covered and what gets undercovered
     

  • Compare the differences in message/approach between print and online outlets of the same brands
     

  • Compare the differences between an establishment brand and anew media upstart
     

  • Probe on what is ethical/not ethical with approach of sensationalism/celebrityism
     

  • Learn what makes for a good headline online by comparing with print headlines

TITLE AGENDA GOES HERE

1. Do Now: Quiz,“The Challenge of Journalism,”and open response on amount of content available for consumption today

2. Review answers to quiz providing some context for lesson


3. Use student open responses to guide discussion about tactics (celebrity, etc.)


4. Ask students to break into pairs for 5 minutes and discuss what stories get under-covered and why -- 3 stories


5. Discuss ethics of story choice; do journalists have an obligation to do more than what's popular to the most people?
 

6. Look at different approaches of WSJ print and online and TIME print and online


7. Compare home pages of NYT and BuzzFeed


8. If there’s time, go into what makes a good headline online or

start next class with that

TITLE HOMEWORK GOES HERE

Read Time.com and BuzzFeed at least 3 times.
Compare and contrast their approach in general and to specific stories.

Please reload

Open Response
Whether or not you answered all the questions correctly clearly you get the idea that people are easily distracted and have a tremendous amount of content from which to choose.

Given that, what are some of the ways media sites try to grab readers?
Do you approve or disapprove of those methods?
Why?

Assignment for next online journalism class
Using time.com and buzzfeed.com, analyze how the two sites handle coverage of the same three events/topics: the Grammy Awards (Monday, Feb. 15th), the South Carolina Republican primary (which occcurs on Saturday, Feb. 20), and an event/topic of your choosing.

 

Compare and contrast the headlines, leads and the main idea of the stories. Explain the reaction you think the story is trying to generate in thereader and the word and image choices the sites use to create that response. You’ll receive a reading grade for your work.

Grammy Awards

Time headline:

Buzzfeed headline:

Analysis of lead, main idea, reader reaction, word and image choices:

 

 

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