Learning task 3
Opinions in the newspaper
The editorial cartoon
See the Social and Political Cartoon Satire unit for a brief guide to reading editorial cartoons or Daryl Cagle's Professional Cartoonist's Index
for fuller studies and resources including guidance on the creation of cartoons or The Cartoon Web
for a large archive of political cartoons, caricatures and illustrations.
Stuff's Cartoon Gallery
contains current New Zealand cartoons for study. See also the excellent NZ Cartoons
for a cartoon of the day, together with archived artoons from NZ's top cartoonists.
Letters to the Editor
Look closely at the structure and organisation of two letters which interest you by answering these questions about it.
- What is the issue?
- Where do we become aware of the writer's attitude to the issue?
- Does the writer capture our attention at the beginning? How?
- How many points/arguments does the writer make in support of his/her opinion?
- Does the writer back-up each argument with evidence? Does the evidence comprise of facts, statistics, personal opinion, anecdote, use of other authority or other means?
- How does the writer separate one point from the next?
- How does the writer conclude? (A call for action? A question to leave the reader thinking? An emotive statement, ironically?)
Writing a letter to the editor
Brainstorm to establish a list of school and local community or national issues about which students feel strongly.
Draft a letter of about 200 words which outlines your point of view on one of these issues. Before writing a final draft, make sure you have the letter critiqued by a peer.
Write a final draft to be retained for when you create your newspaper later in the unit.
Creating your own newspaper
Form groups of 5-6. Each group is to produce a condensed newspaper -either a traditional print newspaper or an online paper. If the group decides on the latter, they should read Weblines
, the New York Times very thorough guide to the production of an online newspaper. They should also read some of these online newspapers from US high schools
.
Each group is responsible for the production of a two page newspaper. One page will be the front page and include news stories - along with the other features of the front page
. One page will be an opinion page and include an editorial, letters to the editor and an editorial cartoon. Your target audience will be Year 10 students.
Allocate the following roles to each group member. No matter what role you are allocated, you will be responsible for supplying to the sub-editor, an original news story and a letter to the editor, for inclusion in your newspaper.
Depending on
role (RTF 17KB)
allocation you may be the :
- the editor
- sub-editor
- designer
- photographer
- graphic artist
Writing news stories
Each of you is to write an original news story. Decide whether you are going to write the traditional news story (of the type you have studied) or whether you would like to try your hand at an alternative narrative style of news writing.
Decide on your story
- an issue (With thanks to Nigel Evans and Liz Cormack, Dominion Evening Post)
- or
- an event (eg incident in your school or community - accident, sports game, cultural event, altercation in the classroom or playground, profile of a student or teacher).
Research your story
Gather all the information you will need to write your story by:
- interviewing people involved, witnesses, "experts" on the issue and other sources you can identify
- finding out any background information you can from your library, the internet, local newspapers.
Write your story
- Keeping in mind the language and structure of new stories studied so far and heeding this advice to budding journalists (with thanks to Nigel Evans and Liz Cormack, Dominion/Evening Post), write the first draft of your news story.
- Before writing a final version of your story (prior to submission to your sub-editor for final editing) make sure you proof-read it and use a dictionary to check any spelling about which you are unsure.
Package your story
- Try to include a photograph to accompany your story. First, look at this information about news photographs. If you are producing an online newspaper also check out this information on digital photography
. Work with your sub-editor to format and present your story and news pages in the most effective manner possible by noting the tips in How to Train Editors Who Design.
Evaluating your story
-
Working in pairs, use the
assessment (RTF 57KB)
to decide upon whether your partner will gain no credit, credit, merit or excellence for his/her story.
Submit your story to your sub-editor for final editing (and then to your teacher for assessment).
Publishing stories/newspapers
You can submit individual stories to:
