Paper, Order, or Assignment Requirements

Paper 2: Reinventing Newspapers Analysis Chapter 8 deals with the newspaper industry. But just about every other chapter we have read so far has also covered topics that pertain to changes and challenges facing the newspaper industry, including fragmenting audiences, people’s expectation for new information 24 hours a day, heavy use of digital devices like tablets and smart phones, and the difficulty content providers have being profitable in this new world. This paper allows you to draw on all that you have learned so far to consider how well newspapers are succeeding in evolving in modern times. To complete this assignment, you must first spend about a week familiarizing yourself with a newspaper, including both the print and online editions. Examples of papers you could choose include the St Louis Post-Dispatch, The New York Times, and USA Today. However, if you have another daily newspaper you prefer, perhaps from a city you grew up in or where you follow a sports team, you may choose that one. It must be a mainstream, daily newspaper. A week or more before the paper is due, examine your newspaper’s website for ways that it is trying to interact with audiences. Look for ways in which it is encouraging audiences to receive and contribute to the site’s content as well as to interact with each other around its content. For example, there may be blogs, RSS or Twitter feeds, comment sections, mobile apps, or Facebook pages. Note which features are free and which are behind a paywall. Spend a week using the features and tools that are accessible to you. Don’t skip over this part; the more you actually carry out a hands-on examination of these techniques, the more you will have to say when it comes to writing your paper. Review at least one edition of the print edition. (Note: copies of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The New York Times, and USA Today are available free on campus to students.) Consider how the experience of reading the print edition differs from the experience of reading an online edition. Then, write an approximately 4-page paper about your experience. You should apply the principles and tools of media literacy in your analysis. Specifically, your paper should do the following: ▪ Include a brief introduction that previews your main points. ▪ Describe what features (e.g., a blog, an RSS feed) your newspaper offered its audiences online and which ones you experimented with. ▪ Describe the institutional purpose of these features. Why do you think each feature is being offered? That is, what do you think the newspaper company is hoping to gain or achieve by offering these features that they couldn’t achieve with a printed edition? What problem or issue is it intended to address? Are they all targeted to the same audience, and if not, which audience is each one targeted to? ▪ Describe the motivations of you and other target audiences in relation to news. That is, what are you and other potential users of news sites seeking from their news sources? What is most likely to motivate you to get news from this particular paper? ▪ Describe how well the newspaper’s features gratify those motivations. For example, to what extent did these efforts allow you to get closer to the news you want? To what extent did they extend your understanding of various sorts of news? Did the blogs or chat areas make you want to come back to the site more than you would if you hadn’t connected with them? In general, how successful were these features in creating bonds between you and the newspaper? ▪ Provide an evaluation of how successful you think these features are or will be in achieving financial success for the newspaper industry, which is struggling. In addition, how successful do you think these features are or will be in achieving the social function of the newspaper? That is, do you think they benefit the people and community in which the newspaper operates? ▪ Apply the concepts and theories covered in class to your analysis, and back up your points with details. Remember, there should be a point to what you are saying. Don’t tell us the newspaper allows reader comments or that there is a conversation area in the recipe section without telling us why that matters or what that means. Remember, the goal is to demonstrate what you have learned about the media in the 21st century and the newspaper industry specifically. ▪ Make reference to specific class concepts, referring to the book and using proper APA citation style to do so.