>>> Activity module 1:

Getting started >>>

Background

I. Study the front pages of the two newspapers and discuss the questions below.

● What do the pages have in common?

● In what way are the pages different?
● Which of the newspapers is a tabloid and which is a broadsheet?
● What are the distinctive features of tabloids and broadsheets in Britain?

II. Work in pairs and match each type of a newspaper article to the definition:

1) column a) an opinionated story written by a

prominent journalist
b) a long, more in-depth article

2) editorial c) a regular feature often on a specific

topic, written by the same person who is
known as a columnist

3) op-ed d) an article written by, or on behalf of,

an editor, giving the news
organization’s opinion on an issue
 Unit II Journalism Today: News Values

4) leader
5) feature article e) an article written by the editor or a
specialist giving the opinion of the
newspaper on an issue and published on
the front page

Practice

I. Comment on the following graph. Remember to:

● say what is the subject-matter of the graph

● what trend it illustrates
● give possible reasons for the trend
● explain possible consequences of the trend

II. Work in a group and name possible problems and issues each of the
newspaper types is facing in different countries, give reasons why.

III. Scan the article and compare your answers with the author’s.

Are Newspapers Dead or Adapting in the Age of Digital News?

by Tony Rogers
Updated January 28, 2019

Are newspapers dying? That’s the raging debate these days. Many say the demise
of the daily paper is just a matter of time—and not much time at that. The future of
journalism is in the digital world of websites and apps—not newsprint—they say.

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 Unit II Journalism Today: News Values

But wait. Another group of folks insists that newspapers have been with us for
hundreds of years, and although all news may someday be found online, papers have
plenty of life in them yet.
Newspaper circulation is dropping, display and classified ad revenue are drying
up, and the industry has experienced an unprecedented wave of layoffs in recent years.
A third of the large newsrooms across the country had layoffs between 2017 and April
2018 alone. Big metro papers such as the Rocky Mountain News and Seattle Post-
Intelligencer have gone under, and even bigger newspaper companies such as the
Tribune Company have been in bankruptcy.
Gloomy business considerations aside, the dead-newspaper people say the internet
is just a better place to get news. “On the web, newspapers are live, and they can
supplement their coverage with audio, video, and the invaluable resources of their vast
archives,” said Jeffrey I. Cole, director of USC's s Digital Future Center. “For the first
time in 60 years, newspapers are back in the breaking news business, except now their
delivery method is electronic and not paper.”
Yes, newspapers are facing tough times, and yes, the internet can offer many
things that papers can’t. But pundits and prognosticators have been predicting the death
of newspapers for decades. Radio, TV, and now the internet was all supposed to kill
them off, but they’re still here.
Contrary to expectations, many newspapers remain profitable, although they no
longer have the 20 percent profit margins, they did in the late 1990s. Rick Edmonds, a
media business analyst for the Poynter Institute, says the widespread newspaper
industry layoffs of the last decade should make papers more viable. “At the end of the
day, these companies are operating more leanly now,” Edmonds said. “The business
will be smaller and there may be more reductions, but there should enough profit there
to make a viable business for some years to come.”
Years after the digital pundits started predicting the demise of print, newspapers
still take significant revenue from print advertising, but it declined from $60 billion to
about $16.5 billion between 2010 and 2017.
And those who claim that the future of news is online and only online ignore one
critical point: Online ad revenue alone just isn’t enough to support most news
companies. Google and Facebook dominate when it comes to online ad revenue. So
online news sites will need an as-yet undiscovered business model to survive.
One possibility may be paywalls, which many newspapers and news websites are
increasingly using to generate much-needed revenue. The 2013 Pew Research Center
media report found that paywalls had been adopted at 450 of the country's 1,380 dailies,
though they won't replace all the lost revenue from shrinking ad and subscription sales.
That study also found that the success of paywalls combined with a print
subscription and single-copy price increases has led to a stabilization—or, in some
cases, even an increase in revenues from circulation. Digital subscriptions are growing.
"In the age of Netflix and Spotify, people are coming around to paying for content
again," wrote John Micklethwait for Bloomberg in 2018.
Until someone figures out how to make online-only news sites profitable (they've
also suffered layoffs), newspapers aren't going anywhere. Despite the occasional
scandal at print institutions, they remain trusted sources of information that people turn
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to to cut through the clutter of (potentially fake) online news or for the real story when
social media outlets show them information on an event slanted in any number of ways.

IV. Scan through the article and figure out the meaning of the media terms in
bold. Use a dictionary of necessary.

V. Read the article again and summarize what it says about the mentioned
• Problem
• Reasons
• Evidence (supporting one of or several reasons)
• Solutions
• Consequences

VI. Read the article again, find and explain

● Reasons why print newspapers are not dead

● Reason why old newspapers published online may not survive

VII. Work in pairs and discuss newspapers which you read online.

● Give examples of newspapers which exist online only / both online and in
print / in print only
● Give reasons why newspapers go online
● Express your opinion on the trend

Follow-up

VIII. Split into three groups and analyze a newspaper of

your choice using the following plan:

● Type of newspaper: tabloids/broadsheets;

● Country where the newspaper is published and its main rivals;
● Newspaper structure: types of stories and columns with brief description
and examples:
● Online version of the newspaper (if any): differences and similarities
between online and print versions of the newspaper;
● Most popular / top / most read stories of the newspaper, reasons why;
● Your favorite kind of read in the newspaper, reasons why;

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● The future of the newspaper.

VIII. Work in a group: compare your presentations of the chosen

newspapers according to the plan:

● What do the newspapers have in common?

● In what way are the newspapers different?
● Which of the newspapers has a better future, why?

>>> Activity module 2:

Writing headlines >>>

Background

I. Work in a group and discuss the following questions.

● Why are newspaper headlines important?

● What makes newspaper headlines special?
● Do you find it difficult to read headlines in English? Explain why/why not.

II. Look at the headlines below and decide which one came in a broadsheet and
which one in a tabloid.

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 Unit II Journalism Today: News Values

Practice

I. Read the guidelines on writing newspaper headlines and discuss how they
are followed in the examples above.

The Secret to Writing Great Headlines for Your News Stories

By Tony Rogers
Updated October 07, 2019

Writing great news story headlines is an art. You can bang out the most interesting
article ever written, but if it doesn't have an attention-grabbing headline, it's likely to be
passed over. Whether you're at a newspaper, news website, or blog, a great headline (or
"hed") will always get more eyeballs on your copy.

Guidelines for Writing News Headlines

Be Accurate

This is most important. A headline should entice readers, but it shouldn't oversell or
distort what the story is about. Always stay true to the spirit and meaning of the article.

Keep It Short

This seems obvious; headlines are by nature short. But when space limitations aren't a
consideration (as on a blog, for instance), writers sometimes get verbose with their heds.
Shorter is better.

Fill the Space

If you're writing a headline to fill a specific space in a newspaper, avoid leaving too
much empty space at the end of the head. This is called "white space" and it should be
minimized.

Don't Repeat the Lede

The headline, like the lede, should focus on the main point of the story. However, if the
hed and the lede are too similar, the lede will become redundant. Try to use different
wording in the headline.

Be Direct

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Headlines aren't the place to be obscure; a direct, straightforward headline gets your
point across more effectively than something overly creative.

Use the Active Voice

Remember the subject-verb-object formula for news writing? That's also the best model
for headlines. Start with your subject, write in the active voice, and your headline will
convey more information using fewer words.

Write in Present Tense

Even if most news stories are written in the past tense, headlines should almost always
use the present tense.

Avoid Bad Breaks

A bad break is when a hed with more than one line splits a prepositional phrase, an
adjective and noun, an adverb and verb, or a proper noun. For example:

Obama hosts White

House dinner
Obviously, "White House" should not be split between the two lines. Here's a better
way to do it:

Obama hosts dinner

at the White House

Make Your Headline Appropriate to the Story

A humorous headline may work with a lighthearted story, but it most definitely
wouldn't be appropriate for an article about someone being murdered. The tone of the
headline should match the tone of the story.

Know Where to Capitalize

Always capitalize the first word of the headline and any proper nouns. Don't capitalize
every word unless that's the style of your particular publication.

II. Study the headlines below and answer the following questions:
● Which of the following kinds of words are omitted from the headlines? (Articles,
auxiliary verbs, main verbs, nouns, pronouns, etc.)
● Which of the following verb forms are used? (To+ infinitive, present simple,
present participle, past participle, etc.)

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 Unit II Journalism Today: News Values

● Which of the following are used? (Abbreviation, commas, full stops, exclamation
marks, etc.)

III. Study the headlines below and complete their simple-language explanations:
Seven out of ten people who ....
positive for ... ... show any
symptoms

The closure of Nissan’s factory …

thousands of ...

More than 1,500 people ... when the

Titanic ...

IV. Study the headline words in Appendix and match the underlined words in the
sentences (1-5) to their meanings (a-e):

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 Unit II Journalism Today: News Values

1 Google, in Post-Obama Era, a to replace

Aggressively Woos Republicans

2 Soaring government debt is now b large quantity that has been

inevitable. It’s nothing to fear stolen

3 Donald Trump confirms US will c to try to win the favour of

quit Paris climate agreement

4 Tory MP launches attempt to oust d to leave

John Bercow as Speaker

5 Singapore seizes record haul of e to increase dramatically

smuggled elephant ivory

V. Work in pairs and make headlines from the following sentences:

1. A man took his first steps on the surface of the moon today
2. Donald Trump severely criticized a prominent television host on Tuesday
3. The Canadian Prime Minister is going to support financially unemployed
workers

VI. Study language devices and journalistic tools used in headlines and complete the
table with the examples below:
● Their royal heilness
● To Brexit, or not to Brexit, that is Britain's question
● Bears’ brekkie blagged by blonde
● Obama rips Trump

Language device Example More examples

Play on words Barack four more (four sounds
use of a word with more than like “for” preposition as well as
one meaning or that sounds like the number 4 as four year
another word president term)

Cultural reference Populists living in a fool’s

paradise (the idiom form
Shakespeare’s Romeo and
Juliet)

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 Unit II Journalism Today: News Values

Alliteration Man makes massive

the use, especially in poetry, of maritime menagerie
the same sound or sounds,
especially consonants, at the
beginning of several words that
are close together

Emphatic language 'Unacceptable': UN committee

Words which have a stronger damns Australia's record on
effect human rights

Follow-up

VII. Split into groups. Read the stories and make a broadsheet / tabloid
headline for each of them.
1) Facebook and YouTube were severely criticized yesterday for falling on fake
news and offensive content.
2) A Muslim convert has been imprisoned for at least 15 years for planning a terror
attack in which he hoped to kill at least 100 people in Oxford Street.
3) Prince William promised to take a stand against slum landlords yesterday as he
visited one of the most deprived streets in Britain with his wife Kate.

VIII. Work in groups. Imagine that you are a reader / editor,

compare and contrast the headlines you have written by answering
the questions below.

● Which of the headlines sound more appealing? Why?

● Which headlines would you put on the front page of a newspaper?
● If you were the editor of a popular daily, which would be your lead story?
● How do you think the stories continue?

>>> Activity module 3:

Media Bias >>>

Background

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 Unit II Journalism Today: News Values

I. Read the following information about opinion-based and fact-based

articles and discuss the journalistic values of each.

Opinion based article - a commentary written by someone who is

independent of the newspaper.

Fact based article – an article based on or concerned with true events or

experiences.

II. Discuss the questions below.

● How objective are newspapers in your country?
● What do you know about the political slant of newspapers in English-
speaking countries?
● Do you think newspapers should be objective? Why so?

III. Work in pairs and comment on the following statement:

The salesman who tells you what he wants you to buy is more trustworthy than the
one who insists he isn’t trying to sell you anything at all.

Practice

IV. Read the following article and compare your answers to the author’s ideas
on media bias.

Media bias is OK – if it's honest

Nathan Robinson
Conservatives are more open to leftwing arguments when they come from people
who don’t pretend to be perfectly objective

Most people distrust the media, and most people are right. It’s healthy to question
what you’re being told – that’s the mark of an intelligent and independent populace.
And the media in the United States are, in fact, “biased” in many ways. Not always
toward the left or right, but frequently toward reaffirming the worldview of an insular
establishment, as Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky pointed out years ago in
Manufacturing Consent.
It should be obvious that there can’t be such a thing as a neutral journalist. We all
have moral instincts and points of view. Those points of view will color our
interpretations of the facts. The best course of action is to acknowledge where we’re
coming from. If we show an awareness of our own political leanings, it actually makes
us more trustworthy than if we’re in denial about them.
Two recent controversies show how supposedly neutral journalists deny their
biases. The Washington Post’s factchecker gave Bernie Sanders a “mostly false”
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 Unit II Journalism Today: News Values

rating for claiming that there are half a million medical-related bankruptcies a year. It
was quite obvious that Sanders was relying on published research, and the claim was
not in fact “mostly false”. But the Post has a history of these sorts of fact-free
“factchecks” – when Sanders claimed that “millions of Americans” work multiple jobs,
Glenn Kessler labeled the statement “misleading”, even though it was completely true.
Ryan Grim has compiled a list of the appalling record of the Post’s unfair attacks on
claims from the political left. Whatever this is, it isn’t factchecking.
It’s not just an anti-Sanders bias. Donald Trump has some legitimate complaints
about the press, too. Because he tells whopping lies all the time, journalists are
predisposed to believe the worst about him and his administration. Recently, a
Bloomberg Law reporter accused a labor department official of antisemitic Facebook
posts. It was obvious the posts were sarcastic, and the reporter’s work was heavily
criticized and the coverage amended. Because of past stories involving administration
ties to antisemites, and Trump’s own use of language about Jewish people that would
be considered scandalous if it came from Ilhan Omar, the reporter was inclined to think
the worst.
But if we automatically assume that Trump is the one in the wrong, we may end
up with egg on our faces. For example, when Trump claimed that millions of non-
citizens voted illegally in the 2016 election, the Washington Post called him out in a
“factcheck”. But it turned out the Washington Post itself had published an article
making this very same claim. The factcheckers were so sure Trump invented the lie that
they didn’t notice they had spread it themselves.
My personal experience is that conservatives are far more open to leftwing
arguments when they come from people who are honest about their politics, and don’t
pretend not to have a point of view. One reason conservatives hate the “mainstream
media” is that it pretends to be something it isn’t. Conservatives think the press has a
“liberal” bias; I tend to agree with Herman and Chomsky that it would be better
described as a “corporate” bias reflecting the elitist centrism that has come to dominate
the Democratic party. But few at MSNBC or CNN would admit that they’re partisan
networks.
That’s what they do in Great Britain, though – the major newspapers are open
about having a political leaning. The Guardian, for example, is an explicitly left-leaning
paper and everybody knows it. By contrast, the New York Times is clearly inclined
toward Democratic centrism, but it won’t admit it. The editor of the op-ed page says
that they strive for “viewpoint diversity”, but it’s clear that he doesn’t mean it. After
all, they don’t have columnists from the far right, and they don’t have Marxist
columnists. At least Fox News has been honest enough drop its old “Fair and Balanced”
motto. If your paper is liberal, just embrace it – and then you can fire “viewpoint
diversity” conservatives like Bret Stephens.
Paradoxically, rebuilding trust requires embracing bias. Not embracing
untruthfulness, but admitting your politics so that both writer and audience can be
critical. I think the hope for media is in outlets like the Intercept, Jacobin and my own
little magazine, because readers like transparency. (This is also one reason why people
respect Bernie Sanders even when they disagree with him: they don’t think he’s trying
to appear to be something he isn’t.) The salesman who tells you what he wants you to
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 Unit II Journalism Today: News Values

buy is more trustworthy than the one who insists he isn’t trying to sell you anything at
all.
It’s a perilous time for journalism, and small outlets need all the help we can get
in order to survive. Corporate owners are shuttering great outlets all the time, and the
only way we’re going to have viable media institutions is through an outpouring of
popular support.
Unfortunately, the public doesn’t trust us, and we need to think about how to
slowly get people to see journalists as their allies instead of as duplicitous, faux-neutral
propagandists. The first step is to be up front about where we’re coming from and how
we see things. We’ve got to acknowledge that everyone is biased, and that it’s OK.

V. Read the article again and prepare a fact file on the media terms and cultural
references in bold. Explain what the author implies by using the terms in each
context.

VI. Read the article again, find and explain

● Two reasons why journalists have to acknowledge their bias

VII. Read the article again and find emotive, or emotionally colored, language
that shows the author’s negative attitude towards those journalists that are
not honest about political biases.

Follow-up:

VIII. Split into groups. Choose two opinion-based articles from English language
newspapers, compare and contrast these articles. Remember to explain:

● Similarities and differences in the headlines;

● Similarities and differences in the descriptive and reference words (this, they, it,
etc.) used by the authors;
● Similarities and differences in the cultural or factual references made in articles;
● Similarities and differences in argumentation and evidence basis provided by the
articles;
● Similarities and differences in the composition of the articles (intro, body,
conclusion and the way they are organized, usage of neutral or emotive
language).

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 Unit II Journalism Today: News Values

IX. Present your results in class. Answer the following questions:

● Which of the articles is more persuasive and why?

● Which of the articles is more biased, why and towards what an idea?
● Is bias wrong here, why?

>>> Activity Module 4:

Planning an article >>>
Background

I. Look through the following features of writing an article and decide which
of them build up a writer’s style:

● Syntax
● Meeting deadlines
● Preferred sentence length
● Paragraph length
● Feedback to the reader
● Punctuation
● Images
● Spelling

II. Read the definition of house style and discuss possible reasons why it can be
important in journalistic practices.

House style (n) – the preferred style of spelling, punctuation, etc. used in a
publishing house or by a specific publication.

Practice

III. Look at the steps of writing a newspaper article and arrange them
in the right logical order. You may add your own steps.

• Check your article for mistakes

• Write a plan of your future article
• Brainstorm the topic and ideas connected to the article
• Write the introduction
• Research the topic
• Conclude
• Write the body of the article
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 Unit II Journalism Today: News Values

IV. Read the following information about trigger words and decide at which step
of writing an article they should be considered.

There are trigger words (who, where, when, how, why) which can help a journalist
follow the main idea of the article.

V. Read the news story from the Washington Post and write the sentences based
on trigger words. Work in a group and compare your answers.

VI. Look at the sentences summarizing what the article will be about. Write the
summary based on the sentences. Share your summary with the class.

Who? Burger King

What? BK was accused of mocking Asian food
Where? New Zealand
Why? An advert showing a fat man who ate a burger with giant red
chopsticks
What taken? The fast food chain apologized on New Zealand Instagram
account

VII. Look at the headline of the article and think about its topic. Choose the best
introduction to the article and discuss what is wrong with the others.

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 Unit II Journalism Today: News Values

1. Leaders were found guilty yesterday on rarely used colonial-era public nuisance
charges for their role in the 2014 protests. Prosecutors argued the protests had caused
“unreasonable” disruption to public order.

2. The “Umbrella Nine” was charged over the 2014 protests.

3. Nine pro-democracy campaigners have been convicted over their leadership of

“umbrella movement” rallies in Hong Kong in 2014 in a verdict that has prompted
renewed alarm about the area’s political freedom.

VIII. Look at the headline and the caption of the article. Split into groups and
brainstorm ideas about the article. Then write the article based on your
ideas. Compare articles with peers.

Follow-up:

IX. Split into groups. Compare the house styles of tabloid and
broadsheets newspapers. Follow the style features during the analysis:

● Punctuation
● Spelling
● Capitalization
● Foreign words
● Use of American/British/Australian English

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X. In groups, research a local news story. Make notes and write an article for
an English-speaking newspaper. Use the techniques described in this unit to
help you.

>>> Activity Module 5: Vocabulary Focus

I. Find English equivalents for the following terms:

газетный заголовок _____________

вступление новостной статьи _____________
колонка «особое мнение» __________________
передовая статья _________________
статья в рубрике «мнение редакции» _________________
очерк ____________________
платная онлайн подписка ______________
доход от рекламы ______________
тираж _________________
розничная цена газеты ____________
редакция новостей ________________
газетная бумага ______________
рубрика «объявления» _______________
предвзятый (2) ________________
предрасположенный, склонный (2) _____________
политические убеждения _________________
двуличный пропагандист ___________________
проверка фактов ___________________

II. Translate the sentences:

1. За последний год по всей стране в новостных отделах прокатилась
волна увольнений.

2. Чтобы избежать снижения прибыли, газеты должны получать

существенный доход от печатной рекламы.

3. Газеты и новостные сайты все чаще внедряют платный доступ к

контенту для получения необходимого дохода.

4. За последние несколько лет тираж газет резко сократился.

5. Заголовок должен привлекать читателей, и не должен искажать

историю.

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 Unit II Journalism Today: News Values

6. Большинство политиков склонны лгать не краснея.

7. Небольшие новостные каналы оказывают большое влияние на

сознание людей.

8. Люди видят в журналистах двуличных и лживых пропагандистов.

9. Согласно опросу, люди выключают телевизионные новости, так как

они слишком угнетают и слишком субъективны.

10. Журналист должен сосредоточиться на проверке фактов и

использовать лаконичный, неэмоциональный язык в новостях, чтобы
избежать предвзятости.

III. Make headlines from the following sentences:

1. В небе над Лос-Анджелесом был замечен мистический летающий
объект
2. В результате землетрясения в Сан Франциско погибло 1000
людей
3. На президентских выборах в США победил Барак Обама
4. Морской флот США высадился во Вьетнаме
5. Женщина в возрасте 70 лет родила близнецов

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