Tuesday, February 10 covering the news: tabloids vs mainstream newspapers

Black History Celebration

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 9, 2015

Contact: Adele Fico, Arts Center Director

              585-242-7682 ext. 1551

SCHOOL OF THE ARTS PRESENTS 2015 BLACK HISTORY CELEBRATION

Rochester, NY – The School of the Arts presents its 2015 Black History Celebration on Thursday, February 12, 2015 at 7:00 PM in the Allen Main Stage Theatre. The event melds together the talents of SOTA’s award-winning Creative Writing, Dance and Music Departments. It features music, dance, dramatic and spoken-word performances by the SOTA Concert Choir, Jazz Bands, Dance and Creative Writing majors, and the SOTA Roc Stars Step Team.  The School of the Arts is located at 45 Prince Street at the corner of University Avenue.

Highlights from the production include: the singing of “Lift Every Voice,” the Black National Anthem; a South African Gumboot Dance; musical and choir arrangements of various traditional Negro Spiritual songs, and a scene from Kia Corthron's play Force Continuum. The public is cordially invited to SOTA’s 2015 Black History Celebration; there is no admission fee to attend.

School of the Arts is nestled in Rochester’s Neighborhood of the Arts. It serves city school students in Grades 7 through 12 and offers traditional academics complemented by an arts-based curriculum. For more information, contact Adele Fico, Arts Center Director at 585-242-7682 ext. 1551.

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REMEMBER: everyone had an analysis essay due yesterday. Some folks have expressed that they did not understand the objective; so find below a  couple student exemplars.

exemplar 1

In most tabloids, they are usually written for the common person. Meaning that the authors don’t use big words that not everyone can pronounce or understand. While reading these tabloids I noticed that the authors wrote in everyday language. They wrote things that many people would say while talking to other people, but might not write in a formal essay. I noticed that the first paragraph in these tabloids usually gave away to what the whole article was going to be about. The first paragraph captured the audience’s attention, and drew them in.  When reading “Killer lured victims with cheap designer jeans”, I was immediately interested by the title, while also being interested because the first paragraph got right to the point and made it hard to resist. In the article “VANISHED! MYSTERY OF THE 'BIKINI BABE' TERRORIST”, the author used language that was very persuasive. I believe that because it was about terrorism, the author wanted to use language that would make the reading feel Hate towards the people that were terrorizing France, and would soon come to America. The author also mentioned something about 9/11 which would make whoever is reading remember this horrible attack and feel a sense of patriotism which might also cause the reader to be biased and feel hate towards the terrorist in the article. I think this is a good technique because it persuades the reader so they can have a biased opinion when reading the article. In the tabloids, the authors would also use a lot of quotes from people to try and gather accurate information and so the evidence they find can be backed up. Users quotes made me feel that the information the author was feeding us was accurate, because they had people confirming and agreeing with what the author found. 

exemplar 2

Tabloid journalism, unlike mainstream news articles prey on the vulnerability of celebrities. Often the articles are over sensationalized, past the sensational nature of the article. Photos are unflattering and plentiful unlike a mainstream news article. Using short information filled titles they draw in the reader. The demographic of tabloids differs greatly from a normal news article.

Rarely are the articles factual and more often than not they are over sensationalized. In the recent situation with Whitney Houston’s daughter the tabloids took advantage of it and wrote a large amount of articles on the topic. The article ‘Katy Perry Engaged to Robert Pattinson’ on Weekly World News is over sensationalized and not at all true. Providing little evidence they claim that the two are in love and engaged to be married now that they are both single, saying that they were brought together as shoulders to cry on. The evidence they do have is shoddy “But inside, they shared the news with celebrities, and fans, that sat near them”. A fan’s word is never trustworthy and if they told celebrities it doesn’t belong on a tabloid website but in an official news article.

Tabloid journalism uses sleezy paparazzi photos for their articles and often in excess, whereas mainstream articles use more flattering photos and sparingly. In the same Weekly World News article, further disproving it they could not use a photo of Katy Perry and Robert Pattinson - because there aren’t any. Instead, they chose to photoshop their faces onto pictures of one of the two. In the Bobbi Kristina article the photos chosen are terrible and unflattering, obviously taken by paparazzi.

The titles of tabloids are abbreviated and chosen to catch the attention of people who are scrolling  or skimming.  ‘Whitney Daughter Bobbi Kristina Found Unresponsive in Bathtub’ is a title of one of the many Bobbi Kristina related articles on National Enquirer. Katy Perry and Robert Pattinson getting engaged would excite readers of tabloids because two celebrities getting married is always eye catching.

Once in a while these two very different vehicles meet, and the collision changes both.

Assignment: send along, please. You can copy and paste the graphic organizer onto a word document and adapt as needed.

Choose 3 of the following topics:

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

Bruce Jenner

Bobbie Kristina     
Bill Cosby
Bryan Williams
President Obama
Michelle Obama
Kanya West
maybe you have another?


compare tabloid            to       main stream newspaper

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/                                  http://www.nbcnews.com/                                                              
http://www.nydailynews.com/                                   http://www.cnn.com/                     
http://www.nationalenquirer.com/                       http://www.theguardian.com/us                                                   
http://weeklyworldnews.com/                           http://abcnews.go.com/                               

Compare the way a mainstream newspaper and a tabloid newspaper cover the same story. How do they handle the different elements of a news story?
You may pick and choose from the columns. Duplicates are fine.

News story 1_____________________________________________________

	mainstream	tabloid
headline
lead
descriptive language

News story 2_____________________________________________________

	mainstream	tabloid
headline
lead
descriptive language

News story 3_____________________________________________________

	mainstream	tabloid
headline
lead
descriptive language