Argues that high school newspapers might do well to create stronger ties with alternative weeklies. Discusses issues of niche marketing, alternative content, and alternative presentation. Notes that high school papers could learn a lot from alternative newspapers. (SR)

Discusses how the student newspaper "The Lance" (at Westside High School in Omaha, Nebraska) covered the shootings at Columbine High School. Notes that the staff localized the event and brought the student body into the story. (RS)

Attempts to identify predictors of ability in the first week of an introductory journalism writing course. Finds that students with higher self-efficacy and students who spend more time reading newspapers seemed to be the best prepared on the first day of the introductory course. (SG)

Presents a content analysis of suicide stories in the Israeli Press (1955-90) and measures of real suicide events to highlight the selective, distorted, and reconstructed nature of reporting suicide. Argues that such reporting may account for at least some of the contradictory findings of studies on the impact of publicized suicide stories on…

Proposes abandoning the traditional auto mechanic metaphor for teaching news writing (which establishes the teacher's expertise at the expense of the student's learning) in favor of a dialogic method. Argues that dialogic learning that is double looped creates learning advantages for students, and models the social inquiry process of journalism.…

Reports on a study in an introductory media writing class in which student journals were used as a formative classroom assessment technique. Examines the relevance in value of student journals in enhancing instructors' understanding of students' attitudes toward writing processes. Examines the role of student journals in providing feedback on the…

This handbook, which is one in a series of handbooks designed to help tech prep practitioners replicate successful materials, projects, or programs that have been developed by Partnership for Academic and Career Education (PACE) consortium members, uses the PACE publication "Tech Prep News" to illustrate the process of developing a tech…

Because the Hutchins Commission's report, "A Free and Responsible Press," has served as a benchmark concerning social responsibility of the press, a study compared its ideas about press responsibility and the role of journalism with those in journalism textbooks. Twelve period textbooks were content analyzed in detail as were several…

The newspaper section of the Proceedings contains the following 18 papers: "The Role of Headlines and Nut Graphs in Helping Readers Learn from News Stories" (Glen L. Bleske); "Daily Newspaper Reporters' Views of Journalistic Roles: An Integrated Perspective" (Dan Berkowitz and James TerKeurst); "'Cohen V. Cowles Media':…

A study compared six midwestern United States campus newspapers with their respective general circulation newspapers. A content analysis of these publications was designed to determine whether local news stories in daily student newspapers are as readable, interesting, and thorough as those found in general circulation daily newspapers. The daily…

This research originated with the idea that a relationship exists between the culture-specific way of thinking on the one hand and the use of language in special contexts on the other, affecting both meaning and text structure. The goal of the research is to create an interlingual text corpus representing a special type of text that appears in…

The press has long been considered the "watchdog" of government, yet today, more than 100 newspaper editors also serve in public office. A study sought to determine the types of role conflict that arise for editors who hold public office, the public's reaction to such dual roles, and the policies of several leading newspapers concerning…

A study examined 20 New Jersey daily newspapers to assess the impact of readability on circulation. It was hypothesized that the circulation of a newspaper would be inversely related to the readability level of its contents; that is to say, as reading material becomes harder to read, fewer people will read it. News pieces (divided into hard news,…

Investigative journalists long have had an adversarial relationship with powerful institutions and those in public office, stemming from the "righteously indignant" reporters of the early nineteenth century penny presses who guarded the interests of the public. Currently, investigative journalists are in a difficult position if they have…

Composition instructors need to emphasize to their students that persuasion is not always announced--it can be forcefully present in so-called "objective" forms of discourse like textbooks and news. News photographs can be successfully used in the composition classroom as a unit of study in visual rhetoric to introduce students to the…