Greenlands Glaciers Shrinking Rapidly Newspaper Analysis

Dissect a newspaper story

Read a news story from a newspaper, clip it, analyze it, submit an assignment of your analysis.

l. Before you start: Pick up a newspaper…

This could either be from a convenient or grocery story, gas station, newspaper stand, the library, or ask a relative, friend or neighbor for a newspaper (they’re not reading anymore).

the newspaper does not have to be current

a local newspaper would be fine

CHOOSE A STORY FROM THE NEWS SECTION (NOT AN OPINION EDITORIAL, FEATURES, SPORTS, ETC.)

II. After you have a newspaper: Read the news section and pick an article to analyze

lII. Once you have chosen an article: Re-read it, mark-up the story/paper…

The mark-ups should identifying the below prompts. You may highlight the areas and write notes on the actual article. 

• Identify the 5Ws in the lead

Count the number of words in the lead

• Identify the ‘How’

Explain how the nut graf expands the lead

• Count the number of paragraphs in the story

Count the number of sentences in each paragraph

Identify first mention of an attribution

Identify a second reference of the same attribution

Identify a complete quote with attribution

Identify a split quote and its attribution

Identify a full name of an agency, company, office, department, etc.

Identify the acronym or initials for the same agency as well as its identification in the second reference

Identify synonyms for ‘said’

IV. Report and Newspaper Clipping

Submit a written report of you analysis of the article in an essay format. Answer the following questions in your analysis.

Was it easy to identify the areas identified in the above prompts (1-13)?

1. What areas reflect what we have discussed in the class about how news stories are written?

What parts of the article helped you visualized what we have learned about writing a news story?