Need help with this.


SuaveStar

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Hey, sorry that I'm posting in here again, but I still need help with this article that I am handing in tomorrow. Could someone read it and tell me if they think the grammar is Ok and your personal opinions? Any comments no matter how harsh will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Forwards is the new backwards.

One students take on the entire Induction week at the University of the West of Scotland.

Walking into University, or any higher education establishment, the first thing you will feel, is fear. Everyone has been there, that one person who gets lost on their way to the room, only to ask for advice and be taken like a child on your first day of school, to a room full of calm collected people, your peers. The first thing you do when you reach that room is look around you, and seeing all these unforgiving eyes judging you, nerves take over and you stumble on your way to a chair. The worst part of this entire situation is that everyone else in that room, is not only feeling the same way, but they had just made the same errors you made moments ago.

Inductions are not only the places where people can live out these situations first hand, but also they are breaking the ice sessions with your new peers and lecturers. Some of the questions asked during this time range from the quite informative “When is the first date for resits?” to the downright absurd “Is it OK, if we call you Mags?”

When you go for an Induction you are not only there to make a complete idiot of yourself, you are there to get to know the people you will be spending the next 1-4 years with. Getting to know your classmates, and no longer making you feel like the outsider who will be remembered as “That person who tripped over that chair” you now have that chance to be none as “That guy who watches cartoons...or “That girl who likes to get drunk during lunch...”and that is what University is all about.

The University of the West of Scotland’s induction takes place over three days, and over those three days you are introduced to your lecturers, the student support staff, the people who make your tea, and most importantly, your colleagues.

The inductions start with an informal presentation of what your chosen course is about and usually a name game in which you say your name and why you chose the course or a random fact about yourself.

Inductions can usually be done over one, two or, as UWS does three days, all of these methods work in their own ways. The UWS induction is the best in that you get the full three days to stay informal and not have to worry about handing any work in and yet still have time to ask others how their day is going.

UWS induction week, is a very good week and very helpful with students and is highly recommendable for people thinking of going there.

Austen has been to Stow College to Study acting, GCNS to study Communication with Media, and is now studying his first year of Journalism at UWS.

i think the bit about me personally at the end may be to much, but what do I know.

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I'm posting this here for a bit of help, and also as an online back up just incase my hard drive refuses to work again.

Assessment 1

Discuss the following statement with reference to at least three popular theories relating to “news” and “news values”:

“A single definition for the news is problematic because so many factors influence it’s selection and production.”(Fleming, Hemmingway, Moore and Welford 2006)

A true definition for the selection of news and why it is selected is not easy to describes they are so many factors that influence it’s selection and production. What one paper may deem newsworthy another paper may feel is not worth wasting the time to print in a late news section.

The first person to decide whether or not a story is worthy of taking up space in the newspaper is the editor, the editor is the person who has final say in what appears in the newspaper. The editor will sometimes tell the writers about things that they had heard about on their way to the office, or things they heard people talking about while waiting for their coffee that morning, or something they heard or read in a local newspaper or radio. The editor would then either call a staff meeting or choose specific reporters to go and find out all they can about a specific story and write it up for the evening print or for publication in the next morning’s paper. The reporter will then take the info the editor has given them about, for example a carnival which has a ride that has been proven unsafe, yet is still being used by unscrupulous individuals. The reporters will then go out, get all the information they can on the story and write it up, then have it published in the paper. Another factor the editor may make on the paper is the editors own personal opinion on certain subjects, if the editor is a stout conservative and hears about Gordon Brown making a speech on the credit crunch and not having any answers; the editor may be inclined to send a reporter out to get the story and tell them to make a specific spin on it and make it look like Brown is incompetent and should not prime minister of the country. Another effect an editor can have on the paper is their own personal opinion on what news is and what isn’t news, if the editor believes that celebrity stories sell papers such as Lindsay Lohan coming out as a lesbian and a man finding his father after disappearing ten years ago, then the father may get pushed to page four, whereas the Lohan story may be shown as a front page story.

Some of the best known values on what makes news and what doesn’t make news have been summed up by Johan Galtung Marie Holmboe Ruge. Their research was conducted in 1965 and although it is now over forty years old, it is still very relevant today. These beliefs are:

Frequency: If the story is relevant on the day that the paper is published, such as a car pile up on the M8 would take priority in the news as the information is readily available in the who, what, when, where and why.

Who: People driving along the M8

What: A pile up of several cars on the M8.

When: Earlier today.

Where: The M8 northbound.

Why: the roads where icy and a car skidded out of it’s lane.

This information is readily available and can be published on the same day of the incident in the mid-day late news edition of the paper. Background information like how long the person who caused the original crash would not be as relevant as other things like how many people were injured, were there any fatalities?

However things like social political trends like the US presidential election or the ongoing credit crunch do not get reported as quickly as the story of people being involved in a pile up. Storys like these develop over time and have the space to develop and before you can truly publish the story you may need more facts, take Sarah Palin for example, she was and still is the governor of Alaska and during her first speech we were told that she is a very successful governor. Their was no mention of the fact that she had her Ex-brother in law fired from his job because he divorced her sister, yet now in the weeks before the election that story is near enough on the front page of every newspaper and all the news programmes are mentioning it. The incident may have taken place a few years ago, but it wasn’t as relevant then and deemed as newsworthy as it is now.

Threshshold: Is the event big enough for the paper to cover it? A paper like The Extra may cover the story of a local drunk man smashing his car into a tree, but it would not be the type of story that would make it into The Guardian. However if the story was about Alistair Darling getting drunk one Tuesday night and driving his Mercedes into a tree, you can guarantee that it will hit the Wednesday morning national papers, and with the tabloid papers you can almost guarantee some sort of pun about “Drinking troubles away”

Unambiguity: Is the point of the story you are publishing clear? Can the average person who knows nothing about the story pick up your paper and read the story and understand what is going on? A story such as a man getting killed for being black by white supremists does not need any background and could be summed up pretty easily.

Meaningfulness: How meaningful will the news be to the person reading your story. If your writing for a local paper such as the Glaswegian then you are more likely to talk about someone from Glasgow getting five numbers and the bonus on the lottery, than someone farmer from Kent getting crushed by his own tractor, however if you write for a local paper in Kent then the opposite is true. However there are stories that will be published in both the local and national papers, these are stories such as a general election taking place.

Consonance: Does the event match the medias expectations, journalists have been known to make up their mind on a story and what side they will write the story from within moments of hearing the story. For example if you write for The Sun and go and see a woman who is taking care of four kids by her self, you are more likely to talk about how she is sponging off society and should be getting a job rather than the hardship she has to deal with every day.

Unexpectedness: If an event is very predictable and expected such as domestic abuse story where a man hits his wife, is not a very big news story, but if a woman hits a man, that is a little different, it may make a good story, but if you have a domestic abuse story that you can turn around and see a new angle for such as “Child beats parent” you have a more interesting story and it will get published.

Continuity: It is a lot easier to call up an old story and tell more new information on that than trying to find a new story and write about that. It was a lot easier last year for the daily mail to keep bringing the McCanns as they knew it would sell, rather than take a chance on something else.

Negativity: the old saying “Bad news is good news” is very true people as is their nature are more inclined to read about a woman getting raped and murdered, than the same woman winning the lottery.

The public have a very drastic effect on papers, if the public do not want to read what you are writing, then they will not buy the papers and the paper will lose advertising revenue, which is something they do not want to do. Papers can do many things to keep their readership, they can offer incentives such as free copies of a new magazine, or a free Time out with purchase of the paper, but these would only be short term fixes, the best way for a paper to find a readership and keep it, is to know what the public wants to hear and tell them it. The most famous example of this is The Sun in 1997 when they were a devout conservative paper up until then, then in 1997 the tide started to turn in Labours favour and everyone knew that the conservative’s time in power was coming to an end. What does the paper that famously wrote on 1992 about Neil McKinnock “Would the last person on Britain please turn off the lights.” Was now saying that all their readers had to vote for the better option and that would be Labour.

The Frankfurt school is a school of media and cultural theorists who worked closely together with psycho analysis and Marxism. The Frankfurt school believes that the government just use newspapers as their own personal propaganda tool.

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Changed this.

Added some stuff.

Assessment 1

Discuss the following statement with reference to at least three popular theories relating to “news” and “news values”:

“A single definition for the news is problematic because so many factors influence its selection and production.”(Fleming, Hemmingway, Moore and Welford 2006)

A true definition for the selection of news and why it is selected is not easy to describes they are so many factors that influence its selection and production. What one paper may deem newsworthy another paper may feel is not worth wasting the time to print in a late news section.

The first person to decide whether or not a story is worthy of taking up space in the newspaper is the editor, the editor is the person who has final say in what appears in the newspaper. The editor will sometimes tell the writers about things that they had heard about on their way to the office, or things they heard people talking about while waiting for their coffee that morning, or something they heard or read in a local newspaper or radio. The editor would then either call a staff meeting or choose specific reporters to go and find out all they can about a specific story and write it up for the evening print or for publication in the next morning’s paper. The reporter will then take the info the editor has given them about, for example a carnival which has a ride that has been proven unsafe, yet is still being used by unscrupulous individuals. The reporters will then go out, get all the information they can on the story and write it up, then have it published in the paper. Another factor the editor may make on the paper is the editors own personal opinion on certain subjects, if the editor is a stout conservative and hears about Gordon Brown making a speech on the credit crunch and not having any answers; the editor may be inclined to send a reporter out to get the story and tell them to make a specific spin on it and make it look like Brown is incompetent and should not prime minister of the country. Another effect an editor can have on the paper is their own personal opinion on what news is and what isn’t news, if the editor believes that celebrity stories sell papers such as Lindsay Lohan coming out as a lesbian and a man finding his father after disappearing ten years ago, then the father may get pushed to page four, whereas the Lohan story may be shown as a front page story.

Some of the best known values on what makes news and what doesn’t make news have been summed up by Johan Galtung Marie Holmboe Ruge. Their research was conducted in 1965 and although it is now over forty years old, it is still very relevant today. These beliefs are:

Frequency: If the story is relevant on the day that the paper is published, such as a car pile up on the M8 would take priority in the news as the information is readily available in the who, what, when, where and why.

Who: People driving along the M8

What: A pile up of several cars on the M8.

When: Earlier today.

Where: The M8 northbound.

Why: the roads where icy and a car skidded out of its lane.

This information is readily available and can be published on the same day of the incident in the mid-day late news edition of the paper. Background information like how long the person who caused the original crash would not be as relevant as other things like how many people were injured, were there any fatalities?

However things like social political trends like the US presidential election or the ongoing credit crunch do not get reported as quickly as the story of people being involved in a pile up. Story’s like these develop over time and have the space to develop and before you can truly publish the story you may need more facts, take Sarah Palin for example, she was and still is the governor of Alaska and during her first speech we were told that she is a very successful governor. There was no mention of the fact that she had her Ex-brother in law fired from his job because he divorced her sister, yet now in the weeks before the election that story is near enough on the front page of every newspaper and all the news programmes are mentioning it. The incident may have taken place a few years ago, but it wasn’t as relevant then and deemed as newsworthy as it is now.

Threshshold: Is the event big enough for the paper to cover it? A paper like The Extra may cover the story of a local drunk man smashing his car into a tree, but it would not be the type of story that would make it into The Guardian. However if the story was about Alistair Darling getting drunk one Tuesday night and driving his Mercedes into a tree, you can guarantee that it will hit the Wednesday morning national papers, and with the tabloid papers you can almost guarantee some sort of pun about “Drinking troubles away”

Unambiguity: Is the point of the story you are publishing clear? Can the average person who knows nothing about the story pick up your paper and read the story and understand what is going on? A story such as a man getting killed for being black by white supremists does not need any background and could be summed up pretty easily.

Meaningfulness: How meaningful will the news be to the person reading your story? If your writing for a local paper such as the Glaswegian then you are more likely to talk about someone from Glasgow getting five numbers and the bonus on the lottery, than someone farmer from Kent getting crushed by his own tractor, however if you write for a local paper in Kent then the opposite is true. However there are stories that will be published in both the local and national papers, these are stories such as a general election taking place.

Consonance: Does the event match the Medias expectations, journalists have been known to make up their mind on a story and what side they will write the story from within moments of hearing the story. For example if you write for The Sun and go and see a woman who is taking care of four kids by her self, you are more likely to talk about how she is sponging off society and should be getting a job rather than the hardship she has to deal with every day.

Unexpectedness: If an event is very predictable and expected such as domestic abuse story where a man hits his wife, is not a very big news story, but if a woman hits a man, that is a little different, it may make a good story, but if you have a domestic abuse story that you can turn around and see a new angle for such as “Child beats parent” you have a more interesting story and it will get published.

Continuity: It is a lot easier to call up an old story and tell more new information on that than trying to find a new story and write about that. It was a lot easier last year for the daily mail to keep bringing the McCann’s as they knew it would sell, rather than take a chance on something else.

Negativity: the old saying “Bad news is good news” is very true people as is their nature are more inclined to read about a woman getting raped and murdered, than the same woman winning the lottery.

The public have a very drastic effect on papers, if the public do not want to read what you are writing, then they will not buy the papers and the paper will lose advertising revenue, which is something they do not want to do. Papers can do many things to keep their readership, they can offer incentives such as free copies of a new magazine, or a free Time out with purchase of the paper, but these would only be short term fixes, the best way for a paper to find a readership and keep it, is to know what the public wants to hear and tell them it. The most famous example of this is The Sun in 1997 when they were a devout conservative paper up until then, then in 1997 the tide started to turn in Labours favour and everyone knew that the conservative’s time in power was coming to an end. What does the paper that famously wrote on 1992 about Neil McKinnock “Would the last person on Britain please turn off the lights.” Was now saying that all their readers had to vote for the better option and that would be Labour.

The Frankfurt school is a school of media and cultural theorists who worked closely together with psycho analysis and Marxism. The Frankfurt school believes that the government just use newspapers as their own personal propaganda tool. Frankfurt school believes that people care more about celebrities and what they are doing than what is really going on in the world. In a way they are right, the front page of a daily tabloid newspaper such as the Daily Mirror is more likely to talk about Amy Winehouse’s fight with alcohol than the rising cost of homes for first time buyers today. In a way they are right, people do not want to read about how much their lives are terrible, they want to read about the celebrity of the moment and what random name they have called their next adopted child. Story’s such as Guy Ritchie’s divorce from Madonna has taken up the headlines of newspapers over the past few days, even though the credit crisis is mentioned in the paper, it is not mentioned on the front page, but rather it is on page four of the paper, and is not the thing that will grab your attention when picking up the paper.

.

If you can compare two different newspapers published on the same day and available in the exact same newsagents, you would notice some stark differences between them and what story’s they cover in detail, what they skim and what they don’t mention period. The two newspapers in question right now are the daily Star and The guardian. The two newspapers that I will be looking at and comparing are the guardian and the daily star. These two newspapers are completely different not just in writing style but in size, structure and price also.

The guardian is a broadsheet newspaper with a circulation of around about 355,750. The guardian comes in five different sections, the first section is known as the main section as it holds all the main world news. The second section is the sports section which not only covers football but also rugby and golf and even American baseball in very detailed depth. The football section itself also has a lot of space to breathe as it has an entire section dedicated to the leagues such as the Scottish English and European leagues. The third section is the media section, which deals with all the entertainment new, such as the recent death of Heath Ledger. The fourth section of the guardian is known as the internet section, which deals with internet advertising in detail. The final section is known as G2, which is an entertainment news section. Altogether, the guardian costs 70p on a weekday.

The daily star is in a way the exact opposite of the Guardian in both readership and circulation-the daily star has a circulation of around 825,522. The star is one paper with all the sections together and has more in common with a magazine than it does with the guardian. The daily star is twenty pence and mixes between real story’s with real people to celebrity stories about people such as Britney Spears “going off the rails” the star has some of the same sections as the guardian but does not go into as half as much detail as that paper.

The content of both papers is very different to say the least, take Monday 24 September as an example, and with the example I found very stark contrasts. The main story on the front page of the daily star had this headline ”Maddie parents are lying!” then written underneath that in about half the size text “cops say that McCann’s and friends tried to frame Murat” the side story of the star says “Lucy Pinder topless pics!”

The guardian’s cover story is a total polar opposite to the daily star, the main story for the daily star is that of “labour MP’s would back autumn poll” and their main story with a picture is that of famous mime artist Marcel Marceau onstage with the message that he has passed away. “Marceau, last master of mime dies at 84” the guardians main story about the death of mime legend Marcel Marceau is shown with the picture of him onstage performing his world renowned mime act. There is also a tribute to the man on pages thirty-six and thirty-seven about his life and accomplishments. The daily star did not cover this story at all not even in their three-inch wide world news section. The star did this for two reasons I feel, first they probably did not deem the death of a mime artist newsworthy. Secondly, possibly felt that their target audience the 18-34 demographic would not really be that bothered about him dying, as they probably didn’t know who he was.

Lets now go on to the main story especially the headline that read in the star “Maddie parents are lying” although they do say that it is the opinion of one of the officers, this is severely shrunk when compared to the part about them lying, this shows that they, they being the daily star, have already made u up their minds that the parents killed the girl and what their readers to feel the same. Contrasting this belief is the guardian who to their credit do not give away what they think happened that night in Portugal and report the news from an unbiased opinion, and when they covered the Madeline case on page seven and they don’t talk about what a top cop in Portugal said all they say is “millionaire gives legal and pr support” the story is about a millionaire who wants to help the McCann’s clear their names, however it is unfortunate that the star do not cover this, probably deeming it now newsworthy.

The two papers almost speak to the readers like night and day, the guardian gives the reader a detailed description and is primarily aimed at middle class people, these people to quote a stereotype are conservative left-wingers. The star on the other hand uses bullet points to sum up a story in two sentences, probably doing this again to appeal to their target demographic the 18-35 year olds. This group is primarily working class people and the star believes that these people don’t want to read long winded story’s, they want to be taken right to the point and onto the next story, trying to treat the news like the star believes they live their lives, that being fast and no care for details.

The pricing also says really who these papers are aimed at, you look at the price of the star the price at time of writing was twenty pence, which is sort of like saying if you’re going to be cheap getting your information, you’re going to get the bare minimum information. The guardian priced at seventy pence is a more upmarket approach and really says to the reader that if you are paying this much we have to really care to all of your need and in detail. It is like the old saying you really do get what you pay for.

Advertising is major revenue for the papers and really makes up the bulk of their profit, for the reader you may think that 700,000 copies in circulation can make a lot of money but for people in the advertising department they will feel that that means they can charge top dollar for advertising space. The ads in the star are for sometimes the most random things such as the latest crazy frog ringtone, now why would the advertise this? Well if you have a readership of 300,00 for example and 999 out of every 1000 of those readers looks at that ad and says it’s dumb, but that one person who looks at it and buys the ringtone at £1.50 and you have that happening 3000 times, that’s £4,500! Not bad for a daily ad that only has one quarter of a page that is why ad revenues is so huge to the papers and why they can charge so little for papers in a sort of circle of life. The guardian has a different approach to ads, they don’t have thousands of ads on the page they have one solitary ad taking up the entire page, now this ad could be for an Isa savings account, which people who read the star do not normally wonder about, they also have ads asking people to donate money to the African flood appeal, again not to sound stereotypical of people who read the star but they would not be really interested in that.

The guardian is owned by the guardian media group and is a paper that has always been left wing.

United newspapers who also own the daily / Sunday express own the star, this paper family is pro-labour but was not always that back in 1993 the star like nearly every paper at the time was pro-conservative.

The two papers have very opposing views to certain subjects, some of these subjects are:

Topics: the guardian mostly consists of social political and economical stories and news. The star follows story is on real people and real situations such as the story of the Mc Canns.

Treatment: the guardian is a mostly serious paper but does try to inject some intellectual humour into its pieces. The star is a popular but sensationalist newspaper.

Headlines: the headlines of the guardian are usually describing what is going on and gives you the gist of the story, such as the headline “brown refuses to rule out election as mp’s in key mandate give green light” the star would rather garner your attention by almost falsifying headlines “Maddie parents are lying” the star leads with this then goes on to say that this is just the opinion of one of the police officers =on the case and not a genuine statement, but of course reading that headline you don’t get that, but your intrigued and so buy the paper, which is all the star staff care about.

Descriptions of sources differ wildly as well: the guardian goes with ”Ben smith 73 from Manchester” so giving you just the basic info that you need to know, the star try’s to garner sympathy and empathy for their sources by almost telling their life story’s “mother of one 33 year old Jean said that......”

The vocabulary for each paper differs as well and the way they speak to the reader, the guardian is long winded and complex “oppositions to Mr Brown’s potential gamble for the insurmountable obstacle that Mr brown faces..” the star would rather go for sensationalised story’s such as “Kate Mc Cann was a wild child at university so say her college friends...”

Therefore, I guess saying that the layout of the paper is the only thing that is different is a bit of an understatement.

New technology has had a strange impact on the newspaper industry, nowadays to save on trees and actually buying a paper we can go online and check out the story’s there. Also the story’s when broken take time to be written up and sorted and verified and such, but with internet and sky news the story’s are broke in minutes of happening like Keifer Sutherland being caught drink driving, that was on the world news ten minutes after it happened, or more recently Heath Ledgers untimely death, we know that he overdosed on sleeping pills and died and was found by a maid, this was all known at five am that day, normal people don’t see a paper for at least another three hours, so the internet really means news travels quicker. The guardian realising that the internet is affecting their sales decided to introduce an online guardian available to download online, the star seeing the internet as a problem decide to offer mobile subscriptions so that the main story’s would be sent to your phone, that way you don’t need to carry a big train on your travels, where you are most likely to read.

Involuntary control affects the paper in the way that there are story’s going on in court that cannot be talked about or are being investigated right now, such as the Diana trial the papers cannot write anything incriminating about Paul Burrell, who has now been badmouthed by the a papers, because it would affect the trial and maybe the people who are in the jury or could be may be influenced by the papers, same went for the Madeline McCann case. Papers sometimes come together and agree not to print certain pictures or print certain story’s such as Prince William and his girlfriend being hassled by paparazzo’s and so the papers realising they can get better pics in the long term decided not to print story’s on the couple for now, this voluntary control.

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