Research Paper

Length: 1,000-1,500 words

Understanding how media cover events in our world is a powerful skill, not to mention the focus of our class. This paper is designed to help you exercise that skill by having you examine news from a more objective vantage point, from which you seek out media coverage not to inform you of events but to dissect the coverage itself.

1. Pick a “Breaking News Consumer’s Handbook” from the list on the site for WNYC’s “On the Media.” Topics range from mass shootings to storms to celebrity experts. The choice is yours.
2. Listen to the accompanying audio segment and familiarize yourself with the handbook points.
3. Find three news stories on one medium (newspaper, magazine, radio, TV, etc.) and analyze those stories using the handbook. Address each point in your analysis of each article.
4. Find three more stories on the same topic in EITHER a different medium or a different period and analyze those stories using the handbook. For example: if you chose storms, and analyzed Univision’s (TV) coverage of Hurricane Maria’s impact on Puerto Rico in Step 3, then analyze The New York Times (newspaper) coverage of the same storm. Or If you analyzed Fox New’s coverage of Hurricane Harvey in 2017, then analyze Fox New’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
5. Compare the sets of analyses and discuss your findings. What trends do you see? Was one set of stories more or less flawed than the other? Were the handbook points effective at determining the nature of coverage? How might you structure a future analysis if given the opportunity?
6. Include a brief introduction that discusses the choices you made and why you made them.
7. Include MLA in-text citations for any quoted or paraphrased material taken from your sources and an MLA-style “Works Cited” page.