Newspaper Design Outline and Terms

A framework for our class discussion:

THE MOST IMPORANT CONCEPT -- MODULAR DESIGN

What is a MODULE?

Elements present on a well designed newspaper page:
You don't have to define these unless you don't know what they are but I include them because they are the essential building blocks of page design: 

Headlines, Subheadlines, Lines, Boxes, 
Photos, Captions, Stories)

Five principles of newspaper PAGE DESIGN

DOMINANCE

CONTRAST

BALANCE

UNITY

-- discuss BASTARD MEASURE here

RHYTHM

The 8 types of NEWSPAPER MODULES

1. Even legs of text

2. Story on top

3. L-Shaped Text Flow

    -- discuss raw wraps here

4. U-Shaped Text Flow

5. Photo on Left

6. Photo on Right

7. COB photo

8. COMBO plate

Teaser

Flag

Folios 

Bylines

Jumps 

Story dividers

Screens 

Infographics

Masthead/staff box

Bastard measure

Raw wrap

Reefer

Wild art

Pull quote

Ears

Banner

Kicker headline

Wicket headline

Tripod headline

Hammer headline

Modular design

Text wrap

L-shaped text flow

U-shaped text flow

Possible story topics

News                                                                            

Renaming of Lee Elementary school

Projections/local opinions of how a Trump/Clinton general election would go

Prop 1 fall out – what now?

UT murder case – does it impact outlook for UT-bound seniors

Attendance policy update – how are students coping/adapting/subverting the attendance policy

Mr. Stanchos and the current events team placed third at regionals (could be a good feature)

U.S. News and World Report rankings of AISD schools and what if anything it means

                -- Do students care? Does the faculty care? Do parents care about this stuff? If so, why?

                -- LASA, Anderson, McCallum, Austin

The PUD lots of impact near McCallum district and Anderson

Feature

Profile on an interesting teacher/faculty member

n  Japanese teacher

n  Mr. Featherstone

n  Mr. Pass

n  Mr. Pew

n  Ms. Northcutt

n  Ms. Susman

n  Cafeteria staff/manager

Profile on an interesting student

Prom

Alternate prom?

Saturday School – an observational feature profile with a news angle as it relates to the attendance policy

The UIL music gauntlet of superior results

Dress code

                https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CTKKL62

Day in the Life of a Second-Semester Senior

A&E

Profile a local musician or a MAC musician who is doing something great

What’s up with our Grammy? When does our term as a Grammy winner end if it does?

Comcast buyout of DreamWorks – Is it likely? Will it hurt movie quality/creativity/originality?

SPORTS

Baseball epic showdown on Friday – Two 14-1 teams, one district champ

Profile of the seniors in baseball

Softball playoff game on Thursday

Profile of the seniors in softball

Newspaper Design Continued -- Other HS Papers and Vocabulary

As a Wednesday warm-up, I want you to look through some other high school newspapers and I also want you to look up some terms so on Friday you are prepared to get started with a newspaper design project.

Let's start with other high school newspapers.

Go to the following link and spend 15 minutes looking at other high school newspaper:

Here: http://issuu.com/aaronmanfull/stacks/53a902cf8a0146de804bdba9815faf03

Or here: http://studentpress.org/nspa/category/pacemaker-winners/

Assignment: In a new blog titled "Other high school newspapers" answer the following:

1. What is your favorite newspaper front page? Why? 
2. Which paper immediately grabbed your interest? Why? 
3. What is your favorite headline from that newspaper? Why are you interested in it? 
4. How many stories are on the front page of your favorite? 
5. What do you notice that all newspaper front pages have in common? Look at design, size of photos, size of story text, etc.
6. What are things that vary (or are different) on the front pages of different newspapers? Look at design, size of photos, size of headlines, etc. 
7. Were these similar to what you saw last class when you looked at daily newspapers from around the world? 

Now lets get some terms out of the way:

Broadsheet - the largest newspaper size - 3+ stories

Find 3 newspapers from the link above that are Broadsheets - list them on your blog

Tabloid - smaller newspaper size - 2 or less stories

Find 3 newspapers from the link above that are Tabloids - list them on your blog

NewsMagazine - glossy cover - no stories, photo only might be glossy inside or maybe newsprint.

Find 3 newspapers from the link above that are NewsMagazines - list them on your blog

Elements present on a well designed newspaper page:

You don't have to define these unless you don't know what they are but I include them because they are the essential building blocks of page design: Headlines, Subheadlines, Lines, Boxes, 
Photos, Captions, Stories)

Look up the following terms and give me a working definition of the word. Please make sure you associate the term with newspapers. You may need to put the word newspaper in the search engine (especially for some of them which have alternate meanings). Put the answers on your blog

Teaser

Flag

Folios 

Bylines

Jumps 

Story dividers

Screens 

Infographics

Masthead/staff box

Bastard measure

Raw wrap

Reefer

Wild art

Pull quote

Ears

Banner

Kicker headline

Wicket headline

Tripod headline

Hammer headline

Modular design

Text wrap

L-shaped text flow

U-shaped text flow

On Friday we will be looking at The Shield and looking at how the above items are utilized in our newspaper. I will also be giving you more info on your newspaper design assignment.

Intro to Newspaper Design

Overview: I am going to put a satire lesson together, and it should be fun when I do, but another topic I want to cover this six weeks is Newspaper Design. Visit the Newseum's Gallery of newspaper front pages from around the world. Take 15 minutes to look at the different front pages.

You can start this if you have time today. If not, we can do it on Monday.

http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/

Click on the Map View and look at the following:

• Newspapers from at least three different states in the United States.
• Two newspapers in New York City. 
• Two newspapers in Texas.
• Two newspapers in Europe.
• Two newspapers in Asia.

Assignment: In a new blog titled "Front Pages of the World" answer the following:

1. What is your favorite newspaper front page? Why? 
2. What is your favorite headline from that newspaper? Why are you interested in it? 
3. How many stories are on the front page of your favorite? 
4. What do you notice that all newspaper front pages have in common? Look at design, size of photos, size of story text, etc.
5. What are things that vary (or are different) on the front pages of different newspapers? Look at design, size of photos, size of headlines, etc. 

Current Events 6.1

I know what you're thinking. Mr. Winter, we just did a current events assignment. Well, it was more than a week ago, so it's no longer current. Besides, it's a new six weeks and you should be reading the paper every day. So, to encourage that practice, here we go.  

To get to the Austin American-Statesman - click the link and then put in the user name and password.

http://nieonline.com/austin/studentconnect.cfm

The user name is MAC-J

The password is Knight1!

Current Events Assignment 6.1 -- April 21, 2016

To answer question 1, please read "Jackson out; slave savior to be face of $20 bill" on the lower left corner of page A1.

1. How is the design of U.S. currency going to chance if Treasury Secretary Jack Lew's proposal is carried out? And how might the proposal prove the power of musical theatre to effect change (Mr. Denning must be happy today.) This is a $40 question as you should discuss the $20, the $10 and the $5 thoroughly.

To answer question 2, please read "3 officials charged in Flint lead crisis" on the lower right corner of page A1.

2.  What is the latest news in the Flint water crisis? According to Detroit defense attorney Neil Rockind, why is the latest news a "rare" development?  This article does a good job of summarizing this whole debacle briefly. I counted at least three horrible mistakes made by Flint officials which led to this whole mess. What horrible actions (or inactions) caused this to be a full-blown disaster. Last question: What is the Michigan governor doing over the next 30 days? Why? Do you think it will help?

To answer question 3, please read "Clinton, Trump riding high after blowout wins" across the Btop of page A4.

3.  Why are the Clinton and Trump campaigns "invigorated" after Tuesday? How close are each of the front-runners to securing their respective nominations? What's up next Tuesday for the candidates? What familiar argument did Trump make again Wednesday in Indianapolis? What streak was halted by Clinton's win in New York?

To answer question 4, please read "Teachers union sues over new evaluations" at the bottom right of page B1.

4. Why is a teacher's union--the Texas State Teachers Association--suing the head of the Texas Education Agency? What does the union hope to accomplish with the lawsuit? What does the story say about the Austin Independent School District? How does AISD compare to other districts when it comes to teacher evaluations? What is "a value-added model" and how does it relate to this story?

To answer question 5, please read "Report: Volkswagen makes deal to pay U.S. customers" at the bottom right of page B7.

5. My son and I play Punch Buggie incessantly in the car (I lose virtually all the time), but after reading this article we may have to stop because I'm not sure we should create any fond memories that involve the German automaker Volkswagen. What deal is the automaker Volkswagen like to announce today at a federal court hearing in San Francisco? How much money is involved? Why might some individuals receive more money than others from the German automaker? And why do they have to make payments anyway? Why is the amount of money (it's a lot) apparently just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how much the automaker is going to have to pay? 

6.  Pick an article that you want to read (more than other articles anyway), read it and then write a three-sentence (minimum) summary of the article and a three-sentence explanation (minimum) about why you chose that article to read or why you thought it was newsworthy or important enough to select for this assignment.

Current Events 5.2

To get to the Austin American-Statesman - click the link and then put in the user name and password.

http://nieonline.com/austin/studentconnect.cfm

The user name is MAC-J

The password is Knight1!

To answer question no. 1, please read, "To get to the Austin American-Statesman - click the link and then put in the user name and password.

http://nieonline.com/austin/studentconnect.cfm

The user name is MAC-J

The password is Knight1!

To answer question no. 1, please read, "To get to the Austin American-Statesman - click the link and then put in the user name and password.

http://nieonline.com/austin/studentconnect.cfm

The user name is MAC-J

The password is Knight1!

To answer question no. 1, please read, "Sources: Student was strangled," across the top of page A1.

1.  This story is grisly and unsettling, but I don't think we should ignore it. What new details are revealed in today's Statesman regarding the murder of UT freshman Haruka Weiser? Who are the sources that revealed this information and why are they unnamed in the story? Why do you think they provided this information? Why do you think this story has attracted such media attention (think back to our discussion of news values if you can remember them)?

To answer question no. 2, please read, "Study: Technology firms offer women lower salaries," on the bottom left of page A1.

2. According to the hired.com wage analysis, what inequity do technology employers create? What is hired.com and why were they able to conduct this study? I thought the most interesting part of the article was the part about the possible causes of this inequity. According to the article, what are the causes of this inequity? Do they change how you view the technology companies that are making these hires? Something else kind of bugged me about this article. Did it seem to you like it was promoting hired.com a bit too much or do you think it was unavoidable given the nature of the story?

To answer question no. 3, please read, "N.C. governor retreats from part of bias law," on the top left of page A4.

3. North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory issued an executive order on Tuesday. What specifically did the order do to change the controversial House Bill 2 that he signed into law? How did the ACLU respond? What do PayPal, the National Basketball Association, Deutsche Bank and Bruce Springsteen have to do with this story? How might they explain the governor's executive order?

To answer question no. 4, please read, "Boko Haram increasingly uses child bombers," on the top right of page A3.

4. According to UNICEF, what 11-fold increase has been observed in the past year? What has been a terrible consequence of this trend? Why do terrorism experts reject the term suicide attacks when referring to these bombings? What is Boko Harum and how is it different and related to al-Qaida? What motivates people to join it (according to a new Mercy Corps report)?

5. Pick any story that grabs your interest. Summarize it and say what you liked and/or did not like about it.

6. Longtime Statesman columnist Kirk Bohls has a piece in today's paper (see page C1). His piece today is basically a top 10 list instead of a unified column, but it still has many of the qualities of a sports column. What qualities distinguish this piece in terms of style and viewpoint from the other stories you read for this quiz? Which of his observations did you find most interesting? Which would you cut first if the piece were too long and needed to be shortened?

Finish this by period's end. Remember that you have the next step of your column-writing assignment due today as well.

COLUMN-WRITING ASSIGNMENT

Write a column that emulates the column of a distinguished professional columnist.

1. Find a favorite sports columnist (or at least one whose work you find admirable or effective). Once you have identified a sports columnist, please respond to this post with the name of your selected columnist. Make sure that no one else has chosen your columnist before you move on to step two. First come, first serve on columnists.

Here is my list of some of my favorites (feel free to find your own):

Mitch Albom

Kirk Bohls

Christine Brennan

John Canzano

Tim  Cowlishaw

Sally Jenkins

Miramon Nuevo

Bill Plaschke

Joe Poznanski

Rick Reilly

William C. Rhoden

Bill Simmons

Dan Wetzel

Jason Whitlock

Michael Wilbon

Mike Wise

Dave Zirin

2. Read several of the columnist’s pieces until you isolate one that you think is both excellent and representative of the columnist’s style, approach and body of work.

3. Be prepared to share the column and why you selected it as excellent and representative of the columnist’s work. Each class member will present their column and lead a brief class discussion about it.

4. Compose and original column based on the model column you selected. The topic of the piece you write should be original. The way that you write should be inspired by the columnist you chose to emulate.

5. Beginning on the first line of a separate page, identify your columnist and the model column and explain why you chose the columnist and the column as your model.

6. Include the model column as an appendix to your column.

7. Include a reflection in which you explain how your column emulates your model columnist in style, and explain briefly the purpose (or total effect) intended for your column. Describe how the style works to enhance the delivery of your subject.  Evaluate how your column compares to your model column.

8. You may write one additional column for extra credit. But please do not write two columns on the same subject or with too similar an approach or structure.

The components of this assignment will count on the final six-week grading period.

Original Column is a major assignment.

Class presentation is a minor assignment.

Reflection is also a minor assignment.

Please indicate the columnist of your choice by the end of class on Monday, April 11.

Please indicate the model column you have selected by the end of class on Wednesday, April 13.

We will begin sharing the columns on Friday, April 15.

Your original columns are due Tuesday, April 19.

Best Sports Day Ever Piece

Due dates:

Fully developed first draft – April 7 (beginning of the period)
Revised and polished final draft – April 13 (beginning of the period)

Major Grade

Assignment:

Write a personal narrative about your best day in sports. It can be about a day you played, watched or somehow experienced a sporting event.  The sporting experience need not be central to your story, but it needs to be a part of the story.

Criteria:

Your story should be rich in concrete detail, imagery and appeals to the five senses. The better you recreate all of the sights, sounds and sensations of your story the better.

Your story should begin in a captivating way and end with a conclusion that resonates with the reader, giving them something upon which to reflect or ponder before leaving your story.

Your story should be polished, free of careless, avoidable spelling, grammar and punctuation errors.  I strongly recommend reading it out loud to someone else or even just to yourself so that you can hear how your writing sounds to others.

Your story should be told in your voice. The style should be informal and the tone conversational and colloquial.  Whenever you write a personal narrative, you aren’t just trying to convince the reader that your story is worth reading. You are convincing them that you are interesting and worth “listening” to.

Your story should be on time.  I will deduct two points per school day that your story is past the assigned deadline of April 7.  

The fully developed draft is due April 7.  The revised draft is due April 13.

Please print your submission before coming to class so we can do a peer edit as part of the revision process.

The rubric for the polished draft is below:

Topic: Write a piece describing your best sports day ever.

STORYLINE/NARRATIVE 5 6 7 8 9 10
VIVID IMAGERY/DETAILS 5 6 7 8 9 10
GRAMMAR/STYLE/PUNCTUATION 5 6 7 8 9 10
VOICE                         5 6 7 8 9 10
DEVELOPMENT/APPROPRIATE LENGTH 5 6 7 8 9 10

Finding the Flaw -- Is it With the NFL or with The Times?

So a recent Times story on the NFL's response to concussions among pro football players has caused some unprecedented reaction from the league. First, the NFL bought a full page ad in the Times specifically to rebut the article (which they had never done before), then the league directly demanded that The Times retract the story or that the reporters preserve their notes (basically threatening to sue the paper if they don't retract).

Considering that we have spent a good deal of time talking about the reporting process and recent failures to execute that process properly and considering that we just started talking about sports writing, this is just too good an opportunity to pass up (plus I want to force myself to read the article and answer the same question I am about to pose to you).

Read the Times article and the NFL responses to it.

Then write a response that answers this question: Where is the flaw here? With the NFL's response to concussions or with the reporting and writing of the Times story?  In other words, did the Times get the story right? Or should they retract the story as the NFL has demanded?

THE STORY: N.F.L.’s Flawed Concussion Research and Ties to Tobacco Industry

THE RESPONSE: NFL statement on New York Times' concussion research story

THE LETTER DEMANDING A RETRACTION: NFL letter to NYTimes demanding a retraction

UPSHOT OF THE LETTER: "We demand that the story immediately be retracted, and we
reserve our rights more broadly. We also request that the Times's reporters and editors
who worked on this story preserve their notes, correspondence, emails, recordings and
work papers and all other electronic and hard copy documents generated or received in
connection with their work."