Reading the Newspaper Intelligently

Every morning (or afternoon), something lands on our porch (or in the dog doo, if we're unlucky) that contains as many words as a small to medium sized book: the daily newspaper. Although newspapers are struggling in an increasingly new-media driven society, they are still--in many ways--the most timely and convenient way to receive important national and local information. Former CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite, speaking of broadcast news, once remarked that the typical half-hour news program would just about fill the front page of a newspaper. Reading the Newspaper Intelligently is a fine introduction, mixing both an interesting history of journalism in America and a contemporary guide to how a newspaper is written, arranged, and used by the end reader. Viewers will learn that the first newspaper--"Publick Occurences both Forreign and Domestick," published in 1690 before certain spelling rules became standard--closed after a single issue, thanks to British censors, and they'll also gain an understanding of the importance of freedom of the press to the American enterprise. In addition, viewers will be shown the inverted triangle nature of news stories, learn to help distinguish hard news from editorial stories, and be clued in to certain qualifier words (such as "suspect" and "allegedly") which signal the tentative nature of many breaking news items. A solid overview, which is not nearly as in-depth as the 15-volume News Writing (VL-11/95), but does offer a very good concise overview. Highly recommended. (R. Pitman)