Web Exercises

Web exercises direct both instructors and students to useful and current web sites, along with creative activities to extend and reinforce learning or allow for further research on important chapter topics.

  • Newsroom Ethics and Objectivity
    Read the Newsroom Ethics Policy of the Boston Globe: https://services.bostonglobe.com/news/news/news.aspx?id=6466. Thinking in terms of the discussion of objectivity in Chapter 4, identify several specific aspects of this policy and discuss how these rules and guidelines are necessary for a news organization today. How effective do you think this policy is? Is true objectivity attainable in terms of news reporting? How do policies, routines and guidelines, such as the Globe has, contribute to the appearance of objectivity? Discuss with your classmates.

  • Decision Making for Profit
    Check out the Top 100 TV shows according to TV.com: http://www.tv.com/shows/multibrowse/?tag=page_nav;multibrowse.
    How can you better understand this list, having learned about the constraints and routines of producing media? Given this list, what sorts of TV shows do you think media producers might try to introduce in the future and why? Will imitating currently popular shows guarantee success? Why or why not?

  • User-Generated News
    Look around CNN’s iReport: http://ireport.cnn.com/ and Indymedia: http://www.indymedia.org/en/index.shtml. What type of news coverage do you find on these sites? How is it different from “professional” news coverage? How are new media and its capabilities being incorporated into traditional news routines? What does this mean for content diversity? For objectivity?

  • Visit “The Breaking News Consumer’s Handbook”: http://www.onthemedia.org/story/breaking-news-consumers-handbook-pdf/?utm_source=local&utm_media=treatment&utm_campaign=carousel&utm_content=item1 
    Why is On The Media providing a list of guidelines for consumers when it comes to breaking news? What sorts of rules do they provide for news consumers? How is the need for this handbook related to changes in the news industry as discussed in Chapter 4? Try to apply these rules to a recent breaking news story- does it change the way you interpret the story? What does the need for this sort of vigilance on the consumers’ part say about the state of objectivity in journalism?