creating-a-newspaper
In this unit, you have already read a variety of selections centered on the theme of wealth and poverty. You will remember that each unit in this course ends with a culminating project. In this unit, your culminating project will be to construct a newspaper based on this theme.
Your newspaper can be dated either in the past or in the future. However, the theme of wealth and poverty should be clearly apparent to the reader. You will need at least 2 pages to lay out all of the required articles.
Your newspaper must contain these items:
- 2 advertisements (A)
- 1 satirical essay (B)
- 1 opinion piece (C)
- 3 articles about a local, national, and international news event (D)
(A) Your advertisements must be original. Please do not copy and paste advertisements directly from the internet. Design your own. Remember, a good advertisement promises you something: “If you use Swell Shampoo, you’ll look like the latest celebrity.” Your advertisements should be persuasive as well as informative. Please design them yourself. You may use scanners, photos, photoshop programs, art/drawing programs or whatever combination of technical abilities you may have access to in order to complete your advertisements.Make your ad visually compelling, memorable, and clear. You want your audience to “get” the message, not have to guess what it is. Think about the colors, fonts, size and placement of pictures and writing, and the catchiness of the slogan or the words in your ads.
(B) You may use the graphic organizer you have completed for this unit to write your satirical essay. (This is attached but it does NOT have to be used). Good humor counts! Your assignment is to write original satire.Your teacher will be looking for a powerful title as well as an appropriate tone or writing voice.Your satire piece should be a minimum of 400 words.
(C) Your opinion piece must reflect the theme of wealth and poverty. It must also state a clear opinion. Choose a topic that was controversial during the time period you are writing in. Obviously, if you are writing in the future, you will get to be creative with this assignment. Choose a topic you think will be controversial!Make sure you take a clear position.Make sure you back up your points with clear examples or anecdotes.The Op-Ed piece should be a minimum of 400 words.
(D) Your articles may reflect a real life event or they may be completely fictional just written like a standard newspaper article which answers the questions: who, what, when, where and why. Typically a news article begins with a lead sentence which sums up all five questions.You must write three separate articles. One must focus on a local news event; one must focus on a national news event; one must focus on an international news event.The sentences following may contain quotes from witnesses, additional information, and details about the event.Each of your news articles should be a minimum of 150 words in length.
OTHER IMPORTANT INFO:
You may use the columns feature in MS Word to create newspaper columns. If you are more experienced, you may also try your hand at using MS Publisher which is a popular desktop publishing program. There are tutorials available for using both of these programs on the internet.
You will need to layout your newspaper. You may use MS Word or MS Publisher.
Make sure your newspaper includes:
- A Masthead
- A Headline
- A Byline
- Columns
Look at your local newspaper and examine the layout carefully. You will want to use it as a model. Please be sure to document your sources. An example newspaper is attached.
