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CAREERS IN TELEVISION JOURNALISM
Presenters: Steve Hayslip and Amy Rao
Target Audience: Students in grades 7-12
Disciplines: Communications; Art; Language Arts
Objectives:
Students will:
- Demonstrate an appreciation of the strengths and the weaknesses of television news as sources of information
- Understand the role that target audience plays in the creation and content of a news broadcast on television
- Exhibit an awareness of the way in which news is "packaged" for a particular target audience
- Describe the different tasks needed to create a news program.
- Recognize producing a television news show is a complex task that requires
many skills, many people, and much thought and planning.
- Pre-Activity: Focus on collaborating with other students to develop a news program.
- Post-Activity: Present a news program that is shared with at least one other class in the school.
National Standards to which this program aligns:
This lesson plan may be used to address these academic standards. These standards are drawn from Content Knowledge: A Compendium of Standards and Benchmarks for K-12 Education: 2nd Edition.
Grade level: 9-12
Subject area: physical science
Standard:
Understands basic concepts about the structure and properties of matter.
Benchmarks:
Knows that the properties of a compound reflect the nature of the interactions among its molecules, which are determined by the structure of the molecule (the kinds of atoms and the distances and angles between them).
Grade level: 9-12
Subject area: technology
Standard:
Understands the nature of scientific inquiry.
Benchmarks:
Knows that results of scientific inquiry--new knowledge and methods--emerge from different types of investigations and public communication among scientists; the nature of communicating and defending the results of scientific inquiry is guided by criteria of being logical and empirical and by connections between natural phenomena, investigations and the historical body of scientific knowledge.
Grade level: 9-12
Subject area: U.S. history
Standard:
Understands the economic boom and social transformation of post-World War II America.
Benchmarks:
Understands influences on American society during the post-World War II years (e.g., how family life changed after 1945, the influence of popular culture on American society after World War II).
Grade level: 9-12
Subject area: world history
Standard:
Understands global and economic trends in the high period of Western dominance.
Benchmarks:
Understands how government programs and technological development influenced the industrial nations of the Northern Hemisphere in the early 20th century (e.g., government programs that included social legislation such as Social Security, minimum wage laws, and compulsory free public education; the broad effects of technological developments in labor, capital investment, and industrial production).
Grade level: 9-12
Subject area: language arts
Standard:
Demonstrates competence in speaking and listening as tools for learning.
Benchmarks:
Makes explicit use of various techniques for effective presentations (e.g., modulation of voice, inflection, tempo, enunciation, physical gestures) and demonstrates poise and self-control while presenting.
Grade level: K-2
Subject area: the arts
Standard:
Understands how informal and formal theatre, film, television, and electronic media productions create and communicate meaning.
Benchmarks:
Understands the visual, aural, oral, and kinetic elements of dramatic performances.
Grade level: K-2
Subject area: the arts
Standard:
Understands how informal and formal theatre, film, television, and electronic media productions create and communicate meaning.
Benchmarks:
Understands how the wants and needs of characters are similar to different from one's own wants and needs. Knows appropriate terminology used in analyzing dramatizations.
The Consortium of National Arts Education Associations has developed national guidelines for what students should know and be able to do in the arts. View the standards online:
artsedge.kennedy-center.org/teach/standards.cfm.
This lesson plan addresses the following national standards:
- Analyzing, critiquing, and constructing meanings from informal and formal theatre, film, television, and electronic media productions
- Understanding context by analyzing the role of theatre, film, television, and electronic media in the past and the present
The National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS)
NCSS has developed national guidelines for teaching social studies. View the standards online: http://www.socialstudies.org/standards/strands/.
This lesson plan addresses the following thematic standards:
- Culture
- Individual Development and Identity
Pre-Activities:
1) Choose appropriate videos of television news programs and preview the complete program to ensure that the content is appropriate for a classroom and community. Share and discuss these videos in a class discussion.
- Video archives of news stories are available from the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, MSNBC, ABC News, and CBS News and Weather Channel Web sites. Local television stations may also have online archives.
- Videotaped segments of television shows will also work for this assignment if you have a television and VCR in your classroom.
- Your library may have videotaped segments of news broadcasts and documentaries of historical importance that can be used for this assignment as well.
2) Have students brainstorm the things that go into a news program. Write the list on chart paper so that you can return to the list in later sessions. Use these Journalist's Questions to get discussion started:
- Who appears on the news program?
- What is covered on the news program?
- Where are the programs taped?
- When are the segments in the program shown (in what order)?
- Why are the particular segments shown? Why were they chosen?
- How do all the parts of the news program fit together?
3)Conclude the session by mapping out jobs that will need to be done for every news segment. Invite students to identify the jobs that are included on their brainstormed list. There can be news anchors, investigative reporters, weather forecasters, and news analysts. In addition to the jobs seen on camera, students may add jobs such as the director, set designer, and camera operator.
CLASS LESSON DESCRIPTION and ACTIVITY:
How television news is constructed – Class Activity and Discussion
1) Show a number of TV newscasters and/or reporters (with or without sound).
- Can students identify some common characteristics?
- Discuss what messages these people transmit through their appearance and voice.
- How does TV journalism differ from radio and print journalism?
2) After viewing a portion of a selected newscast, discuss the set used.
- What does it look like?
- What are its elements?
- Why are they used?
- Discuss possible alternatives -- news delivered from an armchair, podium, bar, parking lot, church -- and their possible meanings.
3) Compare different newscasts. Examine the use of color, lighting, background sound, camera angles, shots and the use of the teleprompter. Students may experiment by trying to read from notes without losing contact with their audience.
4) Show selected clips from the movie Broadcast News and discuss the concepts.
5)View a selected newscast and chart each news story, according to the following headings:
- type of visual used
- duration
- location (local, national, international)
6) Consider some of the following questions:
- Are the locations appropriate to the story?
- What other locations could have been used?
- Show a portion of the news with sound only.
- What type of language is used? How and why is it used?
- What do the visuals do to and for the story?
7)Note the length of each story in a newscast. Pick one story and compare its coverage in a newspaper, preferably the edition closest in time to the newscast. What differences exist? Why?
8)Discuss the entertainment aspects in a selected newscast. Why are these included?
9) How is conflict used in news stories? Do sensationalism and violence make news? Why is "bad" news shown so often?
10)Examine the wording used in newscasts. How might it contribute to sensationalism? Try to write a news story by exaggerating the sensational aspects.
11)Who decides what stories, people, events should be on the news? Who owns the stations and networks?
12)Can TV news show us the "real" world? Can TV news be objective?
Post-Activities:
- Drawing from the list, create a chart of the possible segments the groups can produce (such as investigative report, weather forecast, editorial commentary).
- Divide students into small groups. Each group will produce a news segment. Ask students to choose a kind of segment for their group to produce and encourage students to identify the jobs that they'll be doing.
3) Once the group members are satisfied with their idea, they can proceed to write a script for one news show.
4) After the script has been written, group members should create a storyboard, which shows the flow of the script in pictorial form.
5)Have students choose news anchors, investigative reporters, weather forecasters, and news analysts as well as the director, set designer, and camera operator.
6)After several rehearsals, film or tape their news episodes. Then they can share their news shows with other groups.
Suggested Additional Readings:
Television Production
Alan Wurtzel and John Rosenbaum, McGraw-Hill, 1995
This detailed handbook, a part of the McGraw-Hill Series in Mass Communication, is intended for professional practitioners, but would explain to the young adult reader what television production entails.
Opportunities in Television and Video Careers
Shonan F.R. Noronha, VGM Career Horizons, 1994
The production of television and the newer video programs offer challenging, exciting career opportunities for persons with a variety of talents, skills, and inclinations. Explore those opportunities in this guide to the field.
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