Jessica Mitchell
Special Education
Resource English I.
Austin High School
I had a class set of papers delivered yesterday but was not able to get to the activity for the week until today. We compared the front page of Monday's Statesman to several other front pages from around the world. My students loved looking at pages from other countries; and they were particularly intrigued by the idea that a newspaper in Hamburg, Germany would be carrying the same lead story (and picture) as _La Frontera_, a newspaper in McAllen, TX, among others. The story was about the economic situation in the US and Obama's financial advisors. Some of my students couldn't imagine why "our news" matters to the rest of the world. That led to a great "teaching moment" as we discussed why certain countries would cover news from the US and which countries might not focus upon us as much.
As for the front page they liked the best, they chose _The Times_ from Johannesburg, South Africa (Tuesday 11/25/2008; http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/hr.asp?fpVname=SAF_TT&ref_pge=gal&b_pge=1) for the following reasons:
1. The picture on the front is eye-catching and immediately made the students wonder what the story was about.
2. The headline was simple enough for them to read without effort yet enticing because it obviously applied to the picture of the man that had first caught their attention. The byline and inset also caught my students' attention ("ANC youth leader finally apologises for 'kill for Zuma' comment" and "We'll never incite violence...we are law abiding citizens of this country'").
3. The front page contained just enough writing and stories to make it informative without being intimidating (like _The New York Times_) or uninteresting/sparse (like_Daily Journal_ from Tupelo, MS).
4. They also were drawn to the fact that the banner at the top of the paper contained pictures of people's faces (including an attractive singer) and easy-to-read headlines.
5. An observation I've made while writing this post is that my students overwhelmingly were drawn to front pages with pictures of people of varying ethnicities, rather than those papers with pictures they believe they usually see (politicians in suits or smiling white people like the "uninteresting" picture/headline on the front page of the _Daily Journal_). I mention this because I think my students are, perhaps subconsciously, looking for frontpage news with which they can identify (visually, at least) while simultaneously looking for news that differs from what they think they see all the time in the news (the "boring stuff" they don't think is relevant).
Overall, it seems that the most interesting front pages were the ones with the most color, the largest, most direct headlines, and intriguing pictures. Too many unfamiliar words or acronyms in the headlines deterred the students as did photos that were posed rather than candid shots.
Happy Thanksgiving!
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