News and journalism focus their surveillance of the environment on four major geographic areas – local, regional, national and international news. Local television stations and newspapers generally focus the majority of their news effort on local and regional; national news producers generally focus their coverage on national and international events.
This question is designed to lead students to think about the differences between the number one source of news for Generation M and the older technologies of newspapers and television news.
There are distinct differences in the encoding of news between television/radio and print media. For tv, news producers prepare word stories for anchors to read, voice overs (VO), stand-ups (where the reporter is doing a live interview or a package interview).
during the 1960s and 1970s, social changes, questions about the truthfulness of government reports and other societal issues brought a new type of journalistic technique. Some journalists began to explore and delve deeper into news issues and began to use the writing techniques of fiction writers to add depth into their stories.
In general, the social organization of the newsroom is the same for most types of news organizations – the owners or corporate representatives follow the day to day operation at a distance in many cases and leave the production of the news to managers, editors, and actual news producers. However, gatekeeping is and can be present at each level – individuals in all types of positions make decisions on not only what becomes a news story but how it is packaged
: Recent critics of the news industry have pointed to the ownership of media companies focusing too much on profits and maximizing advertising revenues rather than focusing on what is in the public interest. Producing news at a newspaper, radio station or television station costs money – it is expensive to pay talent, a production team and have the latest technologies required to produce the news. Some news stations have had to maintain a news presence with less funding/money – therefore relying on wires and other types of non-local content. At the same time, some news organizations have actually staged events to gain and hype viewer/readers/listeners.
Investigative reporting got its beginnings in the mid-1800s with the Penny Press. During the late 1800s, a reporter “Nellie Bly” (Elizabeth Cochrane) made an agreement with Pulitzer’s New York World to help her get out of an insane asylum – where she spent 10 days documenting horrific treatment. She wrote about the experience and gained worldwide notoriety. Later, in the 1970s, two reporters for the Washington Post – Woodward & Bernstein – helped uncover the Watergate scandal. During the 1990s, Matt Drudge began posting stories about Bill Clinton and later developed the Drudge Report.
