Youth Readership: NC Newspapers in Education Newspapers’ current educational efforts aim to reach young readers with current news and information about their communities, state, nation and world. Approaches vary, and many employ technology tools. Some efforts reach out to parents and teachers, adults who influence young people. Other initiatives appeal directly to young readers through social media and special sections in print and digital editions. Innovative approaches are discussed in detail here. Traditional Newspaper in Education (NIE) programs supported the use of newspapers as supplementary text in schools, homes, adult education programs, colleges and universities, libraries and other educational settings. The following explores ways to obtain print and digital editions of newspapers for instructional use. NIE is the acronym most often used for Newspapers in Education.
- Some newspapers offer PRINT editions, classroom sets, one or more days each week. Contact the NIE coordinator or manager or call the publisher, editor and/or circulation manager to find out what a newspaper will provide to schools and at what cost. Newspapers may encourage you to place orders online or provide order forms on websites.Some newspapers offer REPLICA or electronic editions also called e-Editions. E-Editions look the same as the print edition because they are pdfs of the printed newspapers.
- Teachers sign up to receive the e-Editions and use them where students have access to computers or use projectors and white boards for displaying the stories and pages. In the e-Edition, readers use clicks to move from page to page and magnify text and images.E-editions generally provide archives that allow users to search for words, phrases or complete stories related to a topic. The archival feature of some e-Editions allows teachers and students to track developing stories or catch up with stories they missed.Some e-Editions can be programmed to notify users through e-mail when stories containing certain words or topics appear. The system may allow teachers to save or collect stories for classroom use. They may allow for translating stories into other languages, having stories read alouds, and/ or emailing stories to students and/or parents.To gain access to e-Editions, teachers should ask for the person who leads a newspaper’s education initiatives or contact the circulation department (or NIE manager) at the newspaper and then ask how to sign up and receive a password that allows them to open and have students open the e-Editions. E-Editions are generally password protected.Most REPLICA or e-Editions provide tutorials that show how to navigate from page to page, section to section, enlarge text and images, and access archives and other special features. E-Editions vary from paper to paper, so users should become familiar with the e-Edition, just as they become familiar with any publication.
- Newspapers have WEBSITES. Increasing numbers of newspapers set up pay walls and require subscriptions to gain full access to their websites. Some newspapers limit access to their archive to readers who subscribe to the print edition. Most pay walls limit free access to a certain number of stories over a month. Newspapers’ websites include updated reports or continuous news coverage, photo galleries, multimedia presentations, reader comments and reader-generated news.Press associations for different states are likely to provide links to newspapers’ websites or online newspapers available in their states.
In their PRINT editions, some newspapers run sections and features aimed at young readers, such as the
student-produced stories and/or illustrations and
puzzles and games. North Carolina newspapers publish
news quizzes that test knowledge of the news, pages featuring projects carried out by young people and other localized features. Anything that appears in the print editions will also appear in E-EDITIONS. Some newspapers also offer blogs, podcasts and other digital lesson plans to use with the newspaper. Newspapers also provide tours, speakers and support community events, such as Spelling Bees, reading festivals and contests, and partner with other literacy organizations, such as public libraries and community colleges. NC newspapers may offer NIE websites and/or education-related newsletters. North Carolina and other states’ press foundations provide curricula and training. In NC, contact the NC Press Foundation,
email@example.com for more information about resources available in North Carolina.
- Text complexity (writing sampler): http://sarahktyler.com/code/sample.php
- Mini Page, archived, searchable--Southern Historical Collection, UNC-CH
- Read Write Think lessons (Lesson plans sponsored by The International Reading Association (IRA)
- Creating a newspaper
- GIST: A Summarizing Strategy for Any Content Area (5Ws)
- Comic Creator (K-12 activities)
- Imagine That! Playing with Genre Through Newspapers and Short Stories
- Technology and Copyright Law: A “Futurespective”
- Book Report Alternative: A Character’s Letter to the Editor
- Persuading an Audience: Writing Effective Letters to the Editor
- Novel News: Broadcast Coverage of Character, Conflict, Resolution and Setting
- The Feature Story—Fifteen Minutes (and 500 Words) of Fame!
- Can you convince me? Developing Persuasive Writing
- Fallacies in Advertising
- African American journalist Ida B. Wells was born in 1862
prepared by Sandra Cook, July 2013