The Front Page

Divide students into groups and have them access the student chapter The Front Page.

Have each group choose a Canadian news outlet and then analyze its front page (if you are using print newspapers) or home page (if you are using an online news source.) Make sure that no more than two groups choose the same outlet.

Ideally, students should look at the outlet’s front or home page for at least three separate days. (Remind students to only look at the front or home page, since that’s the best indication of what a news outlet considers to be newsworthy.

The top stories will usually be the most prominent (largest text and images) nearest to the top of the page. Some news outlets run several smaller stories along the top border of the page; these are not considered “top stories.”

When students have finished their analysis, have each group share their findings with the class and ask them:

• How many hard news stories were there, compared to the number of soft news, opinion and analysis stories?
• Were opinion stories clearly marked or were they mixed in with news and analysis stories?
• Which newsworthiness factors appeared most often?
• What does that tell you about what this outlet considers “newsworthy”?
• Based on your analysis, what might be an example of a potential story that this outlet would definitely consider “front page” material? What would be a potential story that would definitely not make the front page, or wouldn’t be covered at all?

When all of the groups have finished presenting their findings, ask students whether there might be news stories that, while important, might not be covered or might be “buried” as a result of these standards.

Some possible prompts for discussion:

• Might a problem be ignored by the news because it is so common it’s not “novel”? (Point out that drinking and driving was considered to be normal, and drunk driving deaths received little news coverage, until advocacy groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving were able to draw attention to it)

• Might a crisis be ignored, or receive little coverage, because it’s happening far away (low proximity), or because it’s happening slowly (low specificity)?
• Might a focus on freshness lead to people forgetting about an issue after a while, even if that problem hasn’t been solved?
• Might people or groups “game the system” by saying or doing outrageous things because they know they will be considered newsworthy? (Point out that for anyone who advertises themselves, their business or their cause, news coverage is called “earned media” and is seen as being at least as valuable as paid advertising. Doing something that gets a lot of people upset can get you a lot of earned media in the news, and even more on social networks.)
• Might the need to make their cause “newsworthy” push a group to do something that hurts their cause? (Tell students that in 2022 a group threw soup at a famous painting to draw attention to the need to address climate change. Although this event made the news, it may also have made people who saw the news story less sympathetic to their cause.)