Newspapers and Community

Process

Ahead of Class (optional)

Ask students to listen to the Eddie — AFRO! episode of the Baltimore: The Rise of Charm City podcast (29 minutes), which talks about the history of the Afro American. If time does not permit, there is a three-minute WBAL-TV story called The Afro-American at 125, and also the Afro History page on the Afro American website.

Alternately, you could choose another newspaper from the archive that is relevant to your students and ideally with some useful background material.

BACKGROUND

Step 1:
Talk about how newspapers serve specific communities. Before the internet, most of these communities were bound by geography — i.e., the local newspaper — but communities also defined themselves by factors including race, language, religion, class, and political affiliation. 

These days newspaper articles are archived individually on the internet, but the Google News newspaper archive contains facsimile pages of hundreds of newspapers. Newspapers came as a package, and these facsimile pages show the whole thing — words and images; short and long stories; journalism and advertising — in one place.

This exercise will explore the Afro American, a family-owned newspaper published out of Baltimore since 1892.

EXERCISE

Step 2:
In class, form groups of 2. 

Step 3:
Assign each group a decade between the 1910s and the 1980s. Tell the groups to choose a year in that decade.

Step 4:
Set them up with the Afro American. Have each group read an issue in that decade close to their birthday, or another meaningful (and available) month and day.

Step 5:
Ask groups to make a Google Slides presentation. Take screenshots of:

• The front page 
• One political story
• One sports story
• One arts story
• A birth, marriage or death announcement
• One other story you did not expect 
• Three display ads (boxes, visual)
• Three classified ads (text-only; like Craigslist)

Step 6:
At the end of the slideshow, have students write down three things they learned about the newspaper and the community it served.

Step 7:
Students then share their presentations with one other group  or, in a small enough class, with everyone.

Step 8:
After presentations, reflect on the following questions:

• How did the stories in the paper help serve the community?  What gaps in coverage could they see?
• How do you stay connected to your community (however you might define that)?  How do you get information about your community?
• Why do you think the advertisers put ads in the Afro American?
• How do the advertisements you see online make you feel connected or disconnected to your community?
• Brainstorm ways newsrooms can engage with the communities they are reporting on, or how they can engage with the communities they serve.

POSSIBLE EXTENSIONS

Option #1:
If your students have access to the New York Times, have them look at the same date in TimesMachine facsimile archive. There, they can:

• Compare front pages;
• See which stories from the Afro American you can find in the New York Times and how they cover the subject differently;
• Find a national event in each paper and compare how they were covered (i.e. something with sociopolitical significance).

Option #2:
Ask students to find out about a newspaper published for (and by) a racial, ethnic, religious, linguistic, or other group in or near your hometown. (If you can’t find one, choose a city that you feel an affinity with.) Figure out:

• When it was founded;
• How big its peak circulation is;
• If it still exists;
• Who owns it now;
• How big its circulation is now;
• Whether its archives are online.

Try the website of your local library, a city or state historical society, or the Google Newspapers archive.

HAVE QUESTIONS? FEEDBACK?

We’d love to hear about your experience using these activities in your classroom, get your thoughts on what we could improve. Email us at resources@journalismdesign.com or fill out this form.