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COMM 1307 - Media & Society (Olson)

Assignment #2

Green icon of a television setIn this assignment, you will compare a 10:00pm local broadcast newscast with the following day's Houston Chronicle coverage. Focus on the Houston Chronicle's front page (page A001) for the assignment. You will want to:

  • Write a report addressing the types of news covered, the substance of its editorial page/broadcast, and anything else of interest. 
  • Research which company owns each media outlet. 
  • Also look at the "newsmakers" (people quoted in the stories) - including gender, age, ethnicity, etc.  It might be helpful to answer the six journalistic questions (Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?) for each of the media stories studied to determine if information was the same or differed. 
  • Be sure to include a reference to the issues/broadcast date studied. 
  • Place most of your focus on the compare/contrast angle; you don't need to re-tell the specifics of individual news stories.

Watching Local News

For the news broadcast, you can select one of these local stations to watch a broadcast from:

Company Research

First, find out which companies own each station. You can do this by searching for the station name on the Mergent Intellect database, then checking which company is listed as the "ultimate parent." Once you have identified the owner company, you can use the other databases to research that company.