Overview of the requirements to the mass media

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Lectures on mass media

1. THE MEDIA. NEWSPAPER STRUCTURE

The term MEDIA. Newspapers:

News and entertainment are communicated in a number of ways, using different media. The media include print media such as newspapers and magazines, and electronic media such as radio and television. The word media is most often used to refer to the communication of news and in this context means the same as news media. Media and mass media are often used when discussing the power of modern communication.

Newspaper is a publication devoted chiefly to presenting and commenting on the news. The press ideally has 3 functions: information, discussion and representation. It is supported to give the reader reliable and complete information to base his/her judgment. It should let him/her know the argument for and against any policy and it should reflect and give voice to the desires of people as a whole.

Newspapers have certain advantages over the other major news media. Newspapers can cover more news and in much greater detail than television and radio.

Linguistic features. Graphology and Punctuation:

1) Short paragraphs. Often they consist of one sentence only. Purpose: to create a blow-by-blow effect and make it easier to digest the information. Long sentences normally belong to philosophical treatises, not for an “easy read” one might want to have on the train or while waiting at the dentist's reception room.

2) First paragraph expands the headline. Purpose: to provide a resume of the article, to give the reader a better idea of what the article is about. Many time-pressed readers often limit themselves to first paragraphs, because they have all the appropriate facts in a concise form.

Example:

Headline	Shake-up at Tandem as Income Declines
First paragraph	Tandem Computers, leading manufacturer of fault-tolerant computer systems, yesterday announced a shake-up of top management, revealing a sharp drop in the company's fourth quarter income.

The first paragraph either a) gives more on the facts already included into the headline, or b) introduces totally new facts bearing on the topic. In the previous example we additionally learn from the first paragraph WHEN the shake-up announcement was made (time reference) and HOW BAD the decline is (attribute of the event).

3) Subheadings. Purpose: to break up the text into more manageable (readable, digestible) portions.

Example: subheadings are usually short and non-predicative, sometimes very emotional - more like exclamations: Murdered or Sticky business or Catastrophic.

4) Quotation marks. Purposes: a) to give extra weight to certain phrases; equivalent to underlining; b) distance the writer from an opinion (usually unpleasant) or reported fact (might be doubtful); c) indicate technical or novel (slang, fashionable) expressions.

Grammatical features of article texts:

The text of any article displays a multitude of linguistic features that are used by the writer for a number of reasons. You have to remember that, probable, you will hardly find ALL the features in any one article, but you have to be able to find all those that ARE there.

Newspaper style is characterized by the following grammatical features:

1. Adverbial phrases introducing sentences.

Purpose: to save space.

Example: `Characteristically for him, the Prime Minister started his speech with accusations.' Instead of `The Prime Minister started his speech with accusations, which is characteristic of him.

2. Relative clauses, often considered by the use of the present and past participle and infinitives.

Purpose: (a) to save space and pack in more information onto a shorter sentence; (b) to vary the structure of the sentence.

Example: Varying the structure of the sentence is necessary to break the monotony. The ultimate aim of the writer is to dress up the material so that the paper sells well. In this light the tedious repetition of the normal `Subject - Predicate - Object' is a definite loser. Who would be interested in reading something like this: `The British Cabinet has adopted a new law. The new law deals with real estate disposition. Real estate matters are now regulated by the old legislation passed back in 1982 …' A livelier version using the monotony-breaking devices would look as follows: `The British Cabinet has adopted a new law which deals with real estate disposition and replaces the old legislation passed back in 1982.' Note that relative clause have been used to blend the second and third sentences of the original text into the first sentence. We could compact the information even further using participles and infinitives: `The British Cabinet has adopted a new law dealing with real estate disposition and replacing the old legislation passed back in 1982.

3. Premodified noun phrases, popularly known as stone-wall constructions.

Purpose: to pack in more information and create dramatic effect. One of the usual premodifications is title-and-name combinations, though the usage is virtually unlimited: you could potentially condense a whole sentence into a Premodified noun phrase creating rather colorful combinations.

Examples: (a) `a Chinese Communist Party Central Committee Politburo member statement' is definitely shorter than `a statement by a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China'; (b) the premodification is not necessarily a noun, though most often it is. It could practically ANYTHING, including whole sentences, e.g. `a 57-day fast', `a don't-touch-me-or-I'll-kill-you expression on his face', etc.

4. Apposition.

Purpose: to save space. The most widely used cases include mentioning the post, age, profession.

Examples: (a) `Mr. Sands, 38, …' (instead of `Mr. Sands who is 38, …'); (b) `Mr. Clinton, US President, … (instead of `Mr. Clinton who is now the US President'; note that in this case premodification could be used with the same effect: `the US President Mr. Clinton').

5. Hyphenated adjectives.

Purpose: to save space. This is one of the most efficient ways to compact the information and a form of space-saving premodification (that is used to save space).

Example: `panic-stricken people' instead of `people stricken with panic'. Note that in many cases such adjectives are nonce-words that are not to be found in dictionaries but whose meaning is readily deductible from their components.

6. Inversion of subject and predicate (noun and verb) with speech verbs.

Purpose: to break the monotony of the `Subject-Predicate-Object' pattern.

Example: `This man is an unspeakable disgrace', said Johnnie Cochran, O.J.'s flamboyant defense attorney.

7. Passive verb forms.

Purpose: (a) give a phrase a front-position, and so emphasize it; (b) express an impersonal, neutral tone; (c) vary the pattern of active verb form (the most frequent reason for using passive forms).

Example: (a) `75 people were killed during the blast' (underlining the most important fact: the number of casualties); (b) `Ten activists were arrested during the demonstration' (avoiding the potentially embarrassing use of the name of the actor - police).

8. Extensive use of Subjective-with-the-Infinitive.

Purpose: to compact the information and give the sentence a neutral tone.

Example: `12 people are reported to have been killed during the attack'.

3. Front Page Analysis

1. Give the title of the paper and its country of origin (country where it was printed). Some papers are international (“Financial Times”).

2. Identify the lead story (“leader”):

- Provide the headline (normally it is characterized by a) heavy font, usually bold; b) prominent position on the page; 3) an illustrating picture.

- Give the gist (summary) of the story. /It is not necessary to read the whole story; normally the essential information (what happened and where it happened) is contained in the first paragraph.

- Describe the features that helped you identify the lead story, including:

- prominent position on the page (top left-hand corner, center of the page);

- large font size; usually the font is also bold;

- picture/photograph accompanying the story.

3. Analyze the other stories:

- List them with brief contents./the first paragraph will come in handy again.

- Ratio/proportion of local/national/international news (stories)./The more international news there are - the more serious the paper is.

- Ratio of objective news (politics and economy) as opposed to human interest and glamour stories. /”Glamour story” is a story about a star (film, pop etc.) or VIP's personal life.

4. Advertisements on the Front Page/Normally there would be few or none.

5. Analyze the ways to learn what is inside the paper:

- Table of contents.

- Story previews (short summaries of inside stories with a reference to an inside page).

- Unfinished front-page stories with a reference to inside pages.

6. Pictures, cartoons, comics are not typical for the front page.

7. Resume. Suggested text: “The layout of the front page is designed with the purpose to provoke the reader's interest and/or curiosity and induce him to buy the paper.”

THE ALGORITHM: STATE WHAT FEATURES THERE CAN BE, WHY THEY ARE THERE, AND GIVE AN EXAMPLE.

2. HEADLINE ENGLISH

Headline as a communicative unit.

The newspaper reporting has a style and a language of its own. Since newspapers usually report the news in brief, a journalist has to convey the most essential parts of the news in the most economical way possible, while attracting and keeping the reader's attention.

Newspaper headline is a communicative unit. It gives brief contents of the facts, informs the reader about the meaning, character and a degree of importance of the events. With the help of the headlines it is possible to guess the author's and the editor's opinion of the events.

Newspaper headline performs several functions:

1) first of all it fulfills nominative-informative function, the function of informing about a fact;

2) a headline has an advertising-expressive function, which is aimed at catching the reader's eye, at making him read the article;

3) newspaper headlines fulfill graphical-distinguishing function, which helps to delimitate one text from another, separate the article from the context and at the same time to make a common entity of all the articles. This function is realized with the help of graphics: newspaper headlines are usually printed in heavy font, usually bold type and occupy a prominent position on the page.

Lexical-grammatical features of a headline.

Newspaper headlines in authentic English and American newspapers have a language of their own, which is unusual in a number of ways. Headline English is characterized by some lexical-grammatical peculiarities:

1) articles, personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns this/that, finite forms of the verb to be, auxiliary verbs are omitted where no severe ambiguity results:

Fan Kills Wife. - A sports fan has killed his wife.

Houses (are) Smashed by (the) Hurricane.

2) Newspaper headlines generally use simple tenses of verbs:

a) The present simple is very frequently used to express past meaning:

Killer Escapes from Courtroom. - A killer has escaped from a courtroom.

Five Holidaymakers Die (died) in Austrian Bus Crash Horror.

b) The infinitive is used to express the future:

President to Visit Germany. - President is going to visit Germany soon.

c) Passive form is employed where the action is more important than the agent:

Two Killed as Hotel Blasts Hit Istanbul. - 2 people have been killed in a hotel explosion in Istanbul.

Three Injured in Bomb Attack. - 3 people have been injured in a bomb attack.

d) Continuous participle is used to express present meaning:

Thames Approaching Danger Level. - The river Thames is approaching danger level.

Most headlines are elliptical.

3) The predicate is often omitted when it plays a secondary role:

Second Term for Irish President. - Ireland has re-elected its president for a second term.

4) Vice versa: in order to pay attention to the predicate the subject is omitted if it is less important than the predicate:

(they) Expect New Economic Depression.

5) Space-saving punctuation marks are often used to indicate quotations, questions, causal relations and connectives:

A Soldier Last Words to Mother: “It's Getting Scary Here”.

6) Headline language is characterized by frequent use of acronyms and abbreviations:

PA Sacked by Lady Archer Is Bankrupt. - A personal assistant sacked by lady Archer has declared herself bankrupt.

SDP Names Chief. - The social-democratic party has appointed party boss.

Lt-Gen Napier Crookenden. - Lieutenant-general.

7) A compound-noun phrase is usually used instead of a longer clause:

Bank Girl Killer clues for Clues to the killer of the girl who worked in a bank. Sometimes, of course, the briefness of headlines makes them ambiguous. For example: “Prime Minister Moves to Cut Down Expenditure” - when the Prime Minister didn't change his place of residence but made a move politically. Sometimes it's necessary to read the first passage to understand the meaning.

8) Possessive pronoun due to its structural compactness is used with inanimate nouns instead of preposition of:

Price Control's Effect Discussed.

9) Nicknames and abbreviated names are used instead of surnames of some political leaders, actors, sportsmen, etc.

Mysterious “Mad Jack” Goes on Trial in Afghanistan.

Mad Jack - a criminal.

Mr. Cool - Graeme Souness - a famous coach.

10) The use of colloquial phrases and slang attract the reader's attention:

- “web Lotto: it ain't pretty”

- Hey, Wanna Buy Some?

11) Neologisms, dialectisms, poetic words are used:

Teach-in in Oxford - a student's meeting in Oxford.

12) Alliterations and rhyming may be used in headlines to attract attention:

Ginny Goes For Gold.

13) Headlines built around puns, jokes and rhymes are rarely appropriate on news stories but are sometimes appropriate on feature stories. If a headline contains a pun, all possible meanings of the play on words should be appropriate to the story. Usually the sentence following the headline explains the meaning: e.g. A wet open air concert in London by the opera singer Luccano Pavarotti was describes as: Torrential Rain in Most Arias.

There are some headlines which can be understood if you know the realia of the language.

Grand: - great, magnificent;

- 1 000 dollars.

14) Newspaper headlines use a lot of distinctive vocabulary. They prefer words that are usually shorter and generally sound more dramatic than ordinary English words. Short one syllable words are used instead of longer more common words.

1. Newspaper vocabulary.

Headlines are characterized by a language of their own; they possess certain lexical and grammatical features. Some of them present difficulty for translation as knowledge of British and American realities is required.

Headlines help the reader to get a general impression of the major events of the day and select articles which interest him for thorough reading.

Newspaper word	Meaning	Newspaper word	Meaning
Aid	Help	Key	Essential, vital
Axe	Cut, remove	Link	Connection
Back	Support	Move	Step towards a desired end
Bar	Exclude, forbid	Ordeal	Painful experience
Bid	Attempt	Oust	Push out
Blast	Explosion	Plea	Request
Blaze	Fire	Pledge	Promise
Boost	Incentive, encourage	Ploy	Clever activity
Boss Head	Manager, director	Poll	election/public opinion survey
Clash	Dispute	Probe	investigation
Curb	Restraint, limit	Quit	leave, resign
Cut	Reduction	Riddle	Mystery
Drama	Tense situation	Strife	Conflict
Drive	Campaign, effort	Talks	Discussions
Gems	Jewels	Threat	Danger
Go-ahead	Approval	Vow	Promise
Hit	Affect badly	Wed	Marry

Lexical features of article texts.

Newspaper style fulfils 2 main functions: informative and expressive. The style is defined as a system of interconnected lexical, phraseological and grammatical means, which are perceived as separate units, aimed at informing and impressing the reader.

The choice of vocabulary plays an important role in writing a newspaper article because exercising influence over masses of people is the main feature of a newspaper language. It is characterized by a great percentage of proper names, numerals, dates, international words.

Newspaper style makes wide use of innovations which become clichй in a short period of time.

A great number of abstract words is typical of a newspaper language, although information is concrete as a rule. Newspaper style is characterized by plenty of emotive, evaluative and expressive vocabulary, though greater part of vocabulary chosen for writing a newspaper article is neutral.

However, newspaper style has some peculiarities and characterized by a wide use of such lexical means as:

1. special political and economic terms: constitution, democracy, anarchy, apartheid, elections, global investment, etc.;

2. words having political meaning, which are not terms: cold war, puppet government, etc.;

3. neologisms are typical feature of newspapers which react quickly to discoveries and innovations in social life, science and technology: a teach-in, stop-go policies;

4. obsolete words like archaisms are used to re-create historic epoch and for speech characteristic of characters and as a means of expressiveness: governor, codger (эксцентричный старик, чудак), to impound (конфисковывать);

5. a skillful use of synonyms makes speech expressive and precise: bright - shining, regeneration - feed back, really - truly;

6. antonyms serve as a means of depicting people, objects and events: right - wrong, love - hate, evil - good up - down, clever - stupid;

7. homonyms serve as a source of pun: knight - night, piece - peace, write - right. The device is mostly used in poems.

8. tropes - words used in figurative meaning - reinforce expressiveness of speech: leak of information, washed-out, clack, leech. The most widespread tropes are metaphors, metonymies, antonomasia, simile, periphrasis.

9. idiomatic expressions serve as a means of speech expressiveness: to play the rob. Proverbs, sayings, aphorisms also make speech more meaningful: `Count one's chickens before they are hatched.'

10. phrasal verbs are used in order to make the article more readable. Phrasal verbs used in everyday speech make the text of the article more familiar to an ordinary reader who does not like to be made silly by being obliged to consult a dictionary too often: `Clayton is putting up 55% of the required investment capital.' `The increase was set off be fewer aircraft commercial deliveries'.

NB: It is always possible to find a neutral or formal synonym which is invariably longer.

11. frequent use of key-words. They are used to emphasize the topic of the article. This device aims at `driving the message home'. The reader must upon having read the article be able to say what it was all about: speaking about reaching a verdict the following key-words may be used: jury, juror, deliberate, deliver a verdict, reach a verdict, unanimous verdict, to find a defendant guilty/not guilty).

12. emotive vocabulary is used in order to impress the reader, to attract his attention.

13. newspaper clichй serve a traditional means of expressiveness, necessary for a newspaper style, as they help to find necessary associations and prevent misunderstanding:

b) a simple verb is replaced by a set expression. It adds extra-syllables to a sentence and makes it sound smooth: make contact with, have the effect of, be subjected to, serve the purpose of.

Such expressions consist of verbs of wide semantics, such as prove, render, serve, form, play combined with abstract nouns and adjectives. They are often used in passive form: greatly to be desired, a development to be expected, brought to a satisfactory conclusion;

c) an expression with a preposition replaces a gerund: by examination of (not by examining);

d) short words are replaced by constructions with prepositions and conjunctions: with respect to, having regard to, in view of.

Such clichй make the text sound serious even if the meaning is ordinary: In my opinion (instead of I think);

14. one of the most important features of journalism is the `human interest' angle. The readers of the stories want to have the stories brought to life and one of the best ways of doing this is to add personal detail about the people in news: Susan White, aged 29; 17-year old blonde; long-haired youth; or a 41-year-old factory worker, father of six, had an hour-long argument with his 36-year-old blond wife.

So the choice of lexical units for writing newspaper texts should be performed carefully as newspaper texts are always addressed to masses and should be precise and expressive in character.

3. WRITING A SCENARIO

1. SCENARIO: Each event has inherent logic, and various stages of such an event can be identified and presented in the form of a scenario. Scenarios are useful in a number of ways:

- They help you decide who the participants of the event are and, therefore, give them names - you select your vocabulary.

- They help you predict the development of events; therefore you can anticipate the course of actions in a news story and guess certain things you did not understand directly.

- Knowing the basic stages of a scenario you can single out the most important elements of the story and create a good summary.

In order to work out a scenario you have to identify three important factors:

- ACTORS

- ACTIONS

- CIRCUMSTANCES

- ACTORS are normally people or organizations causing the event to happen, each of them performs specific ACTIONS that are fairly predictable being conventional. Finally, the actors perform on the stage (venue) on certain day at a certain hour (time) in a certain order (sequence). Venue, time and sequence are the CIRCUMSTANCES of an event. Very often news contain historical data on the phenomenon, statistics and reasoning as to “WHY” the event took place. The elements of the scenario sequence boil down to beginning, development, end and consequences. The actions of each actor at any stage may be very different. The following table describing a failed bomb attack on a Bank Office in Tokyo illustrates that:

	ACTIONS throughout the Sequence
ACTORS	Beginning	Development	End	Consequence
Japanese religious sect members, a.k.a. zealots, fanatics, etc.	Plant a bomb (Bank Headquarters(, make an anonymous phone call	Claim responsibility, make a political statements	Make a final call to promise an encore
Bank officials, a.k.a. bomb targets, victims, etc.	Evacuate the building, notify the police		Return to their ordinary duties
Bomb squad	Arrive at the scene, begin searching for the bomb		Find the explosive device and render it harmless
Police, a.k.a. law enforcement units, etc.	Cordon the area, help evacuate the tenants	Maintain order, begin the investigation		Make a statement to the press about the leads they have and possible suspects

ESTABLISHING THE ORDER OF EVENTS AND RELATIONSHIPS: It is very important to correctly establish what is the relationship between various events in a news story. It is complicated when a writer throws in every bit of information at his or her disposal, which results in a hotchpotch of different facts which seemingly have no connection whatsoever. To extract sense from an article we should answer the following questions:

- What happened after what? This is a matter of creating the chronology of events which can be described as SIMULTANEOUS or CONSECUTIVE.

- Which of the events are related to each other? Events can be united by the common topic (e.g., the Balkan crisis) and not be otherwise connected: they just happened at the same time or one after another. On the other hand they can be joined in a cause-effect relationship.

- If some events ARE related, then which of them caused which (or, which of them resulted from which)? The CAUSE-EFFECT RELASHIONSHIPS can be ACTUAL (“event A caused Event B”) or POSSIBLE (“Event B will take place IF Event A takes place”). A simple example will clarify this:

Sunday. At 9.00 Saturday Schmuckland declared war on Snafunia, citing numerous cross-border excursions by Snafunia troops into Schmuckland territory which have been continuing for at least three months as the reason for the commencement of hostilities. At a press-conference in the capital of Snafunia held early today Akuna Matata, Snafunia President, announced that hiscountry is prepared to discuss a truceif Schmuckland agrees to suspend its offensive. The morning news bulletin broadcast on Schmuckland television reported that the country's troops have “rapidly advanced” into the territory of Snafunia inflicting heavy losses on the “enemy”. Scheme. Events “C” and “D” are simultaneous, “A”, “B” and “C-D” are consecutive. The relationship between “A” and “B” can be described as an actual cause-effect relationship, between “E” and “F” - as possible cause-effect relationship.

4. RULES OF A RESUME

Resumes can be different depending on what type of story we are dealing with. There are two: ACTION and OPINION stories.

To make a resume of an action story we have to go through the following steps:

- identify actors and actions;

- identify the sequence of events;

- prioritize events and delete those of secondary importance;

- put what remains in a logical order.

To make a resume you have to fill in the following template: WHO did WHAT to WHOM, WHEN, WHERE, HOW and WHY. The beginning of the template can be slightly different if we are talking about a passive event (“WHO suffered WHAT”), or an actorless event (“WHAT HAPPENED TO WHOM/WHAT”). Another tip: in order to save space use in headlines, they may come in handy while trying to compress the information. THE TIP OF TIPS for the lazy-minded: THE 1^ST PARAGRAPH normally is as close to the resume as you can come. As for opinion stories, things are somewhat different. An opinion article usually (not always) treats ONE event or topic (for example, ways to bring peace to a war-torn country). Here we have to build a pyramid of arguments. The topic must touch upon SUBJECTS, and logically there will be two OPINIONS on each subject. Finally, there should be ARGUMENTS both FOR and AGAINST an opinion. Therefore to make a resume of an opinion story we must go through the following movements:

- identify the subject(s);

- identify the opinions for and against and their holders;

- identify arguments for and against each of the two opinions;

- arrange this into a neat sentence of several sentences;

- add salt'n'peppa according to the taste.

Some notes to remember:

- not always will you find all the components, so go with what you have;

- very seldom, if at all, will you find a pure action or opinion articles; usually there will be some hybrid which should be treated according to which it appears to be more - action or opinion;

- should there be too much information to be included YOU decide what goes into your resume, you choose the important things;

- a good resume causes no further questions;

- (making resumes does not belong exclusively to newspaper analyses, it is something you might find useful in your daily life).

LOGICAL CONNECTIVES: Trying to make a good resume you will have to make a seamless connection between logical parts of your narrative. To do that you need connectives, words that represent relations.

5. PRЙCIS-MAKING TECHNIQUE

Prйcis as a form of abridgement of the text.

Key fragment. Information in discourse is of two kinds. On the one hand, there are facts, actions, arguments, etc., on the other hand, statements, summarizing groups of facts.

The logical pattern takes the form of either deduction which is development of thought from general to particular or induction which is the opposite case, i.e. going over from particular to general.

Generalization is to be found either in the form of a word, phrase or sentence.

The predominant logical pattern in scientific prose and popular science texts is deductive, i.e. the generalizing element occurs at the top of the chunk of text.

Rules of prйcis-writing.

Prйcis-making naturally begins with skimming through the text and getting its general idea. This is the first step of prйcis-making technique. The second step consists of reading the text paragraph after paragraph and picking out the key fragments.

1. Key fragments outcrop in the text in an irregular manner. The average case is a two-part structure which is made up of a key sentence followed by a few supporting details. There are paragraphs made up of ordinary facts, i.e. devoid of any generalizations. Consequently, they yield no key fragments. Then there are paragraphs which contain a logical hub of the text, made up of more than one sentence. press article header

2. The problem of telling primary information from secondary items. To differentiate between the two kinds of information, use method of comparing the thematic content of various paragraphs. Thus the 1^st three paragraphs of the text (the title including) deal with the following main points: 1) (first) computers; 2) transistor; 3) integral circuit (IC); 4) microprocessor. Set against them, the facts discussed in paragraph 4 appear to be of secondary importance.

3. Selection of information to be included in the prйcis is aided by considering the relative extension (расширение, предел распространение) of all thematic words (concepts) concerned. In logic, extension means a class of things to which a term is applied.

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