The readings from the textbook were a good review. Chapters seven and eight went over the inverted pyramid, which is what every journalist must know. Basically the inverted pyramid is an upside-down triangle, with all the important information at the top and the smaller, less important details towards the bottom. The lead is in first sentence of the story and must include information that is not only important but also eye-catching for the reader. A good news story will entice the reader to read the whole story, even to the last details at the end.
The other reading was from Journalism.org, The State of the News Media. In my Journalism Research class last semester we went over the future of the news and discussed the possibility of print news becoming non-existent. This report addressed the same issue. I think that is normal for print sales to go down when such a variety of news is available online in a much faster, concise form. However, I do not think that newspapers and magazines will disappear anytime soon. There are still people who cherish the tradition of sitting down to breakfast with a fresh newspaper (like my father).
One factor that was discussed in the print vs. online issue is that local news is seldom addressed in online news sites. People who live in a small town need to be informed about the news in their local community not just the city nearby. Local newspapers do not have the staff to create elaborate websites so for this reason; print will continue to be a staple for the news in the town. I know that in the town I come from the website for our local newspaper is actually a scanned front page from the newspaper that week. http://www.starandwave.com I think that could even be considered a protest to battle against online news.
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As a person who is likely close to your father's age, I also like a paper newspaper, although I've been reading most of my news online. So I hope paper news survives, but I wonder if only we older people care about that. About local news: Interestingly, some small communities have quite active news Web sites. Maybe one of the reasons many don't is that putting news on the Web costs money, and small papers are often stretched pretty thin financially.
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