Choosing the News Article

1.  There are many places from which you can choose an article.  Most newspapers have free web sites.  With permission of the student assistant, you may use alternative news sources.

www.sacbee.com    Sacramento Bee

www.nytimes.com  New York Times

www.latimes.com   Los Angeles Times

www.washingtonpost.com   Washington Post

www.usatoday.com   USA Today

http://online.wsj.com/home/us   Wall Street Journal (subscription required)

www.washtimes.com/   Washington Times

2.  The article you select must have some connection to politics or political issues.  Criteria for selection are articles that you find interesting, that you think are important and that you believe others in class would be interested in as well.

3.  For Tuesday’s class, the article can be drawn from papers published Friday-Tuesday.  For Thursday’s class, the papers should be from Wednesday-Thursday.

4.  Be prepared to talk about the article you have selected.  You might find it helpful to bring the article with you to class but you should be already familiar with its contents.

5.  Template for the news articles.

· Identify source of the article and the date published

· Explain the importance of the article

· Be conversant with the article’s details (in presenting the article to the class, you should not have to review the article to answer questions from the instructor).

6.  The objective of the "news" segment of this class is to learn how current events impact you as residents in this country. While preparing news article reports for class, students should be prepared to discuss the following issues:

    a). What part of the article is fact and what, if any, seems to be opinion?
    b). Is there some historical background that provides context to help interpret the significance of this news item?
    c). How does this event affect you or others in this country/state/city/college?

7.  You will be expected to hand in at the beginning of every class a sheet which contains (a) the source of the article, (b) the date published and (c) a short summary of the content.