Lesson 3 – Newsgathering – How
does TV find news stories?
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Starter
Please find out what the main news
story is for today!
You can use any method – but check with the teacher first.
Write it down in your exercise book.
2
Starter
What was the main story?
What method did you use to find out?
3
How is news sourced and gathered?
Watch this video:
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Sourcing and newsgathering
News can be gathered and sourced in various
ways:
• Dedicated TV channel teams – BBC
• News agencies – Press Association, Reuters,
Associated Press
• News aggregators – Internet-based, Google
News, Popurls
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Sourcing and newsgathering
Dedicated TV Channel Team – The BBC
Newsgathering Department provides live coverage
and news reports to all their news outlets. It is the
world’s largest newsgathering operation. It has 41
international bureaux and 7 across the UK and
Ireland. Journalists make up the vast majority of
the 600 staff. A lot goes on behind the scenes.
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Sourcing and newsgathering
News Agencies – The Press Association gathers
news, sport, entertainment and images, the stories
of which are delivered via a ‘wire’ – Mediapoint
Wire is the official name. It acts as a central point
for news, and content is filed by reporters and
journalists and is available for other news teams to
use by subscription. Reuters is another news
agency.
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Sourcing and newsgathering
News Aggregators – these are generally Internetbased or application-based on mobile technology,
and produced by a computer algorithm to search
and compile news stories which have the most hits.
Usually compiled by RSS feeds. There are various
types – social media and newspaper-based ones.
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Sourcing and newsgathering
News Aggregators
We are going to look at these three:
Google News – updates in real time from newspapers
Popurls – RSS feeds from social media aggregator sites
Metanews – one of the oldest news aggregators, founded
in 1997 – tech, business, science news
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News aggregators
– Google News
Stories in more detail updated
in real time
Shows the source of the news
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The top stories are listed!
News aggregators – Popurls
Can also be shared through social networking
Type of news
Social media sources
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News aggregators – Metanews
Reuters News Agency feed
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News aggregators
Browse the three news aggregator websites:
• Google News
• Popurls
• Metanews
Can you find a ‘hard’ and a ‘soft’ news story?
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Deconstructing a news story
Using the 5 Ws rule for news stories, deconstruct one
‘hard’ and one ‘soft’ story with a partner.
WHO
WHAT
WHERE
WHEN
WHY
Complete the worksheet you have been given.
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Plenary
You have looked at news aggregator websites.
The starter activity today was to find the main
news story of the day.
Was the main news story the same?
Has the main news story changed on the news
aggregator website since you last looked?
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Homework
Research a ‘local’ news story.
Use newsgathering techniques to write a report
using the 5 Ws.
Try:
• Newspapers
• Social networking sites
• Regional TV news programmes
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