With a "Front Pages Project," Division I Analyzes Contemporary News

By Division I Media & Journalism reporter Lila

In the final trimester of Media & Journalism, Division I's Humanities class, students analyzed how contemporary news is reported. First, each student was assigned a different news outlet -- like The New York Times, The BBC, or The National Review -- and took screenshots of its front page every day for one week. They also recorded the top four headlines and bylines from that front page. Then, students split into three groups that focused on examining issues of race, gender or topics reported.

The race group focused on questions like: "How many front page stories are by reporters of color?" and "How many people of color are featured in photographs?" The gender group concentrated on questions like "How many media outlets are owned by women?" and "How many front page headlines mention women's names?" The topics group explored questions like: "How many times does the word 'Trump' come up in headlines?" and "How many front page headlines reference violence?" After all of this data collecting, each group created an infographic -- some on the computer, and some by hand -- to share their findings with the community at Exhibitions. Click on the images below to see larger images of their completed work!