January, 2011
Mr. Lewis
During the Civil War, most Americans (and people in other countries) learned about the war from their local newspaper. Newspaper correspondents traveled with the armies, and wrote reports from the front lines. Unlike today, the reporters were not censored, and they also were able to allow the politics of their readers to influence their stories. You and your partner (s) are a newspaper staff working in September 1862. Your job is to report the Battle of Antietam as completely as possible. Field reports are available, as are photographs of the battle scene (consult the websites listed on the syllabus). It’s your job to determine how to best cover the story, write it, and then to create a front page for your “newspaper”, highlighting the following:
- An account of the battle, along with battle statistics (number dead, areas captured by which side, and other information).
- Eyewitness statements (quotes) of those directly involved in the battle.
- Maps of the various phases of the battle, AND/OR photographs of the battle scene or of the aftermath of the battle.
- An editorial position regarding whether President Lincoln should (or should not) emancipate the slaves. (Recall that this obviously would not be popular in the South, but was also opposed in the North by many.) If you say that he should free the slaves, you should suggest how this should be done.
As a group, you should go about this task in the following manner:
- One person will do the appropriate “reporting”(research on the web), and write the stories. If your group has three people in it, two people will write one story each.
- One person will investigate and write an editorial (stating what you believe the opinion of your newspaper and area of the country would be) regarding the emancipation issue. Remember, you are trying to convince others that your view is right.
- All members of your group will work to find pictures that effectively highlight the story as well as maps that will let your readers know what happened in this battle.
- All members of your group will edit the stories your reporters contribute, write the headlines and put captions to the pictures. Remember, all work your group does should be readable, but it should also be in your own words. If you use a source, be sure to “quote” that source when you write the story. Finally, some simple journalism rules: Remember good newspaper stories contain a strong opening sentence which contains enough information and is interesting enough to “hook” the reader into reading the rest of the story.
Also, good newspaper stories answer the following questions (which should be familiar to you by now!):
- Who (the people or groups involved in the incident)
- What (what happened)
- When (at what time/date did the event occur?)
- Where (geographically, what is the location of this event?)
- Why (for what reasons did the event occur?)
- How (in this instance, how did this incident occur... how was the battle fought, what types of strategies were used, etc.)
Finally, an editorial is an opinion story. The writer is trying to persuade her audience. A news story is factual, and in your case you will need to cite the sources of all of your information.
Project Duration
This project will begin on Friday, January 14th and your papers are due on Monday, January 24th. The project will count for 40 points, and it will be graded collectively. In other words, if one partner does "A" work, and the other does "D" work, the cumulative grade for both partners will be a "C".
Assignments
The following are the partners and assignments for the project:
Burstall, Yu
Nashville, Tennessee
Bradley, Harty
Annapolis, Maryland
Liu, Yannotta
New York City--Democratic
Mangoni, Wise
Charleston, South Carolina
Marsman, Smith
Boston, Massachusetts
Melnick, Shen
Atlanta, Georgia
Molitoris, Morris
London, England
Mooney, Moos-Achenbach
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
Cheng, Corcoran
New York City--Republican
Krings, Le
Richmond, Virginia
Norris, Polachek
Lawrence, Kansas
Rymes, Tietze
Springfield, Illinois
Tran
Columbus, Ohio