COM 340 – Assignment 4 – Winter 2016

You’ve spent a lot of time this quarter tracking down original media accounts from various times in U.S. history. You’ve examined original articles in the colonial press, the partisan press, 19th-century magazines, Civil War newspapers, early 20th century journalism, and the ethnic press. You’ve had the opportunity to review original advertisements, early radio clips, films, newsreels, military information campaigns and more.
I assigned these activities to give you a first-hand sense of how media have evolved throughout U.S. history and to introduce you to some of the online databases and archival materials available for your research. By browsing through these resources, you’ve had the opportunity to experiment with various search strategies, which, I hope, will help you when you want—or need—to track down original sources in the future.
Research Topic: For our final exercise, I want you to select one of the following topics discussed in Barnouw’s The Sponsor and find at least four primary (authentic) U.S. media sources directly involving your topic that were published or produced during the time period discussed by Barnouw. Strive to find different types of media forms, too.
? Government information management and broadcasting during World War II (p. 41)
? FTC’s investigation into Colgate Rapid Shave cream advertising campaign (p. 91)
? NBC’s documentary “Pensions: The Broken Promise” (p. 132)
Step #1: Plan your research strategies
? Select your topic.
? Outline your search strategies, including your ideas about how to search for various types of primary media sources (possible databases, key words, time frame and the like).
? Review Barnouw’s endnotes to see if he documented the information. (You’ll quickly see the value of complete citations, including page numbers.)
? Look for original ads, programming, etc. depending on the topic (remember the advertising, film, newsreels and broadcast archives that you’ve browsed through this quarter).
? Search for newspaper, magazine and trade industry articles (broadcast and advertising) to see if the print media covered the topic (again, remember all of the full-text databases available through the UW libraries).
? Check for video, film and audio clips (remember YouTube, google and the UW databases).
Step #2: Prepare your findings
? Begin with the topic you selected and where it’s discussed in The Sponsor.
? Identify your media selections and provide complete bibliographic citations. This time you do not need to include a section about your search strategies. If you
decide to use only one media form (for example, newspapers), however, then be sure to explain your decision and the steps you took to locate other media forms.
? Summarize briefly each of your selections, explain/justify why you selected it, and compare/contrast your findings with Barnouw’s points (about two pages double-spaced).
? Provide complete bibliographic citations of your four primary media sources.
? Proofread carefully.
Grading Criteria
Success at finding four appropriate primary media sources (60 points); Summary/explanation/analysis of findings (30 points); Documentation/bibliographic citations (10 points); Missing links/copies (-1.0)
A Choice of Due Dates
? Please upload your assignment to the course website, if you are able to meet the original deadline of Friday, March 4, at 11:59 p.m. I’ll try to have these assignments graded and returned by the final exam.
? For anyone needing extra time, the alternative due date is at the beginning of the final exam Tuesday, March 15, at 12:30 p.m. There will not be a late penalty if you select this due date. Please bring a printed copy of your assignment, plus the first page (or a screen shot of a website) of each of your primary sources, to the exam because I will be grading offline that week.
This assignment is worth 10 percent of your course grade.