Assignments
		Community Media
		Television Ratings
	What is a trade publication?
	Articles
	Citing Your Sources

Assignment

Community Media

For this assignment, students will research and locate positive and negative examples of 2 minority groups in local area media and/or media of specific communities (e.g., Latinos, African-Americans). Sources for this project can include local TV stations and community publications such as newspapers and magazines. You may also look at publications that are geared towards specific communities, e.g, Jet (African-Americans), Frontier (Gays/Lesbians), Working Mother (Women), La Prensa San Diego (Latinos/Latinas). Explain clearly why you believe the images are positive or negative.

This is to be 500 words, typed, double-spaced and clearly indicate what media products that you observed.

Click here for news resources.

Television Ratings

Ratings are key to the entire mass media industry of the US and the programs that are aired on television and radio. For this assignment you will find and summarize 2 articles from trade publications dealing with one of the following topics:

1. Demographics and TV program scheduling
2. Advertising spending and television ratings
3. Commercials and demographic features of viewers
4. Ratings and scheduling of TV shows

The articles must be properly cited following APA style requirements. The length of the assignment is 500 words—1-2 pages.

What is a trade publication?

A trade publication is one that is written by people in an industry for people in an industry. Some examples of trade publications for this assignment are:

Entertainment industry trades:

• Variety
• Television Week
• Hollywood Reporter

Advertising and marketing industry trades:

• Advertising Age
• MediaWeek
• American Demographics

For more help on the difference between scholarly, trade and general publications, click here.

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Articles

The two main databases you're going to use for this assignment are Communication and Mass Media Complete and ABI/Inform Global. Both databases have articles from trade publications such as Variety and Advertising Age.

What's the difference between the two databases?

• Communication & Mass Media Complete covers topics from a communication perspective. The articles found here will be about the media side of your topics.
• ABI Inform Global covers topics from the business perspective. Articles here will be from the advertising and marketing side of the topics.

Database	Full Text	Coverage	Scholarly
Communication & Mass Media Complete Provides abstracts and full text for more than 200 communication journals.	+	1950→current	some
ABI Inform Global Abstracts to articles from more than 1,000 leading business and management publications, with full-text for most popular sources.	+	1971→current	some

Citing Sources

As you write your paper, you'll need to cite passages and ideas from the sources you've found.

APA: Publication manual of the American Psychological Association. 5th ed. Washington, DC : American Psychological Association, 2001. Quick Summary of Bibliography (, 172k) Citing in your paper (, 127k) Library Copies (BF76.7 .P83 2001)

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