Public policy issues and their treatment in the media

In Modules/Weeks 2, 4, 6, &7 you are required to submit brief essays, which discuss current news articles that relate to public policy. The purpose of this assignment is to encourage you to evaluate current public policy issues and their treatment in the media in light of the concepts covered in the readings and discussions occurring in the course. The news articles you select should illustrate a real-world application, or, where appropriate, a lack of application, of one or more of the concepts covered in the readings of the same module. Your essays should be critical reviews of the articles, meaning that you should provide your own analysis regarding the articles, rather than simply summarizing them.

Each review is due by the end of the module/week in which it is assigned. Review the News Article Review Grading Rubric to improve the quality of your essays and be sure to adhere to all of the specific guidelines described below.

News Article Selection Guidelines

The articles or news stories that you choose should be:

found in a newspaper, on a news program, or from another reputable media source (including reputable internet sources),
published within the last month,
clearly illustrating the application, or failure to apply, one or more of the concepts covered in the course during the week/module of the assignment.

Each article review must cover different topics. Refrain from using follow-up pieces or multiple perspectives of the same topic. For example, if you find an article discussing a new government regulation in The New York Times, you cannot use a follow-up piece put out a few days later in the same newspaper or a different article in a different newspaper discussing the same topic.

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument. Get homework help here