Introduction

Hello, my name is Nicolette Nagy; I am a student at the University of North Florida majoring in Communications with a track in Advertising. I am working on my second bachelor's degree at UNF; my first degree is a Bachelors of Fine Arts with a major in Creative Photography from the University of Florida.
This blog will be dedicated to a class that I am currently taking called Advanced Writing for the Media. The class is geared toward mass media communications with an emphasis on printed materials such as newspaper articles. Although I am not a frequent newspaper reader I have already learned several interesting facts about the average newspaper reader. For instances, the average reader only spends about 26 minutes a day reading the newspaper. A typical reader might skip over an article that does not interest them based on the lead, which is the beginning of the story. The stronger the lead is on a subject that interest the reader the higher the likelihood is that the reader will read the article. So regardless if the story is considered hard news, if the lead does not interest the reader the reader will simply skip and go to the next article. The articles are also set up in an inverted pyramid format. Which means the most important information of the article will come first, then the second most important information, then the third and so on. So for all those busy people who do not think they have the time to invest in reading the newspaper, for less than half an hour a day you could.
I have always found it more stimulating to catch up on the news by watching broadcasts; my favorite is "The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric." However, the majority of nightly news programs consist of the same stories with different narrative view points. My hope in doing this blog is to become more informed on different news stories and events that are not necessarily seen on TV. And I hope to expose myself to different verbal accounts and different approaches reporters take on conveying news information.