Model Assignment:
Read / Interpret Data or a Graph

Journalism J110
Foundations of Journalism and Mass Communication
Essay 3

Instructions

The first two in-class essays required you to summarize the ideas of someone else. The next two essays will require you to study a list of facts of to discover a thesis or general statement that gives meaning to the facts. These essays will help develop your inductive reasoning powers. You should write for an educated reader who has not seen the list of facts.

Analyzing the Facts

Study the facts, looking for interesting relationships among them. Look particularly for evidence of significant change or patterns of continuing development. If you observe change, you should highlight it and report what you consider to be important and interesting about it. You may also wish to speculate as to why the change happened.

Your top priority is to point out the most interesting meaning that the facts reveal. In structuring your essay, you should alternate between general statements and specific details that support or illustrate those statements.

Criteria for an Effective Essay

  1. Logical analysis: You must point out the most significant meaning in the facts presented you. Then you must support your statement of that meaning with well-chosen, specific details.
  2. Logical structure: You must arrange your general statements and supporting details in logical order. Typically, that order will be from the most significant to the less significant. Logical transitions from one statement to the next will be especially important.
  3. Clarity and correctness: You must write clearly and correctly.

Grading Scale

As before, we will evaluate your essay on a 12-point scale, using a 3-point range for each of the major standards of judgment—excellent, good, average, and poor.

Length: no more than 150 words

The Facts

  Advertising Expenditures in U. S. Media, 1984 and 1989

                           1985    % of         1989    % of
                       (mills.)   Total     (mills.)   Total
  Daily newspapers
      Total             $23,522    26.8     $ 32,510    26.0
      National            3,081     3.5        3,700     3.0
      Local              20,441    23.3       28,810    23.1
  Magazines               4,932     5.6        6,750     5.4
  Television
      Total              19,644    22.4       27,215    21.8
      Network             8,526     9.7        9,260     7.4
      Spot               10,572    12.0       15,175    12.2
      Syndication                              1,215     1.0
      Cable                 546     0.6        1,565     1.3
  Radio                   5,813     6.6        8,385     6.7
  Farm Publications         181     0.2          210     0.2
  Direct Mail            13,800    15.7       22,175    17.8
  Business Publications   2,270     2.6        2,765     2.2
  Outdoor                   872     1.0        1,115     0.9
  Miscellaneous          16,786    19.1       23,715    19.0

                        $87,820             $124,840

Feedback offered to students after the essays were handed in and reviewed by the professor:

Most of you agreed that the most important and interesting changes in advertising expenditures between 1984 and 1989 occurred in cable television and direct mail. Most of you agreed that advertisers apparently shifted expenditures from network television to cable television because the prime time audience for network television decreased by 20 percent between 1970 and 1989 while penetration of U.S. homes by cable television increased from 5 to 55 percent. Most of you agreed that advertisers apparently shifted expenditures from daily newspapers to direct mail because although daily circulation of newspapers held constant at 63 million from 1970 to 1989, the total U.S. population increased and the number newspapers per 100 households decreased from 111 to 72 during those years.

Percentages and Dollars

Numbers can be tricky. They may tell us something. To be sure, it’s often helpful to convert raw numbers to percentages. For example, advertisers spent more money on network television in 1989 ($9.3 billion) than they did in 1984 ($8.4 billion). But we can’t be sure that dollar increase means much until we look at percentages. In fact, network television's share of advertising expenditures dropped from 9.7 percent in 1984 to 7.4 percent in 1989. The dollar gain is not as significant as the percentage drop in share of advertising expenditures.

Share vs. Amount

Many of you had problems defining the changes precisely. One change was in the percentage of total dollars spent for each medium. That part of the table showed each medium’s share of all advertising dollars. For example, cable television's share in 1984 was 0.6 percent ($546 million) of the $8.8 billion advertisers spent that year. Cable’s share in 1989 was 1.3 percent ($1.6 billion) of the $124.8 billion advertisers spent that year. So cable’'s share of advertising expenditures increased 0.7 percent (0.6 to 1.3 percent) from 1984 to 1989.

Another change was in the amount of money advertisers spent on a medium between 1984 and 1989. For example, the increase in money that advertisers spent on cable (from $546 million in 1984 to $1.6 billion in 1989) was substantial. Expressed as a percentage, the increase was even more substantial—186.6 percent. We know that increase is worth noting because total advertising expenditures in all media increased only 42.15 percent (from $87.8 billion to $124.8 billion).

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