Spend one week reading the Kansas Reflector or ProPublica. Keep a diary of each day’s experience. Post a 500-word entry to the class blog category for this topic. Write a brief summary of what you saw and use the questions below to reflect on how the nonprofit site differs from traditional news sites.

If you are using the Kansas Reflector, please respond to the questions below and use article links to support your answers:

• • What content is covered? 
  • What is the quality of the writing and reporting on the site?
  • How does this compare with state and local stories in a profit-driven Kansas paper (KC Star, HD News, Wichita Eagle, or CJonline)?
    • Be sure to tell us which paper you used for comparison
    • To avoid paywalls, use the World News Research Collection from our library guide to access the latest copies of the Kansas City Star or Topeka Capital-Journal.
  • Who do you think has better coverage: the Reflector or the paper you compared it to? Why?

If you are reading ProPublica, please respond to these questions with supporting links in your blog post:

• • Was there new content daily on the site?
  • What sorts of stories were broken?
  • Did the stories appear to be written by journalists or citizens?
  • Was there a mix of news and entertainment features?
  • Compare what you are coming across to another national newspaper, like the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution or one of the other major U.S. newspapers available in Gale Newsfile (see our library guide).

If you are commenting on this activity before anyone posts, take a quick look at one of the nonprofits and one of the for-profit papers listed above to compare and contrast in five to twenty sentences, with article links to support your ideas.

Hybrid students can choose which activity to fully complete and which one to create a comment for.