Essential McLuhan 182 PRESS 1. Does the aspect of newspaper as inclusive image of the community commit the newspaper to the job of exposing private manipulation of the communal thing? Is there an inevitable clash between the public nature and function of a newspaper and the private points of view of many of the interests in a community? 2. Consider the same news story as handled on radio and television, and in the newspaper. Do you think any one of these ways of handling the news especially adapted to any particular kind of news? Does world news, for example, seem most appropriate in headline form? Does local news find its most appropriate form on the radio? 3. Which medium—press, radio, or television—is most effective in gaining the participation of the viewer? Does the newspaper reader tend to be a mere spectator of events? Is the radio listener more closely involved? Is the television viewer most challenged to participate in action? 4. Does the newspaper typically create the outlook of the sidewalk superintendent in all community matters? 5. Is the job of the newspaper to dramatize the issues within a community? 6. How did the news photograph alter the nature of the newspaper and the news story? 7. How had the print affected the nature of news coverage prior to the photograph? (See Ivins’ Print and Visual Communication.) 8. Has the influence of radio and television been to encourage newspapers to a more editorial attitude to the news? If news can be given by radio and television, does the newspaper see its unique advantage to consist in background to the news? 9. Why should the newspaper find so little sympathy with historical perspective on any matter? (See Time magazine as a newspaper trying to achieve historical perspective.) 10. What devices does a newspaper employ to provide a sense of continuity from day to day for its readership? 11. Why should the newspaper, in processing opinion in such ways as to produce homogeneous emotions and attitudes, be a major means of mobilizing the manpower resources of a nation? TELEPHONE 1. How would a speed-up of information movement to telephone dimension affect the pattern of authority and of decision-making? 2. Ask your friends and parents how the telephone shapes their business and social lives.