Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Making Teenagers Read Newspapers. A Nationwide Experiment in French High Schools

cepr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 70 posts

Re: Making Teenagers Read Newspapers. A Nationwide Experiment in French High Schools

#51

Post by bluGill »

KPGv2 wrote: post #44
bluGill wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The better educated somebody is, the more likely they are to have reasonably fluency in English. There are some great non-English sources out there, but English is the most read language by well educated people. Not saying there are not great news content in other languages. However English should be expected to dominate over the whole world.

This is a bizarre take. Newspapers, even really good ones, generally don't target international readers. They target their home country's readers. How many Englishmen are interested in the machinations of unions in Paris? How many Frenchmen? Obviously the best coverage will be in the country's majority language.

The best coverage for a country will be in that countries language.

However for world events coverage English is the more likely language. For niches that might interest you English might be the only option since odds are someone in every country speaks English and reports on that niche. (odds, but no guarantee)

Re: Making Teenagers Read Newspapers. A Nationwide Experiment in French High Schools

#52

Post by bsoqk »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #16
SoftTalker wrote: post #3

Major newspapers and even local ones (if they still exist) have been so dumbed down in the past few decades. I would estimate that many are now written to target a less-than-high-school literacy level. Worse, news often seems to be written to elicit outrage or fear (probably because "engagement").

In Germany, there was a survey around 2009/2010, depicting that more than 60% of the audience of the major national daily newsshow do not understand the words used by the moderators (it was about "Tagesschau", a major news outlet by the public broadcasting system)

Maybe they should have used Arabic words.

Re: Making Teenagers Read Newspapers. A Nationwide Experiment in French High Schools

#53

Post by paulryanrogers »

throwitaway222 wrote: post #50

We need more things like Ground news. We're either propagandized by reading the news or watching it on TV OR we're holed up in a confirmation biased world by social media (which is also propagandized).

Don't look too closely into Ground News. It's more like controlled opposition

Re: Making Teenagers Read Newspapers. A Nationwide Experiment in French High Schools

#54

Post by 220hertz »

SoftTalker wrote: post #3

Major newspapers and even local ones (if they still exist) have been so dumbed down in the past few decades. I would estimate that many are now written to target a less-than-high-school literacy level. Worse, news often seems to be written to elicit outrage or fear (probably because "engagement").

Your first point is true, unequivocally so. I watched it happen ... from inside the newsroom for almost two decades.

We were actually taught in journalism school to write straight-up news for a Grade 5 level audience. You could get fancy if you chose in opinion pieces.

To your second point, if it bleeds it leads. That's always been the case. Journalism is, and always has been, a business. A sensational news story of yesteryear is today's viral content. It's the same thing — both are desirable because they sell.

Re: Making Teenagers Read Newspapers. A Nationwide Experiment in French High Schools

#55

Post by 220hertz »

bluGill wrote: post #27
berytos_storm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s admittedly been a long time since I looked at a local newspaper, but I do seem them occasionally. Kinda seems like the local ones are just the local news segment in text format. Fine, but I can read that on my phone or watch it on the TV with much more convenience. Maybe there’s some interesting stuff left in classified ads or whatnot, but a lot of that shit so on marketplace now.

Local is where getting the news is the hardest. My local school board meets at the same time as the local zoning board... My town publishes city meeting minutes - "debated to change zoning regulations in [development], it passed 2-3". What changes were made? What were the debate points? Once I get that information who do I vote for/against in the next election if I care about the change. I really want a local news pa…

The unfortunate part is that while a lot of people might want that information, few will pay for it. I ran a small company's paywall, like this was a small chain of local papers. We could barely give the subscriptions away.

Re: Making Teenagers Read Newspapers. A Nationwide Experiment in French High Schools

#56

Post by KPGv2 »

bluGill wrote: post #51
KPGv2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bizarre take. Newspapers, even really good ones, generally don't target international readers. They target their home country's readers. How many Englishmen are interested in the machinations of unions in Paris? How many Frenchmen? Obviously the best coverage will be in the country's majority language.

The best coverage for a country will be in that countries language. However for world events coverage English is the more likely language. For niches that might interest you English might be the only option since odds are someone in every country speaks English and reports on that niche. (odds, but no guarantee)

> However for world events coverage English is the more likely language

Can you explain how you arrived at this conclusion?

Certainly when I lived in Japan and picked up a copy of the Yomiuri Shimbun, the world events coverage was in Japanese. And when I've traveled in France, Le Monde was entirely in French. The international section didn't become English.

> For niches that might interest you

I'm not sure you're talking about newspapers at this point.

Re: Making Teenagers Read Newspapers. A Nationwide Experiment in French High Schools

#57

Post by BrandoElFollito »

A friend of mine briefly managed a "celebrities and ovni" kind of newspaper. His first decision was to distribute papers to generic people asking them to highlight the words they did not understand. He then proceeded to having these words added to the spellcheckers so that they are flagged as incorrect.

His time was a nice success for the newspaper and a sad addition to the average stupidity of the world.

Re: Making Teenagers Read Newspapers. A Nationwide Experiment in French High Schools

#58

Post by BrandoElFollito »

Since I cannot find any mention of this in the French press and after asking a few friends who have children in high school (hopefully this is lycée, a tad too late to push people to reding) -- it is very likely not a nationwide experiment at all

Re: Making Teenagers Read Newspapers. A Nationwide Experiment in French High Schools

#59

Post by tstrimple »

Saline9515 wrote: post #26
phtrivier wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't access the article, so I don't know which newspaper they were subscribed to. But, given the wording of "the leading national newspaper", I can assume it would be "Le Monde". The audience for the written paper is not less-than-high-school educated. Do you think the wording is at this level ? Eg: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2026/09/08/pisa-202...

Le Monde is mainly entertainment/preachy articles nowadays. Content and writing is usually better in the "Le Monde Diplomatique", although it's more politically biased. English version: https://mondediplo.com/

To be politically "neutral" is to be biased.

Re: Making Teenagers Read Newspapers. A Nationwide Experiment in French High Schools

#60

Post by SoftTalker »

thesuitonym wrote: post #45
xboxnolifes wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would estimate that many are now written to target a less-than-high-school literacy level. I would have imagined they would have been targeting less than high school literacy since their inception. At least the ones intended to be read by the masses. I'd actually expect that they target somewhere in the 4th-6th grade literacy range.

It used to be a pretty well-known guideline that any writing for general consumption should be at no higher than an 8th grade level.

Well then I think 8th grade level must have been higher in the past than it is today.

My local paper (basically a reprint of Gannett stories with a few local ones, mostly sports) tends to use a very basic vocabulary, often organizes stories as a set of questions/answers, or bullet point lists under a "What you need to know about..." headline.

When I think back to newspapers I read in high school (1980s) or even in the 1990s they weren't written at that low a level.

Post reply on HN