Ideas for Creating a Newspaper

• Literacy group members can become ‘journalists’ and create their own newspapers.
• After your group has done some of your research and people are familiar with the different sources of information, you could begin planning for your newspaper.
• Start by looking at different newspapers to see what types of articles there are. Notice the difference between articles, commentaries and editorials. Look at book and film reviews, cartoons, birth and death notices and classified advertising. Make a list of all the different forms of writing you find in the newspaper.
• Notice the layout of newspapers. Look at how bilingual newspapers like Nunatsiaq News lay out articles in Inuktitut and English.
• In small groups, read some of the articles and discuss the forms of newspaper writing. The facilitator can teach mini-lessons on different journalistic writing forms.
• Brainstorm different types of writing you would like to have in your newspaper. Look at the list you made earlier.
• Literacy group members could create a newspaper for a specific day in the past, say 1972, 1940, or 1840! It depends on the interests of the group and the type of research you have already done. Imagine what would have happened in one week of that year. The newspaper could cover just your community, your region or the whole of Nunavut. Think about people who may have been down south at school or in the hospital. What stories could you include about them? Maybe you would like to include advertising – imagine the kinds of supplies, equipment and other goods that people needed in that time period. What would the weather have been? What about birth and death notices?
• Or choose a specific historical time – for example, when modern Inuit met the Tuniit on Southampton Island, or when the first Qallunaat whaling boat came to Cumberland Sound – and imagine what people would have experienced on one particular day in that time period.
• If the literacy group is interested in how people celebrated special occasions, such as Christmas, date your paper December 28, 1956 and talk about celebrations that happened in different communities or camps that Christmas.
• If the group is writing a newspaper from a date in the past, think about the forms of Inuktitut or Inuinnaqtun that would have been used then. Try to use some traditional vocabulary Elders’ used in interviews.
• Or the group could write a modern day newspaper. Include events, politics and issues that are happening in Nunavut today. You could interview people, including Elders, to get their ideas or opinions on these topics. You could write an article that includes quotations from both older and younger people. As writers, you will need to use critical thinking skills to put together information from several sources (synthesis) and to show in your article how the different opinions relate to each other and to life in modern times (analysis).
• Decide if your newspaper will be in Inuktitut or Inuinnaqtun only – or will it be bilingual. Think about your purpose for creating this newspaper. Is your goal to strengthen Inuktitut or Inuinnaqtun literacy skills? If so, writing the newspaper in Inuktitut or Inuinnaqtun only will create important reading materials in that language. Readers will not be able to resort to reading the English versions, if their English literacy skills are stronger. Interesting photographs and headlines will lead people to try harder to get information from the articles.