Your assignment is to write a 4-5 page research paper in which you place a specific media product (text) within its industrial context.  In particular, you should try to address the specific issues you raised in your topic proposal. 

Your research must include discussion of the media product in the trade press (publications such as Variety and Advertising Age that are read by professionals in the industry you are writing about).  It may also include discussions in the popular press (publications such as Time and Entertainment Weekly that are aimed at a general readership) and in scholarly journals or books.  You must have a minimum of five sources.  This paper is due at the beginning of class on Tuesday, March 4, and it is worth 15% of your final grade.

Your paper should have a thesis statement in its introduction in which you put forth a specific claim about the subject of your paper. The body of the paper should be the support for this statement.

These are some of the questions you might try to address in your paper.  You certainly cannot answer all of them; they are to stimulate your thinking.  A good paper might address only one or two of these.

  • Who is the intended audience for this media product and how do its producers try to appeal to this audience?
  • What technological aspects of the media are required to produce this media product and how are they used?
  • What is the profit model of the media industry that produces the product you are considering and what specific strategies do the producers employ to make a profit?
  • What specific industrial processes are necessary for the production of this product and how are they undertaken?
  • What industrial precedents does this product follow?  How is it modeled after them?
  • What are the product’s competition?  How does it seek to distinguish itself from the competition?

Your paper must be written in well-crafted sentences and paragraphs of appropriate length (no one or two sentence paragraphs—it isn’t a news story).  You must spell correctly and use standard grammar, syntax, and word usage.  Your paper should have an introduction and conclusion and should be organized logically as a series of points, all of which are supported by evidence from your research.  Your paper should have a title, something more descriptive than "Industry Analysis Paper,” please.  Sources must be cited properly as we shall discuss in class.  Badly written papers will get bad grades even if the ideas contained in them are good.

Very important: I will not read your paper if it is not typed and double-spaced, with 1-inch margins on all sides and 12-point Times or Times New Roman font.  I will not read it if the pages are not numbered and stapled together.  Seriously, I’ll hand it back to you and it will be late.

Even more important: papers containing plagiarism will be given an F and the appropriate disciplinary measures will be taken with your dean.

Grading criteria:

1)    Adherence to the requirements of the assignment.

2)    Clarity, expressiveness, and organization of the writing.

3)    Degree of thoroughness, insightfulness, and originality in the research and analysis.

4)    Concreteness, clarity, coherence, and originality of the argument and adequacy of research and analytical support for that argument.

The grade given to average work on all assignments is a C.   B or A indicates impressive achievement above the average.  A indicates especially exceptional work.  Grades C and below indicate inadequacies in any or all of the grading criteria. 

Notes on citations of audiovisual texts: 

-Italicize titles of books, movies, newspapers, magazines, television shows, games: The Da Vinci Code, Spider-Man 3, The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, Laguna Beach, World of Warcraft.

-Put titles of episodes of television shows in quotation marks.  When referring to a television show, refer to episodes by their original air date, e.g.: “In the series premiere of Laguna Beach, “A Black & White Affair” (originally aired September 28, 2004), we are introduced to the show’s main characters.”  You have the option of putting episode titles and dates in footnotes instead.

-When first mentioning a movie, put its original release date in parentheses, e.g., “In Spider-Man 3 (2007), Tobey Maguire and Kristin Dunst return to play Peter and Mary Jane.”