THE COMMUNITY NEWS SERVICE: A STRUCTURAL-FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the structure of the Community News Service (CNS) and the medium's function as a journalism training program.;The study is divided into three parts: Context, Treatment and Evaluation. The context of the study is provided by the solution to Subproblem I: to describe the social ecology out of which CNS emerged. The Treatment part of the study is provided by data from Subproblems II and III: To describe the structure and trace the history of CNS. The Evaluation segment of the study will come from data collected for Subproblems II, and III and IV: to evaluate the effectiveness of the CNS training program in terms of its stated goals and functions.;Standard historical and descriptive research techniques were used to uncover and present the data for the study's Context, Subordinate Problem I, and for Subordinate Problem III which describes the history of CNS. For the structural-functional analysis of CNS, Subordinate Problem II, a custom tool was devised using several media ecology worksheets and teaching aids. This analysis permits a systematic examination of the components and elements of a system's structure that organize human behavior in time and space to achieve purpose. . . . (Author's abstract exceeds stipulated maximum length. Discontinued here with permission of school.) UMI;The media ecological concern of this study is the interaction of the structure of CNS and its journalism training function. Two aspects of CNS therefore, are examined--its operational structure as a daily newswire based in New York's black and Puerto Rican communities and its function as a training resource for minority men and women seeking careers in journalism. The study, therefore, is a structural-functional analysis conceptually derived from media ecology and organizational communications. This analysis permits a media ecological evaluation of the CNS training program in terms of its structure and stated goals and functions. The following research design represents a reasonable attack on this problem.