Educational Dissemination through Newspaper Daily

Abstract

The formal sources of educational guidance remained no more sufficient to deal with the fast changing educational demands of the learners. Therefore, informal sources like media, especially low cost newspapers, may serve these demands. Newspapers are storehouse of current information and treasure of knowledge related to personal as well as social and local and global issues. According to a readership survey among the youth of India, conducted by NBT in 2009, a literate youth spends on an average 32 minutes on newspaper reading daily and about 63% read newspapers to gather news and information on current event and only 10% reading for entertainment. Knowing this youth demand, several dailies are bringing out educational supplements. Hence, the present study was planned to investigate educational dissemination through newspaper daily and its role in educational guidance. 28 days of circulations of the newspaper The Telegraph (Calcutta Edition), including the routine publication and all the supplements (Metro, T2, Sunday, Graphiti, Telekids and Career Graph) published during the month of February, 2013, constituted the sample for the present investigation. To collect the data content analysis method was used and a General Information Schedule (GIS) was developed for the research purpose. The data were analyzed using both Chi-Square and Percentage technique. Data analysis showed that the amount of both Non-Educational News and Non-Educational Ads were higher in percentage than Educational News and Educational Ads respectively. The amount of coverage of Educational News and Educational Ads also significantly differed and the latter was much higher in amount than the former. Further, the coverage given to different categories of educational news items also not equal or near to equal. The research concluded that The Telegraph (Calcutta Edition) is providing only a partial and unstructured educational guidance to the students which are neither comprehensive, nor regular. This research will create the scope for using newspaper as a tool of educational guidance and will help the newspaper publishers to review their existing content and to come up with necessary modifications.

Keywords: The Telegraph, Newspaper, Educational Dissemination, Educational Guidance, News Content, Educational Coverage