First Draft

My first draft. Enjoy! :)

Blog Post 9

As I revisited my earlier posts, I found it difficult to find a post that I could either forward or counter. After a few minutes of scrutiny, I rediscovered my second blog post, all the way back from September 2^nd. I know it's odd, but I feel that I should counter this post because it is not necessarily true. I wrote:

"Why do people write? The answer is a simple one: to inform others. Though it is true that some writers keep their works hidden, the works are written down because it simulates bearing one's soul to another human being. Blogs, however, almost guarantee that it will be read by a reader. If an amateur writer writes a piece, there is a strong chance that it will go unread. Blogs give everyone, despite their writing skills, the ability to be heard; in other words, one does not have to be a novelist or journalist in order to be noticed. Some of the top bloggers of the world are everyday people."

 

Though it is true that blogs give a writer the chance to be heard, it does not mean that the writer will be heard; there are numerous blogs on the Internet that go unnoticed on a daily basis, much of ours included (if you exclude the class, who is required to read it). Of course, this is not to say that the writer will not be heard either. With the advent of the search engine, blogger's blogs can easily be discovered by subject, but those with obscure subjects may not have many (if any) readers.

Blog Post 8

What exactly is countering? Well, if one were to define the term without reading the chapter in Rewriting, his or her answer would most likely be "proving someone wrong"; however, that is not how Harris defines it. Harris claims the act of countering "is not to nullify but to suggest a different way of thinking," or in other words, using the text of others to provide a spring-board for another view. Of course, this view can be the total opposite, but the writer should think of countering as adding more to the conversation. My junior AP English and Composition teacher, Ms. Carnefix, was also quite partial to this definition. She required us to qualify our arguments, saying our view was "true most of the time, except in these circumstances."

Finding an example of this in a blog was a bit more difficult, as most posts were either forwarding or simply contradicting a source. After frantic searching, I came across yet another article at The Daily Kos. My apologies for the crude title, but it does, in fact, counter. The post starts out with Republican congressman Steve King quoted as saying "All Americans have health care, every single one," which, as we all know is blatantly false. The article then uses this quote to firmly establish that many Americans are left without healthcare through examples that illustrate the dire conditions these people are trapped in. By establishing that Americans need healthcare, the article takes "All Americans have health care, every single one," and turns it into "Americans need healthcare because too many are left without it—which is dangerous."

Blog Post 7

At first, upon reading the prompt for this post, I drew a blank. Where could I ever find such a thing? I was (obviously) having a "slow moment," as I like to call it. After a few seconds it hit me—almost all blog posts are somehow forwarding. So, being the enterprising young scholar that I am, I pulled up The Daily Kos, and sure enough, almost all of the posts were forwarding in some fashion. Which did I decide on? This one! I would use quotes as examples; however, the blog post itself is a video. I picked this one because it is strictly forwarding (specifically illustration), yet it still makes a statement. The author, Jed Lewison, created a montage of FOX News coverage of the New York 23^rd District congressional race between Dede Scozzafava, Doug Hoffman, and Bill Owens, and uses the video to point out the extreme bias of FOX News and to point out the hypocrisy in the station. The video, made up of a series of clips from over 2 hours worth of source material, starts off with the claim that the election is turning into "a battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party." As the video continues, the reporters of FOX News obviously frown upon both the Democratic candidate, Owens, and, strangely enough, the Republican candidate, Scozzafava, while showing clear support for the Conservative party candidate, Hoffman. Why was the Republican candidate between the crosshairs? She was not conservative enough. Later on, the clips show the station celebrating the polls with Hoffman ahead in this "important" election, but to their surprise, Hoffman loses to Owens. After this occurs, a reporter is shown somberly saying that he felt the election was "grossly exaggerated" election in a "rather obscure congressional district," and claims the real civil war in politics are among Democrats. I consider myself a Democrat, and this civil war is news to me. Of course, Lewison could not have included all of the source material and get his point across in a timely, convenient manner, so he left out a good hour and fifty minutes worth (though it was probably repeating itself as most news channels do). Other than that, nothing is altered. The true essence of the broadcast remains, which ultimately contradicts itself.

Blog Post 6

How are the blog that I am following and the New York Times related? At first glance, the two are utterly unrelated. But a reader of both can make connections with the inner workings off both. Like the New York Times, the Paris Blog is comprised of many authors, each giving a different view of Paris and life within it. They both provide the quirky, off-beat articles that I love to read. There is one main difference between the two; the New York Times supplies me with more factual information and told from the third person, whereas the Paris Blog is much more opinionated and deeply personal. Even then, I am still learning from the blog. What kinds of things am I learning? If I did not start following this blog, how would I know that there is a fair-trade chocolate store in the 17éme arronidissement or that there is a crisis-hotline for English-speaking residents of Paris? Though it is true that this does not help me now, it will help me when I accomplish my goal of living in Paris. Even if, for some strange reason, that I never accomplish that goal, it is still educational—though not necessarily in a factual way. In some fashion, this blog is already letting me live in Paris, through the posts of the authors. It is, more or less, a trial run just so I can see if I like Paris (and so far, I do!). I am also learning about the human experience—an artistic view of life—through it. The New York Times is also educational, but mostly in a factual way. Even though it is a good thing, it still feels "cold" when compared to the blog. The blog would almost certainly fall into the category of peers—they just feel so personal. The New York Times is definitely still in the press category.

Blog Post 5

Do Jarvis' and Sullivan's theories on the news and blogging, respectively, agree? Of course! They are almost entirely the same. Jarvis claims that the news is different from "back then" (though he fails to give us a tangible era). Now, news is all around us in many sources, ones when can respond to, creating new stories, ad infinitum. This is a clone of Sullivan's theory on blogging: blogs are posted and then commented on, spurring new blog posts. Sullivan describes how people share information on blogs through links. Jarvis claims people are "distributors" of the news article because of this very same reason. Both authors would agree on this new process of writing and distribution. But are their theories completely uniform? It depends on how one interprets Jarvis' article. Does he dislike the new process or love it? Many of my fellow classmates have felt that Jarvis feels animosity to the new process; however, Jarvis is actually (and obviously) a proponent of it. Why is this obvious? For one, he never says a bad thing about the process; he just points out the differences. Secondly, he refers to the "old process" as everything being filtered through the press, which has a negative connotation to it, whereas the "new process" has unfiltered, raw news, ripe for the reading. Finally, he owns a blog—a piece in the puzzle he likes to call the "Me Sphere." With all of these obvious clues as to whether or not he is a fan of the "new news process," how can one not know his point of view? This shows that Sullivan's theories are almost a complete match of Jarvis'. The theories are so similar, it is almost as if Sullivan's article was rewritten to apply to news in general, or vice versa.

Blog Post 4

I am going to come straight out and say it. This article was extremely difficult to understand. Jarvis, it seems, has great difficulty putting this concept into words, and even then, he still resorts to drawing unclear, plain charts to accompany the article. I had to read the article twice, once completely aloud. There is a particular sentence that I could not decipher, the meaning of which still alludes me: "This is replaced today by a press-sphere in which any of many sources can, thanks to links, add up a story and to fulfilling the need or desire for news and information." I have read this sentence aloud multiple times, each with a different emphasis and inflection, yet I still cannot reap the tiniest morsel of meaning from it. Jarvis also uses pronouns in ways that make what he is trying to say unclear. Perhaps he did not go back and read what he wrote after he finished writing.

Though some of it is almost completely baffling, the parts that do make sense hit the subject on the nose. There is, in fact, a new way the news process works and a modern news ecosystem. Thanks to the Internet, news does not have to come from the press anymore; it can even be found as it is happening, such as a radical new policy posted on a company's website. In terms of the new process, I had never really considered it before; however, the news in today's society is not a one-time deal like before the Internet came into fruition. It truly is ongoing (though there will eventually come a point where the story loses a large amount of interest and is not talked about much anymore). Jarvis' concept that readers are now distributors is also novel, but also completely true. How many people email news stories to their friends or post it on Facebook?