Thinking of a Creative Title That Doesn't Involve the Names Sullivan or Jarvis, Oh Crap, so Much for that Idea

First I have to state the obvious in regard to the pieces by Sullivan and Jarvis; Jarvis’ is shorter and it has pictures. The rest of this will be legitimate I promise, I just had to get that out of my system.

The first difference I notice is with audience and style. Sullivan wrote an article for the press about blogging, and Jarvis blogged about the press. (This is why I felt like it was my duty to mention the fact that Jarvis’s piece was shorter even though it seems obvious and insignificant. Though one should remember that nothing is insignificant. This is a life lesson that has nothing to do with the prompt, but I thought it had to be said.) See, with Sullivan’s article there is the possibility that it will reach people who aren’t on the internet; something that I think is a major part of Jarvis’ sphere. If those non-internet users were to come across Jarvis’ post they might be confused, well more confused, when compared to internet users.

If one looks at both pieces it can almost be said that Sullivan’s is an in-depth look at part of Jarvis’ point; blogging. I really don’t have anywhere to go with this, I thought I did, but it’s just a sole thought on its own.

Here’s a thought that I was going to put in the last post, but I forgot, but it works for this one so yeah. I think that Sullivan’s point about how with blogging the deadline in right now, is compatible with Jarvis’ point about the product being the process. I know this doesn’t make sense now, but it will, maybe, I’m not doing a very good job explaining things tonight. With blogging everything is about what happened one minute ago. If we look at Jarvis’ diagram with all the arrows, which I now know is a timeline, we see that a story takes longer than a minute to develop. With blogs all of these steps are documented. I’ve noticed this when reading my two blogs that often there will be multiple posts through-out the day on the same topic. (connections!!!!) Today these topics happened to be health care reform (big surprise), and Maine’s gay rights election.

Another similarity that both pieces have in common is tone. Both aren’t concerned too much if this change is good or bad, more or stating that there is a change.

(Side note: I think this is the first time this unit that I have posted hours, with an s as in more than one, before due time. I am considering this a great accomplishment.)

It's Alive!!!!!

Jeff Jarvis made me think about news in a way that I haven’t previously considered; news is alive. Not alive like you and me, but in a way it is alive. I figure the news is one step above what Hedges predicts our future generations to be like, but one step below Carr’s robots. Almost like a virus in that it shows all the characteristics of life, but it needs another life form in order to survive and reproduce. (In this metaphor we would be the other life form.) In class we’ve talked about all the different places we get news and the pros and cons, but never did we talk about how all sources are necessary.

Jarvis says that stories don’t have a beginning and an end. I agree with this. Even when a story is late breaking, it’s not new. There is tons of background information that is needed in order to explain and discuss the news, and all that background info has background info. But where does the background info come from? The same places we get ‘new’ news from. Some things we dismiss as gossip could still give us useful background information for later news.

Besides never beginning, the news is never ending either. Because we have all these outlets to get information news can travel and change. For example, a story could break out on the news networks, then the blogs take that information and put their own twist on it, word is spread around people, then some crazy person does something crazy (because that’s what crazy people do, they do crazy things, thus the title crazy) regarding their opinion on the story, and that act become late breaking news. Even that ‘late breaking news’ is just a continuation of the same story.

Staying with the idea of a never changing story, look at history. Stories that happened hundreds of years ago are still being spread around today.

There are two quotes that I really liked in this reading:

“The notion that news comes in and stories go out.” I just really liked the way he phrased this. What is the difference between news and stories? The obvious answer is that news is more factual, but is it? Or is the real difference just the title?

“Who brings that together? It’s not always the reporter or editor anymore. It can just as easily be the reader(s) now.” We are part of the news spreading community. I think that this increases our interest in the news. Let’s go back to what people said in the first post. People don’t read news for their own pleasure, most of the time. The read it because it’s something that is seen as conversational, and if you can’t converse about it then there is something wrong with you.

Done With 33 Min. Left Till Due Time

Reading the New York Times. I have to say I am enjoying it more than I thought I would. The only problem I am having is trying to get into the habit of checking it every day. I get easily distracted, so I will go online planning to do a couple of things, including going to New York Times, and then I’ll forget to go. Then I have to log on again. I think I’m getting better though. I find that once I get n though I spend more than 5-20 there. There’s a lot to navigate through there.

All though I am reading the New York Times, it doesn’t really feel like I know more. Let me explain. I thought that if I was a more informed person, I would have this look at me, I know things feeling, but I don’t. Oh well.

All though I’ve read a lot of different things, the best one was a little bit I found one day about why vampires are so popular now. Basically it said that vampires are popular because women want to have sex with gay men. Not even kidding. Even though it was on the site I’m not sure if it was really a part of the New York Times. It made me laugh though.

I also read a story about a priest who had an affair, and the child resulting from that affair now has cancer, so the mother is breaking her confidentiality agreement with the church to get money. This story was actually more legitimate than the vampire thing. Maybe the reason I don’t feel more informed is because I read stupid stories.

Blogging about Blogs

Both blogs that I’m following are very similar, so this should be very simple. For the last few das I have been looking at Daily Kos, and AmericaBlog. Both basically have the same purpose, which is to spread liberal views to everyone. Both blogs talk mostly about politics, actually that’s the only topic I’ve come across; I just say ‘mostly’ in case I missed something. For the last few days the main topic has been heath care reform. If you are in anyway surprised by this please go crawl in a little hole and stay there, forever. It will be a nice change from the rock you’ve been staying under lately. Although another topic that has come up, I would say it’s second next to health care, is the ‘battle’ between the white house and Fox ‘news’. I put news in quotes because I don’t like Fox. That’s all I’ll say about that but just so you know I could go on for quite a while. Back to the real point I’m trying to make. The thing that interested me about this topic, is that I first heard about it on the New York Times. It was really interesting to get the basic story, and then follow it with the opinions on the blog.

Authors for both: On Daily Kos there seems to be about 7-10 regular writers, and on AmericaBlog there are 5. Right now I can’t tell too much difference in each author’s style, but I think the more I read them the better I will be at figuring out who wrote what without looking at the byline.

Audience: again the audience for both are the same. Liberals who like to make fun of republicans. I did notice on AmericaBlog that they have a bunch of stuff dedicated to gay rights, so I think that’s part of the audience they cater heavily to as well.

Layout: shocker, they are both laid out the same; Posts on the left side, hyperlink features and advertisements on the right side. They have different color schemes though. AmericaBlog is blue and Daily Kos is orange. I don’t know about AmericaBlog yet, but I think the orange has importance on Daily Kos. I can’t find it now to quote it, but earlier today I read something on thee about orange. It was like the nation in orange, or the news in orange, or the truth in orange, or the orange machine, something like that. It made me think about what we talked about in class reguarding different jargon used in blogs. I have also noticed that AmericaBlog put up a lot of videos. Instead of just quoting someone they put a video up. I think this has a greater effect for the points they try to make.

I think that’s all I have to say. I’m not sure how to end this so I’m just going to stop.

How Come None of the Saints of English 105 are Women?

This is the first time that I actually read everyone’s posts word for word. Normally, I have to be honest; I just skim them a bit. It took me a long time to read them all too, I think I’ll go back to skimming. But now to what I found out. Are you ready for this? Are you sure? You might be surprised. The faint of heart should stop reading now. This is my last warning. You think you can handle this? OK, cue dramatic drum roll please… It turns out, we’re all different! Who knew? Why would 18 people have completely different views on where they get news? Ha ha, views and news rhyme, views and news views and news. It’s one in the morning, in case you couldn't tell.

Anyway, everyone is different. We get our news from different combinations of the following; people (consisting of friends, family, parents, boyfriends who watch comedies, and grandmothers who watch CBS), television (lots of CNN, Fox, and a PBS), radio (both fun stations and NPR), magazines, actual newspapers, and that wonderful thing, the internet (Google, Huffington Post, New York Times, and even facebook) See I really did read everyone’s post. I might have let one or two slip the cracks though, like I said, lots of variation.

Lots of these sources showed up in a lot of people’s blogs (I thought about tallying up how often things showed up but then again it’s one in the morning and that would involve more work, at one in the morning, wait it’s actually closer to two in the morning now. Basically it didn’t happen.) Even though some people got their news from similar sources, they still seemed different. I can’t explain this right now very well, (I want to sleep) so I’m going to finish this in the morning.

Much better now. So what I mean is that every one ad different confidence levels on their news intake. Some people were perfectly fine with the amount of news they were getting, while others didn’t feel as self-assured. Some people said that they were glad that the unit would force them to get more news. No one actually said they were unhappy about the topic of the unit, but that isn’t something one would actually put up so I’m sure one of us feels that way.

Now, to what those three would say about our posts. We should give them nicknames, like the English 105 Tribunal or something. Wait that doesn’t work, we need to include Harris. How come Harris wasn’t in the prompt? Do we not care what he thinks? Maybe we could refer to them as the Saints of English 105, used to attain guidance in our quest of knowledge regarding civic literacy.

Hedges: His who thing is that we aren’t getting news, but obviously we are, so he would probably find something else to complain about. Like that we’re spending t much time inside attaining news that we’re not getting our vitamin D requirement.

Carr: Without actually making a strong point, he would look at our habits at different angles, and see how he can twist the fact t make it look like we’re turning into robots. (Although he has his work cut out for him because, as I said before, all our habits are different and show our individuality.)

Sullivan: I’m not sure about him. He would definitely look at everything analytically, but I’m not sure what he would say. Although it will probably be more positive then Hedges or Carr.

(I know the title has nothing to do with my post, it’s just a thought I’m throwing out there)

Blogs to Follow

Daily Kos
and
AmericaBlog

I'd like to say that I did lots of looking around to find blogs, but I didn't. These were towards the top, and I liked them so I figured why look any more? I thought about picking one liberal blog and on conservative one, but I decided against it when I thought about having to read things I don't like on a regular basis. Yea, not going to happen. (Sorry it's so late, I had a some problems with my Internet)

New Unit, Same Blog

Where does my knowledge of what’s going on come from? As embarrassing as it sounds, most of it comes from my mother. There are few current events that my mother doesn’t know about. While she doesn’t read the newspaper, she flips through the news stations every couple of hours to see what’s going on. She also checks their websites when she’s online. I mean she actually listens to NPR. No one does that. Then she just tells me all the important and interesting stuff.

Lately it seems that I have been getting a lot of my information from the radio. I listen to t in the morning to get traffic info, and I end up getting the news stories as well.

Not so much now, but when I was younger most of my information came from watching Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live. For some reason I don’t watch it much anymore.

Of course, I get information through conversations with people, but I think that’s the same with everyone.

Ok, I’ll admit it. When it comes to getting information, I’m what most people would call ‘lazy’. Mostly I just wait for things to come to me. I never really go out and seek information, it’s more like if it’s around I’ll pay attention. Although I don’t really consider myself to be ‘lazy’. I prefer the term low maintenance. (Side note: I’ve literally spent the last five minutes trying to figure out how to spell that word and I’m not sure if I got it right, so I apologize if it’s wrong.)

I’m really not an informed person. It’s kind of sad, I’ve never really noticed before. Oh well, no biggie maybe it will change one day.

Emma's Essay 2.0

Link to Emma's Essay 2.0