Huffington Post vs. New York Times

Reading both the New York Times and Huffington Post have given me a new perspective on the connection between blogs and the more traditional forms of press. In the New York Times you get up to date information on current issues, written in a clear and intelligent way. When reading the paper you know that you are reading information from credible sources and competent writers. Reading blogs for news are similar in many ways. You still to get to read information, often from credible sources and competent writers. However, with blogging you get a more connected feel between the writers and the readers. As you read a blog post, you can feel yourself connecting to the writer, because as a blogger he or she is just a regular person giving their take on the world. They don’t have a lofty title of editor-in-chief, separating you from the writer. This connection provides you with a way to better bring the news into your life, allowing yourself to connect with people and issues all across the world.

Still getting news from the press does provide you with a kind of guarantee that the information that you are getting is accurate. With editors and fact-checkers working for newspapers, they give you accurate information in a well-written way.  In this way the press and the blogs work together to provide the general public with information, giving both the credible, detailed reports along with the more opinion-centered version of the news. Both the press and the blogs are necessary to the “press sphere” proposed by Jeff Jarvis. Both contribute to the flow of information that is constantly coming at the general public from the internet, from the government, from private companies, from coworkers, from friends, and from the press. This interconnectivity provides a reader with a full grasp of the news from the comments of strangers to the words of witnesses. With the many different sources of news, we are better able to connect to events going on across the world.

Discussing the Press Sphere

In his article “The Press Becomes the Press Sphere” Jeff Jarvis writes about how we perceive and use the press is changing. In earlier times, the press was our direct link to the world. All news that we received was reported and edited by the press and distributed in the form of newspapers. Now, times have changed and so has the press. Instead of just one means of getting the news, we have numerous ways. These include the media, your peers, the government, private companies, work, and of course the press. Rather than use just one medium we can link across many different mediums to follow a piece of news. This new system of getting the news has changed a lot of things about the news that we get for better or for worse. Rather than reading edited information written by a professional writer, we read a Tweet from a friend or a blog from someone who has a strong opinion about what’s going on in the world. Jarvis also explains how the final product has changed. Rather than using a process to achieve a product, the service is the product.

There was not a lot in this reading that confused me. I think that a lot of the points that Jarvis was making made sense. I do see a change in how we get the news even from when I was little. Rather than getting the news solely from the newspaper or the television, you can receive news from tons of different sources. I think that this is especially true in college where the more traditional forms of the press are more difficult to come by. I always seem to get my news from the internet or from my friends. The next place I go is to the more “press-based” forms of news like the newspaper to verify a story or to get more details on a story. I think that this does lose some of the elegance of the press. However, it does add a whole new dimension to the news where you are able to interact with other people such as witnesses and the people reporting the news. I think that we still cannot determine how this will affect how we receive the news in the future.

Huffington Post Rhetorical Analysis

The Huffington Post is a giant blog that contributes to many different kinds of current events and news from politics to technology. The purpose of the Huffington Post is to inform readers of current issues and often to make readers see an issue in a different light. For example in the technology section there was an article about how the use of drones affects the world politically. The author did not necessarily focus on the technical aspects of drones but rather how they affect us socially. This is the main purpose of the entire blog, to show readers how political issues may affect them. The audience of the Huffington Post is anyone looking for news on a multitude of issues although focusing on more liberal leaning people. It is geared toward the general masses, with the reading and information not geared toward a particular interest or intellect. The author of the Huffington Post is a large number of bloggers that write with more liberal tendencies. The blogs focus more on political issues. Even posts on different topics such as the post on the drones had more of a political focus.  Basically the Huffington Post is a blog written by people that lean more liberal for readers that are more liberal with articles focusing on political issues. The main project of the blog is to inform readers on current issues. The uses of this blog are that many of the bloggers that contribute are reputable writers that have a lot of experience with writing on political issues. The limits of this blog are that it has somewhat of a liberal bias.

Blog Following

The blog that I chose to follow is the Huffington Post. I chose this blog because I wanted to follow a blog that wrote about current events specifically the news. The Huffington Post blogs about a variety of current events including political, entertainment, technology, and culture. These blogs are posted by a variety of bloggers that are all very reliable and quite good writers. I chose this blog because it seemed like an interesting new way of getting the news. I love keeping up to date with what is going on in the world. I do this by reading the paper and going to websites such as the times and BBC. Following a blog seems like it could be a new, interesting way to discover what is going on in the world.

Here is the link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Reading the Times

Reading the New York Times has brought me back to when I was younger. Not that I was reading the Times while drinking juice out of a sippie cup, but I would listen to my parents discuss the paper every morning as my main source of news. In some ways it’s a lot of fun sitting in the lounge reading a newspaper and watching people give me funny looks as they pass by. Newspapers aren’t really that common anymore, but I enjoy reading them still. There’s something about holding the reading material in your hands and knowing that the articles were written by “professionals” that just gives you more confidence in what you are reading.

Many of the stories that I have noticed have been articles that cover world events. I really don’t focus on the articles that center on what is going on in the country, with the exception of some articles that focus on the 2012 Presidential Election. I think that I notice these because these are stories that I haven’t really heard about and are more interesting sounding. Reading about some rich white guy making more money or losing more money isn’t all that interesting. I have also noticed that I do tend to focus more on the flashier articles that have a more interesting sounding headline or interesting looking pictures. Because of this I may pass over articles that pertain to more important information; information that may directly affect me. An example of this is the Eurozone crisis that is going on in Europe right now. I know that it is very important because the financial welfare of Europe affects the whole world including our markets. However, I am simply unable to will myself to read those articles because financial based information is not interesting. Reading the Times more is influencing the kinds of articles that I read now though. I do find myself better able to settle down into a news article rather than just skimming the important information. Reading the paper is something that I really enjoy and is something that I hope I will do more often in the future.

Comparing the News

Looking over everyone’s blog posts, it seems that the majority of the news that they get is from the internet. This makes sense because the internet makes news a lot more accessible, especially to college students. Being in college, it is difficult to get a newspaper, watch the news on tv, or listen to the radio. Therefore the majority of our news comes from the internet, from sites such as the New York Times or CNN. It wasn’t all that surprising that most of the internet news sources that people put down were reputable sources like the Times. I think that we’re smart enough to know the difference between someone blogging about the news on their own personal website from a paid writer writing a professional article. Although I do find it interesting how some people pointed out the fact that even though these sources are reliable they can still be biased to certain view points, especially politically.

When I compare my classmates’ comments to my own they all seem pretty similar. It helps that we are all kind of in the same boat being in college where for many of us the internet is our only link to the outside world. Another point that I saw was similar was people who talked about getting a lot of their news from their friends. This is something that I also found because many times I find out about some sort of breaking news from one of my friends and then go online to research it. Some differences that I saw were that some people do still read the paper and watch tv to get the news; whereas, I can never seem to find the time to do either. I think that with the internet we are better able to keep up with civic literacy. We are better able to follow current events and stay informed about what is going on in the world outside of college. This is very important because soon we will be out of college and we will have to deal with what is going on in the world. I think that each of the writer’s would have a different opinion on how most of us getting our news from the internet. Hedges would see it as negatively affecting our literacy, commenting on how the news is solely entertainment-based and making us incapable of individual thought and discernment. Carr would see it as having the potential to change the way we think about current events. I think that there can be many different assumptions made from the increase of the news on the internet, but the true effects that it will have on the future of literacy will be difficult to see.

The Societal Dangers of the Internet

Introductory Paragraph

I am writing this paper to everyone that is in their late teenage years at this moment. Essentially I am writing to anyone that is around my age. I feel that I was born in a very crucial time. When I was younger, the Internet was becoming more available to the public, and it certainly was not easy to use. The main mediums of the media were newspapers and magazine articles. Reading books was still considered fun, and not a laborious task forced upon children by annoying teachers and parents. If you were born around the early 90s, you have seen the rise of the Internet. You know both the simple times before and the exciting times after the explosion of the Internet throughout our culture. I think that this is a very crucial generation because being raised both in a culture that did not focus mainly on the Internet and one that now focuses almost completely on the Internet we are able to bridge the gap between the generations. Because of this I am writing to my generation to warn them to be aware of how the Internet is affecting us. It is alarming not knowing the extent of the consequences of something that has become integral to our lives.

The Societal Dangers of the Internet

Imagine everything that you do in an average day, from waking up in the morning to when you fall asleep at night. Did you think of every time that you got on the Internet? Did you remember the three times that you checked your notifications on Facebook? Did you remember checking your Email or looking up a news article? Odds are that you did not. The Internet has become such a major part of our lives that it is already second nature to get online.  With the variety of what it gives us, it’s almost deceiving how much the Internet affects our lives. Because of how much we use and depend on the Internet it is pertinent that we comprehend the full effect that it has on our lives, especially the negative effects it may have on our life.

The danger of the internet is how quickly it is changing our society, from reading and writing to how we interact socially. This is something that I had not seen myself until looking back on my own life. When I was little the Internet was something that I was rarely on, simply because you could not be on the Internet and have phone access at the same time. So my time on it was limited by my parents and whether or not they were expecting a call. There also was very little to do on the Internet anyway. Games and social networking were just barely beginning and therefore a lot less engaging. This freed up my time to play outside, read books, and just use my imagination to have fun. However, as the Internet grew more easily accessible and entertaining, I started spending more and more time on it. Reading became a chore that took too long to be considered fun. Then entering high school, I bought a laptop through my school. This opened up a whole new world of finding research easily online and staying in touch with my friends. I also started getting all of my news online. I began to read short articles that were quickly understood and then forgotten. “And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation” (Carr). In his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr states this discussing the possibility that the use of the Internet, specifically search engines, is affecting our ability to read long articles and books (Carr). It’s a disturbing thought that the Internet may be causing us to not be able to read as easily or as in depth as we used to. This concept can be seen slowly spreading throughout our culture and society in more ways than just how we use the Internet. Conversations are shorter and to the point; writing about how we feel has dwindled down to a tweet limited to one hundred and sixty characters. The frightening part of this change, is that it is hardly noticeable anymore. Now when I collect my thoughts, they seem to arrange themselves perfectly to fit a witty Facebook status or a clever Tweet.

Another danger that can be seen with the increasing use of the Internet can be seen in the way that people interact with each other both in person and over the Internet. While this does not directly address reading or writing, I think that it indirectly affects how we read and write. In some ways it can be seen as beneficial to writing. We write now more than ever before with blogging and social networking sites. In his article “The New Literacy” Clive Thompson discusses a study done by Andrea Ludson on how the Internet is affecting the way that we write, specifically college students using blogging and social networking sites. In it she comments on how young people are writing more now than ever before because of the Internet. This can be very beneficial to our generation because we are becoming more capable of writing for a specific audience and more knowledgeable of writing in general (Thompson). However, I can see this in a negative light as well. Because it is so much easier to just type out one’s opinion to the faceless mass that is the Internet, we are slowly losing our ability to interact socially in person. So while this increase in writing online is benefiting our ability to write in general, it does not necessarily make it beneficial to society overall.

One negative aspect of this is that we are less able to interact one and one, focusing more on oneself then on others. Christine Rosen makes an interesting point, comparing sites such as Facebook to self-portraits. While the internet does provide us with a fantastic tool for self-expression, it also provides us with the opportunity for self-seeking attention (Rosen 1). I think that this is interesting when compared with Andrew Sullivan’s perspective on writing on the Internet. Through his description of the Internet he sees writing as more open conversation than more traditional forms of writing. He himself says “It renders a writer and a reader not just connected but linked in a visceral, personal way. The only term that really describes this is friendship” (Sullivan). This is an interesting take on something that is causing us to be less conversational in our daily lives. It also does not consider how impersonal this conversation is, focusing more on the idealized “conversations” that occasionally float around the blogosphere. There is more to a traditional conversation than words on a screen. Body language, emotion, and tone are all important to a conversation and all are lost when using the Internet. While many may say that this is no better than letters and books that were all handwritten, I think that there is a difference.

With conversation more easily available on the Internet, it detracts from interaction in person. Why leave your house to talk to a friend when all you have to do is check to see if they’re online? Whereas with letters and books most chose to go out into the real world to communicate simply because it was quicker. Many may question what this has to do with literacy, but I think that all forms of communication are connected in some small way. What do people write about on the internet? They usually don’t write about what they were doing online. They write about the business that they’ve started, the family trips that they go on or the music that they like, because nobody wants to read about the Internet while they’re online. It’s similar to how people are never watching television in a television show. Why watch someone do what you are already doing? “They cater to a nation that now lives in a state of permanent amnesia” (Hedges).  Losing the ability to interact in person will change the way we write because we will not be limited to writing about virtual experiences. We will lose that human experience that provides the excitement and interest of reading.

The Internet is such an all-encompassing concept in today’s society, that it is difficult to see the extent of its effect on us. While we must progress as society progresses it is important that we do not ignore something that has such a significant impact on our lives. Understanding that something has both beneficial and detrimental effects is important. As the generation that is developing just as fast as the Internet, it is important that we acknowledge both the positive and negative aspects of reading and writing before and after the Internet. Our culture is on the precipice of either a spectacular age of culture and knowledge or a dismal age of loss of literacy and in-depth thought. It is important that we maintain balance in how we use the Internet, despite the ever-increasing use in everyday situations.  

Works Cited

Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Atlantic July-Aug. 2008. The Atlantic. Web. 27 Jan 2012.

Rosen, Christine. “Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism.” The New Atlantis Number 17, Summer 2007, pp. 15-31.

Scribner, Sylvia. "Literacy in Three Metaphors." American Journal of Education 93 (1984): 6-21. Print.

Sullivan, Andrew. "Why I Blog." The Atlantic Nov. 2008. The Atlantic. Web. 27 Jan. 2012.

Thompson, Clive. “Clive Thompson on the New Literacy”. Wired Magazine. 24 August 2009.