News and blogs.

That was odd. This blog just posted randomly. I hate blogger. Well I hate blogging too. Blogging can cover the news but it is mainly the conversation of the author who wrote it. Blogging can cover any topic. Some bloggers write about what they had for dinner. In relation to them being a part of a news sphere, it is certainly possible. Blogs can be news coming from our peers. The only problem is the fact that most of the bloggers get their information from the press. These writers don't sent in the middle of congress and listen in on the meetings and report on it. They find articles on the web and watch the tube and find out information. If you read a blog for news you might as well and go talk to your grandmother who has just good enough vision and hearing to watch to TV and get the news from her dimensia stricken brain and get the news from her. It could be just as accurate. That's one thing that I didn't understand about Jarvis' article about the news sphere. Most of the time you still get your information from the media or news, it just comes second hand. Relating the news sphere to Sullivan's article on "Why [he] blogs" is just as simple as stating that blogging is a part of the news sphere. Sullivan writes blogs for the challenge of keeping up with the current news that he finds. We read the blogs and find out what he interpreted the media to be saying. Why Sullivan blogs is to keep up with the news.

Okay. Um well let's see. What the hell did that guy say about the sphere's and the news? I really have no idea. I got more information form his poorly drawn diagrams than his wording. I read the article multiple times and really didn't understand what he was talking about. I understood the fact that we no longer get all of our information from one source. We spread our sources all over the internet, different TV channels, and multiple magazines and newspapers. The press sphere incorporates the idea of us finding out multiple pieces of information from all over and around us. The news isn't just information either now, it is the communication of the world around us that is centered at the individual instead of the community. Let's face it too. The media no longer focuses on news and current events that may be the most important anymore either. They focus on the stories and topics that are going to get the individual to watch a particular channel or read a certain paper so that they have better ratings and/or a profit. I hate reading the news and seeing the news. The reason why is exactly what Jeff Jarvis tells us. He states that the news can create a news story and it generally does so. It's true too. The news is so bias that it cannot no longer be trusted and the news sphere that we participate allows us to decipher the information and lets us find our own truth in the overload of fact and fiction.

My experience reading.

I no read good and or write good either so i cant understand all this stuff. No that's not true I just hate a lot of it. Checking up on these post and the new york times all the time is starting to get onto my nerves. I didn't mind the blog post to much in the first half of the semester, but all of this reading and writing is really starting to give me a headache. I think I'm turning dyslexic too. Now what have I been reading about? So much that I don't really remember all of it to very much. I have read about priests who have kids and the church covering it up and the crack downs on marijuana in California. I read today about a family in good 'ol Britain who were being secretly followed by the police because they thought a mom forged her address to get her kids into a different school. First off, can't they just look up the address where she is living and see if it matches the paperwork or something like that? Second, do the police and investigative personnel in Britain really have nothing else to do? When I'm looking through the Times I'm looking for a lot of the controversial articles that relate to a lot of our everyday activities. I don't want to hear about a journalists escape from the Taliban cause it's not going to bother me. He should make a book out of it cause its a cool story but it's not news I'm looking for. I'd like to know what Obama plans on doing with the war in Iraq and stuff like that or how many were killed in Afghanistan. And I'd like to here the whole story. Not always how many marines were killed in a raid but also how many terrorists. I want the news to explore both sides and report the news and not be discriminate on what they show. With that being the case I only try to read what looks to meet those terms.

My blogs?

Was anyone else really busy yesterday? I was. I was catching up on multiple articles for this post. I was looking at my blogs and assessing them. I found out that one of the blogs that I follow really isn't a guys thoughts or even his own worlds. Instapundit.com is published by Glen Reynolds and is mainly a bunch of articles that he goes onto the web and finds that he thinks are interesting. His collection of articles particularly reflect a republican point of view, but they consist of editorials and other things. It is quite interesting some of the things that he does put on his blog. I was reading not to long ago about why some scientists believe that the baby boomer generation may experience higher cancer rates than other generations. It is because of a strontium isotope from nuclear explosions that the generation received while they were little. I find this pretty cool and what I like about it is, it isn't political. The other blog I've been following is Profootballtalk.com. It is published by Micheal David Smith and Josh Alpher. The posts of these two men briefly explain what is going on in the national football league. It covers everything from injury reports to upcoming games and who is trading who. It even covers a lot of the personal stuff going on with some players. It's not like a tabloid but it does talk about arrests and accusations against players or things like how family members who have family on different teams are going to support both teams. It's a neat website that lets you know what's going on in the league and contains a lot of facts and very little argumentation about whose team is better than the others. I would definitely suggest it to any other football fan.

I'm following who?

First off I will be following the blog Instapundit. I read his first article and sounds relatively interesting. The second will be on profootballtalk.com
I love football and love to talk about it. A lot of it is opinionated and should be good discussion.

Okay. I’m really tired and don’t want to write this, however, for the discussion of the class and what all of us do in order to gain the news that we read, I’ll try to write this as best as possible. I’ll try not to ramble on like I’m doing now. We all find out our news and different days we do it different ways. However I did realize a trend in how we get our news as a class. One of the biggest things that all of us do is talk to each other to find out what is going on in this crazy world. Most of the time it is a he said, she said account that we get. Not to many of us it seemed go out and look for the news and rather come upon the news, whether we’re watching TV and happen to catch a segment upon the local network channels, or if it comes on the radio as a news alert. We may be surfing the web and come upon a sight which may have different links with simple briefings on the news they are covering. I know I’m rambling on and completely sound like a dumbass, but I’m just seeing everything we do to get most of our news as simple and nothing out of the ordinary. It’s natural to us as people who are involved in our community. Not many of us care what’s going on in Egypt or Thailand because it doesn’t pertain to us and we don’t have to have it to be functioning members in our community.

Wait, what news?

News comes in many different shapes and forms. What I mean is that news can cover many different subjects. The news that I enjoy the most is sports. I love watching football and love to keep up to date with it. I know most of the teams’ records in the NFL and can tell you who they are playing this weekend. I’m not one who cares what Angelina Jolie and Brad Pit did on their trip to Africa. They most likely adopted a starving Ethiopian child but I don’t really care. I’m trying to live my life and don’t care what back up dancer Britney Spears is screwing or how often Lindsey Lohan is getting drunk at a club. If it’s important to me it would probably show up on the Breaking News cast of any TV station. Remember 9/11, not one channel didn’t say something about it. A lot of the times if something is important to though, many people will talk about it. Usually when something happens people love to discuss it and talk to each other about it. The radio a lot of times will also broadcast information regarding big news as well. Most of the time though, I do find out my news because someone tells me about it. I had no idea about the little boy who was missing after the balloon got away from his parents. I saw a news special about it but could only see the video. I only saw people chasing down a giant silver balloon and seriously thought that it was a space ship hoax that was caught early or something. I guess what I’ve been trying to say is that I really don’t care what’s going on unless it affects me in some way. The news a lot of time is distorted by the media, and because of that I don’t really pay any attention to it unless it’s important enough for everyone to know of it.

Here is my edited essay:

Kramer, Anthony
ENGL 105
Eric Leake
October 3, 2009
The internet is shaping our lives from all directions. We use it to manage our checkbooks, read about local news, play games, and to socialize with each other. Our lives are beginning to become centered on the web. We go to it for entertainment and work. We rely on it for communication. However, the more we use the internet the more it changes us and our way of thinking. As we use the internet more and more as a way to collect and transfer information, the reading and writing styles of most of us are changing so that the information we collect and share is no longer in depth and only scratches the surface of a topic as seen in the length of the articles we read and write.
Let’s focus on our reading styles as we surf the web. Who reads more than the first part of an article? Who reads the whole thing? Not to many of us will. The reason is because we can’t stay focused on something for that long. We just want to see the jest of whatever we are reading. We no longer read for entertainment, yet we read so that we can collect as much information as possible. We are literate but illiterate at the same time. We can read the text word for word and gain the literal meaning that it poses on us, however, usually there is a hidden message, whether subliminal or textually, that we cannot comprehend. We cannot comprehend the message not only cause we don’t read the whole article sometimes, but also the fact that we are not capable to do so because we are somewhat illiterate. As Hedge’s article stated, most people read at a fourth grade level. The ability to understand in text meanings really isn’t developed until well into high school. One of the main reasons for our lack of ability to read at a higher level is because of what we do read. Most news articles and pieces in the news papers are written at a fourth grade level. This includes most of anything we read on the internet. Most well known writers writing blogs and articles that are well known will write at this level too. The reason is, and I’m stating this from my opinion and logic, because they are appealing to an everyday audience. They want to be able to appeal to the most people possible, and if they write in a very complex manner, not too many ordinary people will be able to understand it and won’t read it. Writing is a game of appeals. You need to focus on your ethos, logos, and pathos. Ethos establish the writer’s credibility, logos, the subject’s credibility and your pathos appeal to the audience. The good writers establish pathos by writing at a simpler level. They appeal to their audience because the audience doesn’t have to think as much. The audience doesn’t have to deal with complex thought. Now they probably much rather be watching TV or something than reading. I think we mostly love to read on the internet because we get the choice of what we are going to read. I know that throughout my schooling career so far I have hated to read. I really have. Now I’m not going to say I completely hate reading but I think the biggest thing is when I’m forced to do it. I have read plenty of books throughout my career, most I have not liked. There have been a few that I have enjoyed, but truly these books consisted of simple diction and a great plot line. When I had to read something that was more complex and had a great plot, but a lot of the meaning in the plot was hidden, I didn’t like the book. Now most people that do read on the internet obviously choose what they read, however they don’t go and read Charles Dickens or Shakespeare. They read simple blogs that everyday people have written. They read what their friend wrote as their status on face book. They read very simple articles that consist of simple diction choices so they don’t have to work to read. Our reading habits really haven’t changed much in my eyes though. Instead of reading the newspaper for enjoyment, most rather sit down in front of their computer and read the paper online. As Americans, we haven’t been known for being the most intelligent people in the world but rather for our ability to do hard work. We work hard. There is no doubt about it, but we do a lot of physical labor and never work our minds too hard. And we don’t like to work our minds because after years of intense schooling being forced to work for what seems like no reward, we will give up on it. This is exactly what we did for reading too. It’s easy to work at a job when every week or two a check shows up in your hands. Our reading habits on the internet emphasize our need as Americans for a reward for the work we do, and our desire to do as little as possible to get this reward. Just like we read simple and minimal articles on the internet so that we can get as much information as possible without doing a lot of work, we write in a similar fashion.
Now me personally, I rather write than read. Now I don’t know if it’s because I like to express my ideas or just that fact I like to argue sometimes. I like controversy and argumentation. When I wrote in high school my teacher always would yell at me because any paper I would write I would turn into a qualifying piece. This doesn’t sound like the point I made earlier about doing little work for the most gain. I have to ask this though, what was your favorite subject in school and how well did you do in it? I bet any subject needs work, however when it was a favorite, you didn’t feel like it was a job or was work. It came easier to you. So I wrote everything as a qualifying piece because it was easier to me and I didn’t feel like I was working as hard to complete the piece. This essay I’m writing now is very difficult to me, I have worked hard on it but have not put an excellent piece together. Most of the sentences in this piece alone are simple, along with the diction. I write at a very simple level, the same most people would. This is also because my almost hatred for academic reading. My knowledge base hasn’t been developed to the point where I can write a great paper, but I can function. I am literate but as stated in the piece, “Equity and Literacy in the Next Millennium,” building upon a student’s knowledge base facilitates their learning which leads to higher rate of literacy. Basically, the more they know the better they will do. Because I hated reading, my vocabulary never flourished. I know I’m talking about my writing a lot and I’m sorry to do that, but the reason I am doing that is because I feel my writing represents most of America’s. It’s full of very simple wording and sentencing. We as a nation of writers do this all the time. I don’t care who is writing. It could be a great writer or just any old person off the street. The writing is going to be very simple. It’s so most everybody can understand it. The writing most of the time will also be, as I like to put it, short and to the point. My big philosophy when writing is to say what I need to, back up my opinion, and then end the piece. Writing on the internet is short and to the point because nobody wants to read six pages of repetition and flowery words. We as writers recognize that our audience doesn’t want a novel when they read a piece. As Andrea Lunsford states in Clive Thompson’s piece, we write for our audience. Our writing has adapted to our audience and what they want to read. Our writing style has changed a lot because our audience is now everyday people on the internet. Even though our reading habits haven’t changed as we surf the World Wide Web, our writing has because of our new audience and our ability to display our work to them.
Most of all, the internet has changed how we write. We can post articles of writing on the internet and allow the world to see them. We write to an audience that doesn’t want to read an exponential amount of material in order to gain a little information. As readers, we have pushed this onto the writers. It’s a cause, effect thing. We have not changed as readers, however as the internet expands and we are able to read more and more pieces, the writers have adjusted their style so they can reach out to the broadest audience possible. The internet is changing our writing habits to fit the poor reading habits that we all have within us.
Au, Kathryn, and Taffy Raphael. "Equity and Literacy In the New Millennium." 35.1 (2009): 170-88. Print.
Hedges, Chris. "America the Illiterate." (2008): n. pag. Web. 3 Oct 2009. .
Thompson, Clive. "Clive Thompson on the new literacy." (2009): n. pag. Web. 3 Oct 2009. .