The Wane of Journalist and the Rise of the Socialite

First I'd just like to say that Hedge is quite the negative Nancy. He has the most pessimistic view on the modern age I could imagine. But anywho.

Although I do find Hedge to be a wee bit off the deep end in terms of the negativity, I do think that he raises some interesting points. They are pretty much the same kind of points he made in "America the Illiterate". The fact that we as a society are much too easily swayed by the accessibility of images and short blurbs. The only real difference this time is that he focuses more on how it effects the journalists and newspapers. And he is right. Newspapers suffer from the internet. People don't have time to sit and read through a newspaper. So instead we skim the front page of a website, find the most interesting stories, and skim them. By doing this we tend to focus on the exciting but shallow news stories. Not only do we only "read" certain articles but we also only go to web pages that confirm our beliefs. The human race loves confirmation of their beliefs. When our beliefs are challenged we get confused, or even scared. It is much easier for us to reinforce our beliefs, so we don't shock ourselves too much.

Even though I do agree with these ideas and believe that they need to be discussed, I also see the validity in Thompson's article. The idea of a "new literacy" is very innovative. Most people look at our shift in literacy habits as negative. Lunfords study on our writing and reading habits put a new spin on this shift. Rather than pointing out the flaws, she points out that we know "who we are writing for" and "why we are writing" which leads to very "good" writing. Often people judge writing on its academic merit, but she recognizes that writing should be judge not solely on how well its written, but also on what context it was written.

That's all for now folks.