A Stance

John Steinbeck is the largest influence upon my writing. I began to read his works starting my sophomore year of high school and ever since I've read East of Eden he has been my most favorable writer. Though I have not read any pieces where he would draw upon another’s work I feel that he would be an expert at Joseph Harris's "taking an approach." Harris's chapter four title could be renamed as 'taking a stance with assertion' because to take an approach it means to encompasses the others works in way that you have your own stance that will mimic the others work in a way to reverse the argument. And in order to be able to do all of this you as a writer need to write with assertion.

The New York Times along with the two blogs--I will refer to the daily dish alone though--appear to be experts at taking an approach. In The Daily Dish the format of their blog really shows the stance on most stories. The pictures, videos, and links all follow their own since of style. This rolls over to whenever they post up what a reader has said. The readers’ writings often follow along the same basic form of writing but in their own style. This particular view I have has come over numerous days of reading what readers write on the blog. A specific link is here speaking on the Fort Hood shooting. As for The New York Times I cannot say that they have an approach. Not due to the lack of ability but that is their job to report the news. The only area that I would say to take an approach would be located in the editorial/opinion sections. Here the authors are allowed to take a stance on an issue. As for the rest of the paper though their goal is to report the news and they do this with fairly little bias opinion in report columns.