FINAL PAPER

Here is the link to the word document of my final paper.

Ambiance

I find it extremely difficult to write out my thoughts in relation to specific prompt. I realize that this fact has always been and will forever stay. This is a disadvantage to those who do not have this problem but my English class has helped me become more aware of this and how to deal with it better since I had to write a blog post after just about every class along with two 1,500 word essays. The one major 'thing' I have learned is that English is a way of life. I say this because I see Engineering as a way of life and now I see English that way too. I had never known that to be proficient in English the person must have a way of going through life thinking in English terms just like an Engineer goes through life always thinking of how to solve the problem.

My writing has changed significantly, although I cannot quote from my own text to prove this without using my entire list of written blogs. In the beginning I kept thinking of how to change my writing style so that I could come into standard with others. Now I have understood that my uniqueness is key to writing. Once I realized this my writing style went from trying to pose as someone else’s to my own scientific style. I went from trying to be long winded to a short and to the point writing style. This has been a challenge in itself though because when I made the change back to my own style, about October, I began to have issues meeting word count. I have now found that I just need to sometimes explain with more detail whatever topic I am discussing and not to just try and add ‘fluff words’. Though I still have little confidence in my writing I have gained some from taking this English course none the less.

Final Essay Draft

Here is the link to the word document.

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.

Movin' On Up

I would like to revisit my prior post on Novembers 8th titled, "Erosion." In my discussion of the Powerline blog post, by John, titled, "It's a Mystery" I only wrote of how he used countering in his writing. I would now like to add how he used forwarding in it also. I wish to do this because now that I have gained some more knowledge and a better understanding of Joseph Harris's terms 'forwarding' and 'countering' I see that you really can't countering without at least forwarding by illustration. This illustration is of another’s work that you are using in your writing which describes to us an overall picture. Very often this illustration becomes bias bending it toward or against your view to better enhance your opinion. John uses this form of forwarding within his piece. He directly quotes phrases from President Obama's radio address. Following this he then uses the Harris's idea of 'countering' by basically saying, "yes, but..." As a reader without the illustration from John I would not have been able to know what his article was discussing. I believe that forwarding before countering is a necessity to a good argument because it will inform the audience or even the opponent of what you are talking about. I don't think this is needed because you should assume everyone one is ignorant but because it gives valid support to your counter argument that the opponent cannot argue against. Putting to practice these concepts will turn a redundant "nutuh. yahuh. nutuh. yahuh" argument into a progressive argumentative discourse.

Erosion

This s post prompt hasn't been my most difficult one to accomplish thus far in the semester. I have found it very hard to find a post form one of the blogs that I read that 'counter' in the sense of Joseph Harris's definition. For the last forty minutes or so I have been vigorously searching for an adequate example of Harris's term of countering in writing. I have finally found a post which I will discuss later but for now I want to explain what my process was that lead me to picking this particular post. I first defined what it meant to counter according to Harris. My conclusion was that countering in writing is to use another's views to provide strength. This means that your work does not completely tear down another's work but erode from it ever so slightly so that your ideas come across stronger by disproving aspects or their piece. Once I established this I then got onto Google and searched for images of countering. Google provided no good suggestions but after a few minutes of searching the page suggestions I came across this photo. This photograph caught my attention because it showed the element of countering in nature. I saw the physical difference between the flowing water and solid rock as countering. I next saw a metaphorical relation of counter in this picture of the water streaming down the long established rock slow taking from it and breaking it down ever so slowly eventually making its journey toward a large body of water. In my mind the rock that the water flows over is the other story that opposes the water's story. In this picture the stream of water is a pathway of information flowing toward a final cohesive destination. This end pool is the final work of the author's thoughts and opinions.

On Powerline I found a post written, by John, on November 7^th, 2008. This short post is titled, "it's a mystery." This post discusses the absurdity of President Obama's inability to come to a conclusion concerning the massacre in Fort Hood. The author mostly discusses this using several quotes from Bryon York (which is hyperlinked) who has the full text of President Obama's radio address to the nation. John uses some quotes like this one, "we cannot fully know what leads a man to do such a thing." John agrees to this statement but he uses it to provide support for his belief that with President Obama being in the elected position of power he is in President Obama needs to make decisions and not just ponder why a man would do such a thing. Out of the entire post This particular section is what I see to use Harris's idea of countering to its maximum. I say this because the blog author takes the words of President Obama and supporting them yet uses them to carry his own opinion that President Obama can deliberate over subject that arrive to him but that he needs to in the end come to a conclusion of what to do about it.

Expansion

Joseph Harris uses the term 'forwarding' in his literary work, "Rewriting" to describe one process of how to write. In chapter two of his book it is all about this abstract idea of forwarding. He writes, "As I use the term, a writer forwards a text by taking words, images, or ideas from it and putting them to use in new contexts." I am in complete agreement with this definition. This blog post can actually serve as an example of this process. As I write and continue to expand upon this term I am using his original definition but morphing it to serve for my own purpose.

Over the course of two weeks I have found that the two blogs I follow often use this process of forwarding to expand upon a topic usually to morph it into their point of view. Powerline uses this method in many of its post one of the most recent titled, "President Obama's selective 'innocence'" written November 2^nd, 2009. This post covers the question raised about Obama's foreign policies. In this the author pulls from Scott Wilson who writes for the Washington Post. He uses this to give background experience that Obama has of being a community organizer in south Chicago. This is important to the blog post because it defines this certain aspect about President Obama's approach to foreign policy that would not have been brought to light before with just the author's view. Bringing in Wilson gives support to the author's idea of Obama not having any particular policy toward the world instead it is just his underlying ideology that shows.

News Ecology

Neither of the two blogs I am reading have made reference to The New York Times specifically but they have both cited other big papers to support their information and facts. As for The New York Times I have yet to see an article that has cited a blog or any other smaller news outlets to support its information. This observation can be correlated to Jarvis's new press-sphere. Big news industries like The New York Times would be the base to all the other smaller news outlets like the two blogs I read. In my revision of Jarvis's me-sphere I would make the press circle larger since this is where the base of information comes from even if people do not get it directly from the press.

Now that I have been following these sites for about two weeks I can see how they play into the grand news ecosystem. Something interesting I came across just today were edits made on Sullivan's blog. They kept the prior information but would mark through it once and then write the correct information. This was a great display of how news outlets give and take; always correcting and discussing topics. I have also seen how some writers have struggled to continue a story when not much has happened in one day. This happened today in The New Times. Every day they have some sort of update on the health care bill but, today’s article was about Jon Coburn’s part in the health care bill. This sort of scrounging to find anything about a topic to write on demonstrates the rise and fall of energy in the stories itself and the news ecosystem.

With all of this I have decided that the press is the base to news sources despite Jarvis’s views and that information the press releases may not get to the people from them directly but it will eventually through other sources like the web, parents, media, and peers. Now do I not only see how the news lives within the ecosystem of Jarvis's press-sphere but how the stories bear a life of their own too.

Instant Information

Andrew Sullivan and Jeff Jarvis would both agree that the way news gets around now days is different to how it was. Now it is instant and can come with more depth than traditional news sources thanks to hyperlinks online along with reader responses giving new and different perspectives to the topics. To compare Sullivan and Jarvis I do believe they would have a common believe in Jarvis's diagram of the new way information gets around in his article, "The press becomes the press-sphere." I say this because Sullivan writes in his article, "Why I blog" that he not only begins topics of discussion using what he knows but will learn from his readers comment also. This indicates the give and take relationship that he has with his blog and readers. To contrast the two authors I believe that Sullivan would view Jarvis's diagram of "the new news process" differently. I believe that Sullivan would have placed discussion, answers, and questions on the right side of the story box. This would be because Sullivan believes blogging creates an atmosphere of discussion. In the blog world this cannot happen until the story has been brought up by the blogging author. This sort of new news process I think can be found more often than Jarvis's take. I have actually seen Sullivan's take in several cases such as conversations and on online newspapers like The New York Times for example.
Aside from the different takes on the life of the news between Sullivan and Jarvis I think the two authors would be able to support each other very well in both of their articles.

The Sphere

What first comes to mind when I hear the word sphere is a ball. To me a ball in one entity, continuous forever in that it has no edges or end. This represents the flow of news in our culture very well now days. I have actually always thought of news to be this way, living and breathing, but Jarvis is the first I have heard of anyone really defining this. I also do believe he is right to say that the news still thinks of themselves in the old fashion instead of this pool of information around the people.
Reading the article by Jeff Jarvis, "The press becomes the press-sphere" really did not do much for me at all. I think the reason for this is because that is how I have thought all my life. So, to read Jarvis's article that I feel skimped the topic did not intrigue me to think any more deeply about it. I did however like the illustrations because I am a very visual person so seeing the press-sphere diagram gave me a visual representation of how I think of the press. I also think it illustrated the life of a story in such a way that it makes it like the blood of the press-sphere’s life.
Despite my lack of interest in this article I would invite others to read this because I think it is a great form of persuasion to get someone to see it how I do. And to also just get someone to perhaps not think like you but to at least reflect on how they get their information.

Spiderman

Literally all I can think about when I hear of or see the words 'The New York Times' is Spiderman. Bizarre, I know. Since the new movies came out when I was in junior high I had yet to really develop any knowledge about The New York Times as at all. So when I saw the movies it was my first real encounter. The belief that was instilled into me because of this was that this paper always tried to report the truth but sometimes bent it to get a better story. As a result my very first thought when my English professor said we would be following The New York Times was, "oh, great." I am pleased to say that my prior perception has been changed.
Perhaps this can be accounted for by my desire to become an engineer but I always keep an open mind or will at least open it after I get some more facts to sway me. With this considered I have applied this characteristic to my reading of The New York Times. Following two other blogs along the way has helped significantly because I can compare information thus implementing a sort of checks and balances system. The day that really changed my mind was October 23rd when I found that The New York Times’ report on Senator Reid was extremely similar to the blog post on October 22nd by The Atlantic. I still find the high number of similarities to put me at bay with how information is found in the news industry, as I talked about in my prior post, but it made me realize The New York Times stuck to the story pretty well.
Reading The New York Times has made me become more interested in politics and what is going on in general. I have found I am lured toward anything related to Obama and the health care plan along with scientific reports which can be attributed by my nature of curiosity. I am surprised but not surprised at all that there has been a report on health care every day. It makes me wonder if any of it is inflated so that they always have a story or if that much really happens every day. I would also like to note that documenting all of the sites I am following has helped me to think more analytically about everything and it has changed the detail I put into my notes to a very small degree.

Rebounded

I have been following and documenting the following news informative cites; The New York Times, The Atlantic; The Daily Dish, and Powerline since October 21st. Over the last three days I have begun to see repetition in style and information. I first want to note that the two blogs always have stories from the current day on their site by nightfall where as The New York Times has the stories the following morning. This would seem to give the blogs a 'one-up' over The New York Times but the newspapers cite always has the stories covered in more detail and with better cohesion. The next item the stuck out to me was that all three sites have some sort of story covered everyday pertaining to a general topic. The topic I personally am following in all three is anything related to health care and Obama. All the stories covered in each site give both sides to the issue a voice but still obtain a preference. The most interesting phenomenon I have come across thus far was the reoccurrence of a particular story in The New York Times and The Atlantic. On October 22nd the blurb titled, "Galluping to a Conclusion" written in The Atlantic was engrained in the article written by The New York Times the following day. This event really took me back. If you compare the two articles there are several sentences and phrases that are exactly the same. This really makes me question how this happened and if this infringes copy right laws. Discovering the similar stories this morning I have been pondering where the news really gets its information. I have yet to come to a conclusion but have a few scenarios. Either A) the news just circulates from one company to the next or B) they all get their news from a source and then it is construed by each news company. I hope by keeping written documents of the three cites I am following I will be able to answer my question later on this semester.

Guilt

After reading through a few blogs and participating in the class discussion the biggest emotion our classmates have--in relation to being informed--is guilt. We all feel this way because we don’t believe we are as up-to-date as we should be. I don't know that it is really so much our fault but a mere lack of experience. Right now for all of us in my class we are only freshman or sophomores (from what I am aware of). With this most of us are young and just out of high school getting to be on our own. For many this can be a rough time; challenging our knowledge and ability to time manage. In my eyes this is directly related to the overall feeling of guilt. We do care about current events but it may not seem that way because we don't know where to get our news or how to fit time into our schedule.
In our class I found our active/passive discussion very interesting. It really surprised me that so many people passively received their news. I knew that’s what I did most of the time but I never would have thought the majority did too. Hearing this in class I thought of what we could do to fix this problem. It wasn't until 20 minutes ago when I read Amanda's blog post that I found an idea I really liked. Most all of us drive. So we also listen to the radio too. Instead of listening to music, like most everyone does. we could change the channel to talk radio news. My mother has actually done this for a significant amount of time and she is one of the most informed yet not politically engaged people I know. This is a small and simple way that we can become greatly more informed. I and hope others will do this to become more informed to better myself and my country.

Get It Here! Your Reliable Newspaper!

As I grew up my parents never instilled a strong habit of reading the newspaper or even watching the news. They have always felt that the news is bias; twisting the stories for entertainment or leaving out the bad. Considering this as my background I have developed the same sense of distrust of the news outlets. Only recently have I found a TV news station that I will watch to a small extent. I have always just gotten my news from my mother. I never took her words to heart completely but they did at times inspire me to research some topic on my own and further developed my opinion apart from hers.

Since I have left home I am sad to say I have not watched the news or read the paper except once. It has just never been something I was interested in. For me, I guess the reason is that it doesn't make sense to me. I have never been good with words nor have I been able to deceive people so when I have to read through fluffed up speeches to get to the point or deal with the fact that people in this world will lie through their teeth just to get what they want discourages me from the news. With this unit I hope to change this attitude of mine because I do realize it is important to know what is going on this world. I also hope to find places that I can trust to get my news information from so that after this class ends in December I will continue to keep updated in the worldly affairs.

Mid-term essay one

Here is the link to my paper revisions and what I hope to be my final copy as of October 3rd 2009 in my Hon Engl 105-07 class.

Coming to Terms

Amanda's Paper

Define the Project (aims, methods, materials)

You seem to be gauged toward getting your views across the page and to the reader about literacy in your eyes and what it means in the big picture of the nation. You do this by having a very convincing play of words and resources.

Note key words or passages

"Pancake-people" is a key word that you took from the course and placed in your paper to prove your point which I really liked. I also like your introduction because it really brings the reader in and then following this the latter paragraphs keep a steady flow that keeps us reading.

Assess limitations or uses

I do not really see any limitations to your paper it is written very well to get the reader to really explore your thoughts.

Daniel's Paper

Define the Project (aims, methods, materials)

In this paper you seem to toy with the question of literacy and the affects of the web exploring all options until you make your conclusions at the end. I like this because it allows your readers to explore too. You educate them in various answers before you tell them your thoughts giving them the ability to make an educated judgment about your conclusions and possibly seeing them from your point-of-view even better.

Note key words or passages

I am not sure why but I really liked your phrase in the introduction, "magical wonders of the internet." I am not sure but perhaps because it gives your paper a personality making it relatable to the readers. Also this phrase starts a chain of them throughout your paper that keeps it beating in rhythm

Assess limitations or uses

For the majority of your work you used your resources to your full potential only sometimes were there places toward the middle and end that you could expand on more.

Virtual Contribution

Here is the link to the full text version of this years first class essay for Hon Engl 105-07. To view in word once you click on the hyper-link go to file then download as then click word. If you do any changes please use a different font color.

Hyperlink

While in my English class today I learned how to do a hyper link. I found an article that I think will relate to my paper very well. Here is the link

Musing

In this world of constant acceleration we people fail to always review the results of our hard work. On the rare occasion that we do we often realize all that we have accomplished and feel much more satisfied following the reflection. I may not be able to speak for everyone but I can see how my internet habits and perhaps even my critical thinking has changed thanks to the work I have put into this Honors English class thus far.

I began this class extremely worried about how I would do and if I would even learn anything I didn't already know. Thankfully my anxiety has settled for I have learned much about this new age of writing. From the readings and the required blog post I have learned to better adapt to the type of literacy that is required now days. For one example I am now able to process virtual readings better; instead of just reading the words I now read between the lines just like I would do in a book. Another is that I have been able to write down my thoughts into a nice steady flow of words because I have read so many articles from the internet their writing techniques have been transposed into mine now.

I guess though what I am really trying to say through all these words is that I have matured as a reader and writer thanks to the analysis of the readings such as the ones from Sullivan, Hedges, and Thompson. I think the reason for this is because they brought several questions to my attention. The major ones being: "How is literacy defined?"; “What is the internet doing to us?"; "How could this change effect us?" I still have no answer to these questions but I do have a better understanding of how the internet may negatively or positively affect me. I believe this makes me more aware and less likely to suffer negative effects and continue to use the internet and everything it has to offer to my advantage.

Finally: Somebody Gets It.

In the most unfortunate event I was required to read Chris Hedges's literary piece, "Bad Day for Newsrooms-and Democracy." I am pleased to say, though, it was not nearly the rant that his other article, "America the Illiterate", was. I do find it disturbing if there really are 6,000 journalists losing their jobs but I cannot be certain to say that because he did not provide a source for this statistic. Once again I hardly stood beside Hedges's views because I believe the corrupt news reports began with the newspapers themselves and have since then traveled to all other news sources if that corruption really has occurred. Sadly I do not have many thoughts on this article simply because it was very short and did not cover very much at all and I would prefer to discuss the other author I read.

Clive Thompson was this new author in a piece called, "Clive Thompson on New Literacy." I loved this piece because it was short, simple, and right to the point. He also had valid evidence to support his thoughts unlike Hedges. This form of writing is very opposite to Hedges's and this piece is in direct conflict with the first piece of Hedges's that I had read. As for the second work its’ topic does not directly relate to Clive Thompson's piece very well.

Thompson finally is the one who gets it. We (meaning my generation) do use slang and do not always write with proper English when we are texting or using the internet but we sure do write a lot in whatever form we choose and we read tons. I am slightly afraid to say this considering this blog will be put on the wall of forever, that is the internet, but I have what I think to be this weird habit. Whenever there are signs or anything with writing I have to read it (that is if I am not already occupied). If other people share this habit with me that in itself just proves Thompson is right and Hedges is wrong because that means literacy is ingrained into the vast majority of us.

I can strongly prove as evidence to Thompson’s reports because I myself carry most all of the habits mentioned in his piece, “Clive Thompson on New Literacy.”