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.