Posts

Showing posts from October, 2017

Journalism from the 18th Century to Now (Sounds Ambitious but I Promise it is not), technically blog post 7

Image
The question in the prompt for this weeks blog post reads: "Have you noticed a difference in your writing voice when you write for the public vs writing for an assignment dropbox?" My answer is "no", only because I write a dropbox assignment with the idea that my work could potentially  be shared with a larger audience than I anticipate (although I doubt any piece of mine has been that good). The next question was about the advancement of the news since the 18th century. The very little "journalism" I do follow today is very simple, which to me is something that older journalism would avoid. My generation has b.s. sites like Buzzfeed or VICE. I hate VICE because their articles are always these trendy/hipster/nonsense like: "I Sat Beside a Vietnamese-North Korean Warlord and Showed Him How to Enjoy the Films of Quentin Tarantino". Of course VICE is not representative of all 21st century news sources, but the trendy stuff aimed at my generat

"If it Bleeds, It Leads!" or, Rise of a Popular Print Culture

Image
https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7003933878689261222#editor/target=post;postID=1909209783324943871 The above quote I used in the title is the mantra of Jake Gyllenhaal's character in the 2014 film Nightcralwer . In the movie, Gyllenhaal plays a man looking to get a start up in the local news business of Los Angeles by filming crimes and car accidents in an effort to shock viewers and thus, increase the popularity of the station he works for. This is not a new idea, by any means. In fact, the portrayal of this idea has only gotten larger. If that sentence seems vague then allow me to clarify: film and television continually push the bounds of what can and cannot be shown to an audience. A horror movie may come out next week that has to do with rape and murder, shown in graphic detail, but a film in the 1930's never would have crossed that line. To go back and look at a shift in the public perception: Vietnam war footage was first broadcast on American televisions i

The Anonymous Lady... or Amorous Lady? (Week 7-8) edited: blog post 6

Image
I picked this image by comic book artist David Mack for the Anonymous Lady. It is not her or even an attempt on Mack's behalf to recreate her, I just find the image fitting.  An image of Martha Fowke was unavailable in my initial attempts to find one. After reading "On Being Charged with Writing Incorrectly" and discussing it in class, I thoroughly enjoyed her attack on the standards of writing. She calls out Busby and his "Slaves", the students he taught the correct form of writing to. Her work is being criticised by the "mighty dull, these mighty wise" and I like her play on words here, too. The "Wise" because of their knowledge obtained from Busby but dull because their own creative voices have been silenced due to being deemed incorrect. She does not have a concern with her work being critiqued because it is her  work, not theirs. "Any punishment sustain, to 'scape the labour of my brain" is a brilliant line, as well