2-8

"Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire", written by Errol Morris's from the New York Times, is telling us how pictures can not tell the truth or false without any captions. Morris exemplified a picture of "the Lusitania", the ship that was "off the coast of Ireland en route to Liverpool from New York when it was torpedoed by a German U-Boat and sank on the evening of May 7th, 1915. About 1,200 of the nearly 2,000 passengers and crew aboard drowned, including more than 100 Americans.*" Before I read the story behind the picture, I thought it was just an old picture of a ship. I did not even think there could be a tragic story behind it. Like this pictures, picture itself may say thousand words, but it cannot tell the truth to the viewers, because the viewers have no background information that they can use to understand what the picture is about. That is why most of the news articles' pictures have captions. Even on Facebook, it always helps me to understand a picture when people describe what it's about. One of my friends posted a picture of a dog. If she did not mention that it is her new dog, Basie, I would not have known that it was her dog. I could have guess that it is her dog, but I would not have unless I talked to her about it. As Morris states, "Pictures may be worth a thousand words, but there are two words that you can never apply to them: 'true' and 'false.'".

2-7 Taking an approach

In chapter 4, Taking An Approach Harris talks about how a writer can use another writers' ideas to enrich his writing. I think the concept of this chapter is a combination of chapter 3 and chapter 4, Forwarding and Countering, but taking it further. He explains the two ways of "taking an approach". First one is to follow other writer's work very similar. Harris does not like this method because this can show a writer's idea and thought, but does not have much difference than other writings. Second one which he prefers more, is to take other writers ideas and take it further. The way he talks about this is, "the original does not go away but is remade into something new. He states there are three ways of "positioning your own work in relation of that of writers and intellectuals who have shaped your approach": Acknowledging influences, Turning an approach on itself and Reflexivity. A writer should acknowledge the influences by using similar examples, "asking the same questions", and look back at your work. Harris states that "situating your own approach as a writer you can begin to rewrite not simply a specific text or idea but a broader style of thinking and working. This is really helpful information to know, because when I think about writing, I usually tend to think about academic writings like an essay I have to write for my english class or music tech, learning "taking an approach" opened up my view of writing.

Countering 2.6

According to Harris, the purpose of countering is “to develop a new line of thinking in response to the limits of other texts”. It is required to analyzing others’ texts, finds flaws in them, and then responds in opposition to it to support one’s idea. Harris explains the three ways to use countering in writing: “Arguing the other side, uncovering values, [and] dissenting”. Arguing the other side is when one thinks what a writer is arguing about is actually correct, and defend the other side of the writer. Uncovering values is when one finds an important missing value in a text, and he/she can uncover the important value, and the last, Dissenting is to figure out flaws in text due to its “limit” to a certain point. People had been questioning about if the egg came before chicken or the chicken came before egg, and I found this interesting article talking about “the chicken came first”. At first it seemed like the writer (Tucker Reals) was agreeing with the idea that the chicken came first, but it turned out to be that the writer uses other texts to point out the irony in the texts, because at the end he mentions “in spite of Hector’s hard work and the ‘scientific proof’ it yielded, the study offered no explanation as to how the chicken got there in the first place. If not from an egg, perhaps it just came from across the road”. He even adds with a little sense of sarcasm. Countering might take more time than forwarding, yet it is great method to prove your points more effectively.

chicken came before egg

2.5 Forwarding

“A writer forwards a text by taking words, images, or ideas from it and putting them to use in new contexts” (Harris 37). Not only he/she is observing ideas from a text, but also use it to support what his/her text. I use forwarding in my writings a lot. I think it is a better way to convince the audience to understand my thoughts and ideas. Even in this blog post I used it in the beginning of this post. I see a lot of forwarding in my emails. Music school forwards me a ton of emails about opportunities to perform or offering a job. I like the forwarding method, because it provides more details about information for the audience to understand the writer’s ideas. On The New York Times, I found this one article about how video games can affect people, and might cause them to be more violent. It’s called “Shooting in the Dark”, and written by Benedict Carey. It states, “The young men who opened fire at Columbine High School, at the movie theater in Aurora, Colo., and in other massacres had this in common: they were video gamers who seemed to be acting out some dark digital fantasy”. He uses what happened “at the movie theater in Aurora, Colo”, to explain what he thinks that violent video games leads people’s illusions towards to “some dark digital fantasy”. Later on he uses other person’s discover to suppose his idea; “‘we found that higher rates of violent video game sales related to a decrease in crimes, and especially violent crimes,” said Dr. Ward, whose co-authors were A. Scott Cunningham of Baylor University and Benjamin Engelstätter of the Center for European Economic Research in Mannheim, Germany”. It shows that Harris’s idea of forwarding actually applies in writing. 

Shooting in the Dark

The Press Becomes the Press Sphere: Review

“The Press Becomes the Press Sphere” by Jeff Jarvis is a blog article about how press controls. He provides the “Press Sphere” to explain how “press stands in a different relationship to the world around it” (Jarvis), and how it appears differently to an individual. There are a lot of different types of news sources that can affect us in our lives such as what Jarvis lists: peers, media, witness, press, government, companies, and so on. I am not sure if Jarvis is pleased with how theses sources affecting people, because he seems like he thinks these new changes has caused people to not acknowledge the facts but accepting the facts that are distorted by the press. All of a sudden readers get more power than writer who are trying to deliver the news. I think the fact that readers can choose what news they want to read makes writers anxious, and force them to exaggerate the information for the readers. I sometimes find that when I read news articles on some Korean websites. They uses very suggestive titles to catch people’s eyes, but when I read them, they only writes unnecessary information that is only focuses on the sake of arousing interest rather than trying to convey some trustful facts. I really bothers me that how much the press is in control of our news nowadays. Many people do not care what the facts are anymore they are only interested in what attracts them the most. To fix this problem, reporters, journalists or whoever writes news articles should focus on informing what they discovered rather than trying please the audience or caught up in the press.

2-3

In my English class, we discussed about our news sources, compared some similarities and differences that we might have noticed. We also talked about how it effected our civic literacy, and what might Hedges, Sullivan, or Carr say about it. Some of my classmates said they get their news from radio in the car on the way to work/school, classmates, people from work, online (New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Facebook, Google, YouTube), newspapers, parents, teachers, their phone, and even a television in restaurants. But since it hard to get newspapers delivery to our dorm (home), we get the most information from reading news articles online or mobile. I think most people seek for a way they can get information faster and cheaper. These things can deliver immediately, to the point, and “tailored to [he/her] interests” (Leake). I think getting news from the Internet sometimes can cause few problems. They can be too opinionated, and drops the accuracy, and it becomes very hard to count of them. They are also tend to be brief and does not provide a lot of details. As I mention in the last post, “because people can pick and choose what kind of news they want to read, the information they get can be very limited”. As we discussed in class, I think hedges and Carr would have expected the growth of the internet news source, but might worry internet controlling media could increase the lower civic literacy. However, Sullivan might like this change, and see it as more chances for people to access more news than they were able to before. I believe people need to be able to access internet well as news resources to make it a benefit of our civic literacy. people need to take an advantage of it, rather than letting it harm them.

My experience with reading the New York Times

My experience on reading New York Times has been good so far. I do not think it is any more special than other news websites. If I had to pick one, I would say the articles more accurate, so I can trust it more than other news websites. I like the front page of New York Times, because it is set up for the readers to be able to get the important news at one glance. At the bottom of the front page there are very specific categories of news so that people can find the kinds of news they want more easy and fast. I think the site is well organized. The only thing that bothered me was that it was hard to go back to past dates news. I did not figure out how to read yesterdays news with out typing a specific subject to look up on the search bar. One other thing that I thought about was what one of my English classmates mentioned two days ago. She said, because people can pick and choose what kind of news they want to read, the information they get can be very limited. I agree with her, because from my personal experience I did not really look into articles that I am not very interested in it such as political issues, but on the other hand I thought it was very nice how reading New York Times only is instant and easy. Since I could access it anywhere and anytime, I got in to the habit of reading news articles when I am not doing anything else. I think it is a great productive habit to have.