Time marching on
Being a bit of a history buff I found the readings from DFB to be particularly interesting and especially the comments from Alexis de Tocqueville. He characterizes the print industry as being incredibly high paced, relatively speaking, with the typical circulation lasting no more than a day. In addition he describes it as being far less formal than the strict form taken by “aristocratic literature.” Where style will be “loose…strong, and bold.” Furthermore emphasis will be placed on speed over accuracy, brevity over length, and imagination over depth. Stefanac rightly acknowledges just how closely this resembles the current talk about blogging. But more than just this comparison this seems to be the conversation surrounding every new advancement in mass communication. This begs the question, are these qualities being infused into these new mediums simply a reflection of societies changing attitudes? The conversation surrounding new technology suggest to me that these notions come from the medium themselves, this I find is not entirely correct. Sure the internet moves infinitely faster than print media but did it really make the choice to sacrifice accuracy for a few more seconds? This was a human decision in the race to break the latest story.
