Reaganomics of Media Reporting
J. Patrick Coolican’s article “The Perils of Political Narrative,” was a very thought provoking assessment of the state of politics today. Even those trying to operate outside the conventional sphere find themselves slipping back into its rhetoric. I would say what Coolican is essentially doing is making an analogy for trickle down economics as it applies to the media. He and his colleagues both wrote and operated under the assumption that the culinary leadership was very strong and would provide a united front for which ever candidate she choose to support. This mirrored the same presumption that local and national media choose to operate under. Only on caucus day the union ended up going for Clinton as oppose to Obama, a complete one-eighty than what had been promised by the leadership. What happened as Coolican correctly points out, he and his colleagues who normally operate on the fringes bought into the false narrative, and “rehash[ed] the campaign machinery’s narrative. Someone how that message still penetrated the minds of the bloggers and independent thinkers.
Gas Pump Stunt
I couldn’t believe what some of these presidential candidates are doing to drum up support. This article follows an unbelievable stunt that Clinton pulled as a way of appealing to the common man. She climbed into a ford F-250 drove to a gas station, naturally with press and then proceeding to pump a tank of gas after having admitted she has not done so in years.
“Barack Obama wouldn’t debate Hillary Clinton in a flat bed truck. But there she was today, sitting shotgun in one, driving home the argument that her rival doesn’t share her concern about the average Joe Six-pack when it comes to fuel prices.”
Thanks memeorandum!
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.
End of professionalism, a new dark age?
My reflection on this week’s reading led me to an idea that I have continually wrestled with and have found to be a source of constant frustration. I am reminded of an argument I encountered in in reading “Closing of the American Mind” by Alan Bloom. The thrust of the argument is that students are being indoctrinated in to a religion of acceptance and openness as oppose to being taught to think critically and make value judgments by teachers and professors especially in higher education. I find this relates to Shirky because it seems to me that when we lose professionalism we lose an identity. Professionalism has come to mean some much more than those characteristics Shirky attributes to it. Professionalism at least to me means maintaining decorum being tough yet firm in one’s resolve of problems and conflict and above all taking responsibility and ownership of your thoughts, insights, and observations. When publishing became widely dispersed and as technical as a few clicks of the mouse society lost its boldness preferring to hide under the guise of ambiguity and obscurity.
Mediated Society
Of this week’s topics I am choosing to focus on a very important subject that has in the past, and will certainly be in the future, very controversial, privacy. For many reasons privacy seems more like a chore than a fundamental right these days. Is our privacy being taken away from us or is it being forfeited? Which ever way you choose to look at it, it is my opinion that we are heading down a dangerous road. In an interview with Stefanac, Bruce Sterling asserts, “I have a real problem with the word privacy. It meant something at one point…But now, there are so many types of intrusions, the whole term will have to be renegotiated.” Blogs, while vitally important to increased democratization are enabling the further degradation of privacy.
Rapid Redundancy
I find myself a odds with most conventional news outlets, partly because it is nearly impossible to get just news, rather it comes now prepackaged with a political twist. More than that, I get exhausted listening to the same information told twenty different ways none of which advance the plot. When faced with a choice about what to do with the precious few moments of down time I get during the day I will more often than not opt for anything other than news. This is exactly what gets addressed in “Journalism is burning or How Breaking News is Broken.”
Why have just one?
Agre suggests that in finding yourself you will find your voice. This a great sentiment but I think it leaves out the idea that we as people often have many faces and encounter many different situations that require us to have several different voices. The manner in which I speak at school is completely different from the way the I converse and interact socially. To that end I would suggest in addition to employing the tools he lays out it is important to recognize the rhetorical situation. By rhetorical situation I mean the objects, people, relations, events, and problems that you are encountering. Often enough these components will at least give the speaker a place to start. It furthermore eliminates the fear of obscurity and relevance because you have fuller understanding of what is going on.
New Media, New Bully?
The growing trend in this country to judge something’s worth on the basis of its immediacy, efficiency, and consolidation is a notion I have tried, to a large extent, to avoid, in that sense you could say I am a little old fashioned. It seems to me that a lot of substance gets lost in this preoccupation. This, in my opinion is partly why the term “blog” is as common as fork and spoon to some while at the same time completely foreign to others. The first time I understood the term blog as an ongoing dialogue came from its reference in a television program on showtime. Like that moment, this week’s readings left me with that feeling of disorientation one has after waking up from a long nap. That feeling in many ways speaks to Gillmor’s message in her opening discussion of “We the Media.”
Having never been to class
Having never been to class I am now attempting to re-create the first day experience by following the agenda that Professor Gill posted on her own blog.
