Short Essay 2

            When trying to decide what article and pictures I wanted to write about, it occurred to me that one of the largest media events of the year had just occurred and there were bound to be countless photos and articles about the Academy Awards.  Every year I see magazine articles titled best and worst dresses of the Oscars and headlines about who won what awards so I thought it only fitting that I write about what has just happened. 

            I did not in fact watch the Academy awards last night because to be honest The Walking Dead was on television and I was much more interested in that.  It was odd however not watching because for as long as I can remember I have always watched the Academy awards with my mom and sister on Oscar Sunday.  Instead, this year, I read about who won what awards the morning after.  I went to CBS news and one of the first articles was about the previous night so I decided to read it.  I saw that within the article there were a few slideshows that could be watched that had pictures about the previous night.  One was titled, Oscars 2013: show highlights.  I decided that before I read the article I was going to look through the slide show at the pictures to see what information I could gather.  I knew many of the actors and actresses that were up for various awards and after viewing the slide show I could with confidence tell you who won what awards.  I noticed Christoph Waltz had an Oscar in a picture and I assumed he won best supporting actor for his role in Django Unchained.  I also saw Ben Affleck holding an Oscar but there where many people on stage so I assumed Argo won best picture because I knew that Mr. Affleck was not nominated for best director.  I could make educated guesses about who won what just based off of the pictures that were shown to me, after all the slide show did say highlights.  After finishing the slide show I proceeded to read the article and picked up on tidbits of information like who won some of the lesser awards that I frankly wasn’t interested in.

            It goes without saying that the pictures told me a story of the night but as I previously stated, I assumed that the actors and actresses had won these awards. Although I was later proven to be correct by reading the article, it was all assumption until I actually read it.  There was also a picture; I believe number 47 on the first slide show that showed Jennifer Lawrence laying the stage steps.  I did not know if she was hurt of had fallen or was just crying or something.  Later on I discovered that she had tripped over her dress and was completely fine.  Another thing that could not be told from the pictures was opinions of people.  Did the people think that these people deserved to win for their performances or not, and most importantly, who did a good job presenting?  It was only after reading that I was filled in on the gaps that the pictures left out.  The pictures can tell a story but like the article we read by Morris, the picture really does not mean much without the viewer knowing background about the image itself.  In the case of the Oscar photos, my background was that I knew which actors and actresses were up for awards and I could make an educated guess as to who won what based on the pictures. 

            I think that the famous saying a picture is worth a thousand words because without prior knowledge the picture could tell a thousand different stories, a perfect example is the picture of Jennifer Lawrence.  Pictures can be very helpful when trying to get a point across but the picture is only as good as the context of which it is being shown. The viewer also needs to know what is happening in the image and even who the image is off to get a proper understanding of what the image is trying to convey.   

Stories with Pictures

After reading the article about images it made a lot of sense to me what Morris was trying to say.  The idea that images can tell a story is and make it believable is something that I find to be true.  I think that a story can be told with a series of pictures but it has to be with a series of pictures.  For example, if I was to show someone a picture of my family, I would assume that they would know it is a picture of a family and if they knew me they would recognize that it is my family.  Although they may know that it is a family they wouldn’t know anything about me or my family or what we have done.  One picture cannot tell a whole story but if I was to show many pictures of my family and things that we have done it would better be able to tell a story of what we have done.  I have attended a summer camp for the last ten years of my life and I could go on and on about the stories that I have.  There is also a flickr page that has hundreds of pictures that tell the story of life at camp.  I can get a story from the life that the pictures represent.  http://www.flickr.com/photos/campwarren/

Taking an Approach

            After reading Harris’s “Taking an Approach” I think that taking an approach I taking a piece of work and writing it with a new life.  It is giving the same story but with a different approach and or audience.  Harris gives an example about how most of the ideas behind Shakespeare’s plays where taken from already used ideas.  Shakespeare just added a new twist to the story.  Harris also writes, “Think of Aretha Franklin turning Otis Redding’s macho demand for “Respect” into an assertion of female independence, or Jimi Hendrix interpreting the “Star-Spangled Banner” as an anthem for destruction.”  These artists all took something that was already around and re-worked it into something new with a new meaning.  When reading the Times I find it hard to find it hard to find a good example of this concept.  I see the times as writing a story in respect to the way that it has happened and I also find it more or less unbiased.  In comparison to other sites though we can find examples of “taking an approach” After reading a blog site like the Huffington Post we can see that the Post takes a story about a subject and portrays it in a different way that the times would.  The Post talks a lot about a rally that is occurring in Washington D.C. in order for Obama not to sign the legislation that will allow a pipeline to be built between the U.S. and Canada. The focus is on global warming and the Post is focusing on how people feel about the pipeline and a lot of anger about the pipeline.  The Times however focuses of the news factor of the story.  They talk about how it is a tough decision for Obama politically.  I didn’t really see any mention of the protestors or global warming at all, both sites took a different approach to the pipeline legislation.  

Short Essay

            When choosing the style that I wanted to use to rewrite my news story, I found it hard not to choose blogging.  I wanted to be able to tell a story but at the same time give my opinion about that story.  I feel that an opinion about a news story is just as important as the story itself. I choose to do this essay with consecutive posts as the story progressed.  I wanted to be able to show that a story can be stated without great detail.  A blogger can then go back and continue posting, adding more and more info as either they hear it or they research it[O1] .  I chose to rewrite the story about Christopher Dorner as I heard about it on CNN. http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/10/us/lapd-attacks/index.html?iref=allsearch   

Post 1   

            So what’s up with this Dorner guy? Apparently he shot and killed two people and is now on the run? Man that’s crazy.  From what I understand he was fired and wanted revenge against whoever fired him.  I mean if he was fired it was probably for good reason not just because somebody didn’t like him.  No one has the right to just start shooting people because they are pissed off.  I hope they catch this guy.

Post 2

            So Dorner is still on the run and apparently now there is an award out for his capture, one million dollars.  Man what I would give to have some info to catch this guy.  After hearing about this story originally I did some research into why Dorner was fired.  Apparently in 2009 Dorner and his partner responded to a call about a mentally ill man creating a disturbance in a hotel.  A few weeks later Dorner reported that his partner had kicked the man but an IA (internal affairs) investigation concluded that this wasn’t true and Dorner was fired for disciplinary reasons.  He appealed but to no avail.  Apparently, he targeted the daughter of the man who represented him at his termination hearing.  Cruel way to get revenge, it’s really sad.  I’m really starting to hate this guy.

Post 3

So I have been following the guy Christopher Dorner’s story ever since I heard that he is accused of killing two police officers.  We all know that he is on the run and to be honest I am kind of impressed that he has lasted so long.  I just got an update on my iPhone that told me that a body was found in a burned out [O2] cabin that is believed to be Dorner’s.  Authorities aren’t able to identify the body because it is apparently to badly burned.  I heard that he even got into a shootout with more cops and even killed one of them.  I find it pretty crazy that some guy would do this I mean he was fired, yea that sucks, but it doesn’t mean you should go and kill people because of it.  I think that this guy ultimately got what was coming for him; after the cops that he shot and killed.  If it happens to be Dorner I will be happy they got him, he has killed four people, and I honestly wouldn’t feel bad if he was in the cabin when itI burned down.

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 [O1]I think you need to talk about what you are rewriting and where the original article came from just to give a back ground I guess for the introduction.

 [O2]What do you mean “burned out”

countering

          When I first saw the word counter, I was reminded of the days when I used to play hockey.  I had a coach that talked about winning a faceoff was all about countering what your opponent was doing.  You see what he is trying to do, and counter it with a move of your own.  Although what my definition is suggestion isn’t the same as what Harris is saying, it is more or less the same idea.  Harris writes that, “to counter is not to nullify but to suggest a different way of thinking.”  In a sense winning a faceoff is just thinking of another way to beat your opponent.  Although for Harris’ purposes, we are talking about presenting a counter argument that can be viewed about the same subject.  Harris also writes, “…the aim of countering is to develop a new line of thinking…” He is saying that countering isn’t trying to disprove or belittle something, but rather again, open it for new interpretation. 

            I think great examples of this can be blog posts.  When someone reads a post they usually have the opportunity to comment on that post.  They can say almost anything that they want and most of the time it is used to present a counter opinion or interpretation of what has already been written.  A great example of this is a blog that I happened across about comics called The Beat.  There was a post about the newest Batman movies and one of the moments called into questions on of the statistics in the article.  The commenter was just presenting some information that could help explain the article a little better. Countering.

I got this from, http://comicsbeat.com/the-dark-knight-rises-batmans-third-act/

Forwarding

When I first heard the word forwarding, I honestly thought of an email.  I thought that you forward an email onto someone else to let them have the information as well.  After starting to read Harris, he was talking about the same thing.  He uses email arrows for left and right to show that you can either reply back to something that someone has said or forward it onto someone else to keep the flow of information going.   Harris writes, “a writer forwards a text by taking words, images, or ideas from it and putting them to use in new contexts”, this really helps explain what the idea of forwarding is.  In his previous chapter Harris even talks about how he uses techniques to bring others works into his own writing as points of reference in order to make a point.  I think that forwarding is a valuable technique but it has to be used in the right context in order to maintain what original works are trying to state. 

An example of forwarding can be found in pretty much every blog post that I have written for this class. I use reading to answer questions and in doing so reference the reading through quotes and examples, even the essay that I had to write for this class used forwarding.  I was given a prompt to use in my essay but most of my argument points were interpretation and summary of what other authors had already written.  I used quotes from many different authors and their opinions helped shape the argument of my essay.  

Where we get News

After reading blogs post from my classmates about how they receive their news, I thought they sounded a lot like my own.  Most of us receive our news from social media, word of mouth, or basically anything electronic.  There is a lot of talk about how someone will post something on facebook and people will then check to see if it is true.  What else is interesting is we all seem to just see the stories and not really read a lot into them to figure out specific details about why something has happened or who was involved.  I even notice in class people say I heard about this story or I saw rather than, I read this article.  I think that we have all grown up in the same time period and these are the ways that we receive our news.  This is probably different from our parents and our grandparents as well.  The way information travels is always evolving and each generation has something new to add to it. 

After reading articles by Carr and Hedges,  I see that both kind of have a valid point Carr tells us about how we get information on the internet quickly and without reading pages of material and Hedges talks about how we aren’t reading anymore and therefore we are worse readers and writers.  I think that both of these authors show some points that are signs of a generational change.  Even though Carr is older than us, he has had to adapt to keep up with the wealth of information that everyone has access to.  I think that both authors would agree that the times are changing but they would make arguments whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.  

Being Informed

I pretty much had been reading the news online before the start of this class.  I would get notifications on my iPhone about stories on CNN or The Times and if they looked interesting, I would read them further.  I ended up getting the Times app for my tablet and that has caused me to look a little closer at stories because it is a little bigger and easier to read.  I have always found the news informational and intriguing when I was a kid and I even watched the morning news and evening news when I had the time.  I feel that keeping up with what is happening in our world is a key part in us being connected and making decisions.  I work at a summer camp each summer and I am always surprised to hear things when I get out of the woods after ten weeks.  I feel like I have been disconnected and I will usually go straight into my apps to learn what has been happening around the world.  I am always interested to see what is happening around the world and how those things could affect me.  I think that world politics are very interesting especially things that are happening in the Middle East and Asia.  I like this class because we get to talk about the news and even have discussions about the sides that are being taken over a debate.  I think I like the news so much because I like to hear what other people think and I can do that by talking about stories that I have seen in the news.  It also helps me shape and form opinions on subjects that could be a major problem in the future.  

News

When I started to think about where I got most of my news, there were so many places that I have received news in the past few days that I was kind of astounded.  I check twitter every day and I get a lot of sports news from there.  I learned about Rajon Rondo’s torn ACL from twitter and I also learned the Minnesota Wild lost last night 3-1 against the Anaheim Ducks.  I also get a lot of my news on my iPhone.  I have a CNN app that will notify me with breaking news and if I find that interesting I will go onto my tablet and read up on the story on my New York Times app.  I used to watch the news on television every morning in high school but I really don’t have time to watch television anymore because I am more focus on getting sleep in the mornings and doing homework at night.  Every once in a while I will hear a snippet of information from another person but I will always back it up by checking my iPhone to see if that news is actually true or not.  The more that I have thought about the way that I receive news kind of makes me wish that I had the time to sit down with a nice hot cup of coffee and read the paper every morning.  I have heard that people say kids in our generation should read the paper rather than get all of their information online but I think that growing up with phones that allow us to stay connected more easily than ever before is a good thing.  We are much more informed than we ever have been and I doubt that my parents sat around and read the paper every morning when they were kids.