So ... it is easy (to some extent) then to see just how influential and important the weblog or "blog" is in our contemporary internet-based, media culture. But, who are some influential bloggers and/or influential blogs? I have my own opinions, and I would like you to form some of your own too ...
Without a doubt Andrew Sullivan (The Dish) is one of the country's most influential bloggers, and, in fact, Harvard Magazine named him the "world's most influential blogger." Sullivan, born in the UK but now living in the US is a devout Catholic, despite the fact that he is openly gay. Sullivan has done a great deal to advance awareness of issues around sexual identity even though his political stances are conservative of a libertarian-cum-republican order. He is a blogger to know.
Nicholas Carr and Mark Blumenthal are two additional bloggers to know from the political-cultural commentary world. Carr, who blogs at Rough Type (great name btw!), has recently raised significant questions around our insatiable internet dependence, most notably in an excellent article for The Atlantic Monthly, entitled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Subsequent to his article, Carr wrote a book regarding the same topic.
Other important bloggers and/or blogs include Jenny Lawson, a former Houston Chronicle reporter who blogs as "The Bloggess" (great handle, huh?), scienceisbeauty (which may single-handedly prove not all of tumblr is total trash), and James Fallows, a nationally renowned correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly.
Some important multi-author-blogs or MABs include Talking Points Memo (TPI), the Ted Blog, and The Huffington Post.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Monday, October 14, 2013
Adv. Comp: Trimming Your Memory Narrative into an App Essay
Now that we are post-Columbus Day, it is time to form that MN into a college app. essay (for those of you who need one). First, please complete this survey, so I know who needs to do what -- this will help me help you!
Then, if you need assistance with trimming, follow this link to a presentation I've created to assist you. Work through these slides, and you should be able to edit down and polish to an acceptable app. essay!
Keep in mind that this process is "on your own time" as we are moving to new challenges in class ...
Then, if you need assistance with trimming, follow this link to a presentation I've created to assist you. Work through these slides, and you should be able to edit down and polish to an acceptable app. essay!
Keep in mind that this process is "on your own time" as we are moving to new challenges in class ...
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Adv. Comp.: Background on Blogging for Purposes of Writing Your Own Posts Part 1
During the course of the semester, I will ask you to add entries to your "Research Blog" -- the first entry regarding your Editorial is forthcoming soon. In order to write quality entries, I find it appropriate to know something about the history of blogging and understand who (or maybe what) is influential in the "blogosphere."
The term blog was coined in 1997 by internet phenom and self-made, Chicago writer Jorn Barger who frequently "logged the web" or "web-logged" in his early uber-blog "Robot Wisdom." (Later, the longer iteration, "web-log" was simply shortened to "blog.")
Barger named the new writing style, but its first practitioner (of repute) was another Chicago native Justin Hall. Hall started an online diary. "Justine's Links from the Underground" in 1994 while attending Swarthmore College. Hall still actively blogs (and how cool is it that his site url is, simply, links.net?).
Hall, along with others, were simply prolific, "web-site-updaters" during a time when web-authoring required some, at least, rudimentary knowledge of coding and the use of FTP, and, during the period of internet development between 1994 and 1999 Hall and his compatriots were more or less writing, rewriting, and overwriting HTML files. Think of this process as writing, rewriting, and overwriting a Word doc., say, that you send via email to the same people over and over again each week.
However, in the late 1990s, improvements to software (or more aptly internet browser functionality) coupled with improvements in the stability of the internet, led to actual "posting" or "logging" capabilities, and the era of the ubiquitous WYSIWYG was born. One of the earliest iterations of this newer technology, launched in 1999, was blogger.com from Pyra labs, and, in an endorsement of the future-leaning of blogging itself, internet colossus Google purchased blogger.com a mere four years later in 2003.
From 1999/2000 until about 2009, or roughly the first ten years of broader appeal and increasing use, blogging was generally an individual writing activity. However, now, most influential bloggers are part of "multi-author blogs" (MAB) like "The Huffington Post," "Mental Floss," "Talking Points Memo," and "Gawker." Also, most major, traditional newspapers have bloggers or use blogging as part of their general news reporting; David Pogue, a technology writer for The New York Times, is an excellent example of a traditional newspaper columnist who has adapted to the only-slightly-different-pose of a blogger.
Many have commented on the increasingly useless game of labeling web-based writing as either "journalism" or merely "blogging." The prolific and highly influential Andrew Sullivan, formerly of the MAB "The Daily Beast" has made a notable career eschewing traditional print forms altogether.
The term blog was coined in 1997 by internet phenom and self-made, Chicago writer Jorn Barger who frequently "logged the web" or "web-logged" in his early uber-blog "Robot Wisdom." (Later, the longer iteration, "web-log" was simply shortened to "blog.")
Barger named the new writing style, but its first practitioner (of repute) was another Chicago native Justin Hall. Hall started an online diary. "Justine's Links from the Underground" in 1994 while attending Swarthmore College. Hall still actively blogs (and how cool is it that his site url is, simply, links.net?).
Hall, along with others, were simply prolific, "web-site-updaters" during a time when web-authoring required some, at least, rudimentary knowledge of coding and the use of FTP, and, during the period of internet development between 1994 and 1999 Hall and his compatriots were more or less writing, rewriting, and overwriting HTML files. Think of this process as writing, rewriting, and overwriting a Word doc., say, that you send via email to the same people over and over again each week.
However, in the late 1990s, improvements to software (or more aptly internet browser functionality) coupled with improvements in the stability of the internet, led to actual "posting" or "logging" capabilities, and the era of the ubiquitous WYSIWYG was born. One of the earliest iterations of this newer technology, launched in 1999, was blogger.com from Pyra labs, and, in an endorsement of the future-leaning of blogging itself, internet colossus Google purchased blogger.com a mere four years later in 2003.
From 1999/2000 until about 2009, or roughly the first ten years of broader appeal and increasing use, blogging was generally an individual writing activity. However, now, most influential bloggers are part of "multi-author blogs" (MAB) like "The Huffington Post," "Mental Floss," "Talking Points Memo," and "Gawker." Also, most major, traditional newspapers have bloggers or use blogging as part of their general news reporting; David Pogue, a technology writer for The New York Times, is an excellent example of a traditional newspaper columnist who has adapted to the only-slightly-different-pose of a blogger.
Many have commented on the increasingly useless game of labeling web-based writing as either "journalism" or merely "blogging." The prolific and highly influential Andrew Sullivan, formerly of the MAB "The Daily Beast" has made a notable career eschewing traditional print forms altogether.
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