HW 14: What Newspaper Are You Reading?

In reading Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business and Culture I came across an interview with Nick Denton called, Take an Obsession and Feed It. Although it is true that he argues, “I don’t think anyone is going to replace, anytime soon, the role of The New York Times in providing, for example, reporting from Baghdad” (Denton 156) he is saying that blogs provide a different service. As an illustration he says that blogs will have an edge in helping people decide what they want to read and what they think is important nationally. As a result people won’t be as loyal to one newspaper, they can mix and match stories according to what’s important to them. For instance what people are doing with TiVo, they are creating their own TV channel in essence and that is what we can do with blog reporting.

HW 13: Why Blogs Matter

Some people are under the impression that blogs have only to do with media, politics or personal issues. The argument made by Stephen Baker and Heather Green in an article called, Blogs Will Change Your Business in the book, Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture written by David Kline and Dan Burstein says, “if anyone thought blogs had only to do with media or politics or personal issues, they were missing one of the biggest elephants in the room: big business” (Baker, Green 221). While I understand that blogs will be very important to big business in terms of advertising and public image, at the same time the effect that they have had and will have on politics, social and personal ideas is going to be more profound. For example the short lived presidential campaign of Howard Dean proved that, “political bloggers can mobilize and unite large groups of citizens in ways that make insurgent candidates more viable” (Kline 14). The fact that blogs can have such an effect on something so important as who the next president is, and whether or not someone dies, (in the case of Ayelet Waldman whose blog readers alerted family of a suicide threat posted on her blog) is more important in the long run than big business making even more money.

HW 11: Can Bloggers Change the International Political Scene?

I chose to review a blog called The Kenyan Pundit, started by a Harvard law student named Ory Okollah who is from Kenya. The first thing you notice is the somewhat blurry aerial picture of what appears to be a street in Kenya. There are many links on the side to other relevant blogs, including some sarcastic ones like, “People Magazine is so 2004” with links to their stories underneath. It seems to me that only Ory Okolloh blogs on it and others leave their comments. There is a column that links all of the different categories she writes about some of which are titled, Africa, Africa and Blogs, American Politics, and Development and Aid. The style of writing varies with the categories, if she is writing under her Baby KP category she is pretty informal but with the political blogs she is more formal.
In reading an interview titled, Making Global Voices Heard with Rebecca MacKinnon in David Kline and Dan Burstein’s Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture MacKinnon reports, “Basically she [Okolloh] has become a hub figure who has spawned the growth of the Kenyan blogosphere” (MacKinnon 330). What MacKinnon is saying is that by having such a blog in existence it is linking other such bloggers and making them all be a part of the political scene. I agree with MacKinnon’s assessment of the blog, it really does have all the aspects needed to create discussion and change. Although I grant that some might say that these blogs are still in their very early days and can’t make such a significant change so easily, I still maintain that just the existence of such blogs opens the doors for open communication and that is the very foundation of democracy.

HW 7: Are You There For Your Kids?

I think that, just like everything else, kids need to do things in moderation. While I don’t think it’s necessary to monitor everything that kids write online, I do think it’s a good idea for parents and guardians to know what their kids are up to online. There are many dangers that kids can unknowingly get into, and they don’t have the capacity to protect their selves from it, that’s their parent’s job. If parents could keep an open dialog with their kids about what they are doing online and the names of the sites they use etc., that would alleviate some of the fear of unchecked online consumption. Another idea is to have the computer in the family room, that way kids know they can be looked in on at any time by parents. In a piece called My So-Called Blog that Emily Nussbaum wrote for Dan Burstein and David Kline’s Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture she complicates matters further by asserting that, “this new technology has provided a million ways to stay in touch, it has also acted as both an amplifier and a distortion device for human intimacy” (Nussbaum 351). In other words Nussbaum is saying that now kids are spending so much time online and staying in touch with their friends, that they are losing out on the real intimacy of face to face conversation and relationships. They are putting themselves out there per say with their online confessionals and some would say giving in to being judged, but isn’t that what we all do in order to have an intimate relationship with someone? This goes back to having the parents there to act as a sounding board for these kids, so that they have someone to explain to them the complexities of relationships and life in general. On the computer or not, my point is that parents need to be there for their kids to help them sort out the hardships of life.

HW 4: What Are Your Clothes Promising You?

In response to reading “The Voice of the Customer,” in David Kline and Dan Burstein’s Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture I noticed a pair of Gap jeans laying a cross a chair in my room. I got to wondering what sort of promises the Gap company has made to me, the consumer. It must have made an impression because I shop there a lot. I think the idea originally with the Gap was nice, trendy, up to date clothing at a reasonable price maybe intended for the upper lower class and middle class, the upper class could perhaps get away with buying their basic necessities there like white t-shirts or socks. It was an affordable way to wear a “name brand”. Now it’s a little different, they are trying to up their image by getting the likes of John Mayer and Sarah Jessica Parker to model for them and in doing so have cut out some of us upper lower class and lower middle class folks from being able to afford them. I went to their web site and here’s what I observed. Everything was very classic, grays, whites, and black lettering with clean lines. Most of the models were white they were all extremely thin and tall and they all gave me the impression of not being wealthy per say but definitely not broke. A quote I saw, “Our design collection is relevant in many different contexts, yet always true to the Gap Brand Essence” made me think they are trying to target scholarly people, those who have an education. So basically what they are promising is that they will keep up with the trends but you will always be able to find clean and classy lines there, not to mention other people just like you will all be wearing the exact same thing.

www.gap.com

HW 3: Who Critiques Who?

In discussions of Blog How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture by, David Kline and Dan Burstein one controversial issue has been blogs and their effect on media and politics. On the one hand some people say that nobody reads blogs and therefore they have no effect. On the other hand Kline and Burstein among others argue that bloggers are transforming the political arena and are giving everyone a voice. In my opinion it used to be the media’s job to critique society, especially politics and the government. They haven’t been able to do their job successfully for a long time now. Most will claim to be non partisan (Fox News) but everyone knows they are conservative. There are complaints that bloggers will criticize the media for how they do their job and the media responds by saying that they should give it a try and see how easy it is. That isn’t the bloggers job though, just like it used to be the media’s job to critique the government, now it is the bloggers job to critique the media!

HW 2: Will Blogs Have Us Losing Face Time?

In reading David Kline and Dan Burstein’s Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture I was struck by the second observation they made at the end of the introduction. Burstein says, “Blogs are particularly interesting because they marry so much personality and attitude with this complex mix of software technologies.” He is saying that we do not have to fear of losing social interaction because we can unite and use the blogs for public discussion. In learning about blogs I was concerned about this topic. I thought that with the technology boom we are experiencing that the personal connections we have might be lost in favor of faceless conversations on the web. He is saying that the technology boom is happening, basically whether we like it or not and blogs might be the way to gain control back. If we can use this to our advantage we could actually have more power in the political and governmental fields than ever before. I like that there is more hope now for us to voice our opinions freely and without, “having to own a press”.