{"id":3681,"date":"2006-01-30T13:22:45","date_gmt":"2006-01-30T21:22:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2006\/01\/30\/eng101-analysis-a-blogger-is-just-a-writer-with-a-cooler-name\/"},"modified":"2019-12-19T16:20:58","modified_gmt":"2019-12-20T00:20:58","slug":"eng101-analysis-a-blogger-is-just-a-writer-with-a-cooler-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2006\/01\/30\/eng101-analysis-a-blogger-is-just-a-writer-with-a-cooler-name\/","title":{"rendered":"ENG101: Analysis: A Blogger is Just a Writer With a Cooler Name"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:6981,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.adage.com\\\/news.cms?newsId=47467&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/adage.com\\\/news.cms?newsId=47467&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>I got my first paper back in my ENG101 class today. The only comment given by my teacher was, &#8220;superb,&#8221; and I got a 3.9\/4.0, or 95\/100 &#8212; it would have been perfect, except that I forgot to include a &#8216;memo of self-reflection&#8217; wherein I &#8220;analyze and evaluate the effectiveness\/growth of [my] own work.&#8221; Oops. Still, I think I can cope with the final grade.<\/p>\n<p>The paper was an argument analysis; the article I chose to work with was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.adage.com\/news.cms?newsId=47467\" title=\"AdAge: A Blogger is Just a Writer with a Cooler Name\">A Blogger is Just a Writer with a Cooler Name<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the paper&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Michael Hanscom<br \/>\nJC Clapp<br \/>\nEnglish 101<br \/>\nJanuary 23, 2006<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\">Analysis: \u201cA Blogger is Just a Writer With a Cooler Name\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Over the past few years, the already fast-paced world of news reporting has had to adjust and adapt to a new form of rapid-fire journalism in the form of weblogs (generally short-form writing, often updated multiple times each day). While some organizations have started experimenting with ways to incorporate weblogs into their online sites, many of the most influential and well-known webloggers are unaffiliated with any major news organization, reporting on their own personal sites or through independent websites. This has led to a perceived breach between the \u201cold guard\u201d of traditional news service reporters and the up-and-coming \u201cnew media\u201d webloggers \u2014 a breach that Simon Dumenco, in his AdAge column \u201cA Blogger is Just a Writer With a Cooler Name\u201d (Dumenco), argues should not exist.<\/p>\n<p>Dumenco begins with an account of a conversation he\u2019d had with \u201ca 30-something newspaper editor\u201d unhappy with the division between weblogs and traditional reporting. \u201cThere\u2019s simply no good reason to segregate the functions,\u201d claimed the news editor. Dumenco expands upon this idea, stating that not only should the division between the two not exist, but that, \u201cthere is no such thing as blogging. There is no such thing as a blogger. Blogging is just writing \u2014 writing using a particularly efficient type of publishing technology.\u201d He is arguing that the software used to write or to publish is secondary to the writing process itself.<\/p>\n<p>Ethos is entirely missing from from Dumenco\u2019s argument, leaving logos and pathos based statements to support his claim. This omission does not harm his case at all, as this is not a situation of ethical quandaries. The simple logical and (to a lesser extent) emotional points he raises are quite enough to form a solid basis for his column.<\/p>\n<p>Dumenco begins by combining his arguments defending his standpoint with the anticipated arguments from his opponents, using a pseudo-dialogue question-and-answer format. The majority of his responses are simple, logical rebuttals to the objections he expects from those defending the perceived need to keep weblogs separate from the \u201creal\u201d reporting. For each point, he immediately counters with his response: \u201cOK, you might argue, blogging is aesthetically a different beast \u2014 it\u2019s instantaneous media. (Well, since the dawn of the 24-hour news cycle, pretty much all media has had to learn how to be instantaneous.) It\u2019s unpolished. (The best blogs I read are as sophisticated as anything old-school media publishes.)\u201d This approach allows him to quickly and concisely counter any opposing arguments while continuing to establish his case.<\/p>\n<p>His use of logos continues in paragraph seven, when he points out inconsistencies when an organization uses one employee in multiple roles. As an example, Dumenco cites the New York Times\u2019 David Carr, who \u201cis one thing (he\u2019s a columnist!) when he\u2019s doing his\u2026business column and another thing (he\u2019s a blogger!) when he\u2019s doing his Oscar-season dispatches\u2026even though both are edited by a Times editor before being published.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He looks at the possible emotional reasons for the division in paragraph six, many of which boil down to idealism and elitism (coming from both sides of the divide). Bloggers \u201clike the idea of being all alterna,\u201d and see themselves as \u201csuperior to the musty, lumbering, out-of-touch traditional media.\u201d Meanwhile, traditional media uses the \u2018blogger\u2019 terminology as \u201clinguistic armor \u2014 labels\u2026to convince themselves that they are the true professionals,\u201d and concerning themselves with \u201cthe amateurs, the arrivistes,\u201d would be beneath them.<\/p>\n<p>Dumenco does qualify his suppositions for the source of the divide by recognizing that the very technology used for the websites may play a part. Many news organizations are using \u201c[once] state-of-the-art, but now-cumbersome publishing technologies\u201d from the \u201990s, as opposed to more modern blogging software systems. However, he does not believe that the tools should define the genre. He humorously emphasizes this point when he points out that, \u201ceven though I tend to first use Microsoft Word on the way to being published, I am not, say, a Worder or a Wordder.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The tone for the piece is kept fairly light, almost conversational. Dumenco\u2019s column appears weekly on the website for Advertising Age Online, a media and marketing news and analysis magazine published both online and offline. Given the magazine\u2019s focus, his primary audience is likely to be people in the marketing and advertising business; however, the implied secondary audience are those on the other side of the divide \u2014 the webloggers.<\/p>\n<p>Dumenco\u2019s position is likely to be fairly well received by certain people in both his primary and secondary audiences: younger (or more open-minded) \u201cold-media\u201d people who are more familiar with today\u2019s technologies and the weblogging world, much like the \u201c30-something newspaper editor\u201d mentioned in his introduction; and more serious, journalism-centric webloggers eager to be accepted into the ranks of \u201cserious\u201d reporters. However, given that there are two large camps who are unlikely to be swayed, or perhaps even conscious of the debate \u2014 older, more traditional \u201cold-media\u201d writers; and the large segment of the weblogging world concerned less with journalism and reporting, and more with personal journaling or simple communication between family and friends \u2014 it is likely that this conversation will continue until a more sizable portion of the media world is made up of people raised and weaned on the Internet and its fast-paced, instantaneous information model. As Dumenco states in his closing statement, soon the only media types will be \u201cthose who can reliably work and publish (or broadcast) incredibly fast, and those\u2026[sic] who can\u2019t.\u201d It may well be that it is only the ever-increasing speed of modern reporting that finally lays the \u201cjournalist vs. weblogger\u201d debate to rest.<\/p>\n<p>Works Cited:<\/p>\n<p>Dumenco, Simon. \u201cA Blogger is Just a Writer With a Cooler Name.\u201d Advertising Age Online 17 Jan. 2006. &#8220;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I got my first paper back in my ENG101 class today. The only comment given by my teacher was, &#8220;superb,&#8221; and I got a 3.9\/4.0, or 95\/100 &#8212; it would have been perfect, except that I forgot to include a &#8216;memo of self-reflection.&#8217; Oops. Still, I think I can cope with the final grade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2043],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-3681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}