Professor Regales, I didn't want to cut this up because it was following a train of thought but it is 500 words...aka two blog posts...
p. 46 of Cult of the Amateur describes citizen journalism in a very persuasive and very negative light, calling bloggers and internet writers, "wannabe Matt Drudges--a pajama army of mostly anonymous, self-referential writers who exist not to report news but to spread gossip, sensationalize political scandal, displaying embarrassing photos of public figures, and link to stories on imginative topics such as UFO sightings or 9/11 conspiracy theories" (46). So who are these people and what are they saying? Can they be credible or are their theories and headlines based on the fantastic? Also...is Brangelina really getting married?
I checked out two blogs: one from Perez Hilton the famous pink-haired celebrity blogger and crazy-Republican Matt Drudges blog and links (whom Keen mentioned),
1. Perez Hilton's blog: The first thing that one notices is a GIANT picture of Avril Lavigne the pop-punk singer and "Complicated" singer. The picture shows Avril in sweats shopping with a friend and the words "Pregnant?" scrawled out in Paint application-quality across the photo graph. Perez goes on to describe that she is "...probably just getting fat now that she's finished her disastrous tour and not doing much of anything!". Amazing journalism really...such a logical conclusion could only be made by good ol Perez. Immediately after this picture is a letter that Perez wrote to President-Elect Obama calling for, " [a] cabinet filled with like-minded individuals who are Democrats, Republicans and politicians who are not affiliated with any party". It's an interesting idea to say the least, but the problem is that very few Democrats, Republicans and unoffilliates are "like minded". This blog is good for a laugh if you are very bored...otherwise nothing noteworthy.
2. Drudge's blog: looks like a poorly put together Word Document. The background is white and there are random photos scattered about with random links in that weird old print rectangular print from Star Trek. Some links include Dave Barry's blog...random.... but I had to read a lot of his stuff in my Feature Writing class. The top headline is "Iraqi journalist throws shoes at Bush"...which was a trend across many political blogs...so it's probably true to an extent.
The most "off" thing with these blogs is their lack of real resources. I agree with Keen when he says that most of the things they say they just think up, so it's not like real journalism where facts are referenced and cross referenced for accuracy. As for this being a bad thing, I think it has it's place as an internet or "TV personality" genre. These people are entertainment and should never be used (like Wikipedia) for actual factual content.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment