Relation between the Times, Daily Kos, and the Artblog

The New York Times and the blogs that I have been reading – Daily Kos and the Artblog – have some basic similarities but many differences as well. A basic similarity between them is that the both provide readers with some facts and updates on a given topic. They all report, though in different ways and styles.

The Times, being a newspaper and very common source of news for society, is more up-to-date. It keeps readers posted on all the events going on in government, sports, entertainment, and almost anything you might want to read news about on its website. The Daily Kos and the Artblog are somewhat up-to-date, but I would say that it isn’t on the same level of immediate news coverage as the New York Times.

This delay between the two sources’ update of news is more than likely related to the fact that the Times is simply like a factual report of the news, as oppose to the blogs I have been following that are more like opinionated stories or reports.

Another difference between them is what kind of material that they report on. The New York Times online newspaper covers almost anything you could want to know about, or has links to websites that do. Daily Kos and the Artblog have much stronger focuses than such a wide range collection of information and reports. Daily Kos covers recent and relevant stories about issues, events, and controversies involving the government today. The Artblog, obviously, has a focus on art, though it does cover the many variations of art and the vast art world in general.

The blogs that I have been following play a role in the press sphere by providing people with another filter for obtaining their news. Since they are about specific topics, readers come to these sources specifically to read about politics or art. The New York Times is a major part of today’s press sphere in that it is one of the most prevalent news sources available. Daily Kos and the Artblog also reach a much smaller audience than the Times because they are “themed” in a way, whereas the Times is relevant to anyone.

Blogging & the New Press-Sphere

With the first reading of these articles, comparing Andrew Sullivan’s ‘Why I Blog’ and Jeff Jarvis’ ‘The Press Becomes the Press-Sphere’ seemed that it would be a rather difficult task since one focuses on various aspects of blogging and the other on how the press and news is changing. However, some fundamental ideas and viewpoints are similar between the two.

A similarity that I noticed between Sullivan's idea of blogging and Jarvis' model of the press sphere is their attribution of continual updates and immediacy to the news, even if it is through different mediums — blogs and newspapers. Sullivan discusses how blogging is an "in the moment" type of reporting in a sense. Bloggers write as the news occurs, with less revision and editing than would occur in a newspaper article. Jarvis portrays the "new press-sphere" as also being continual, but in some different ways than blogging. In Jarvis' blog, he says "Now a story never begins and it never ends...But the story itself — in whatever medium — is merely a blip on the line, a stage in a process, for that process continues after publication."

Jarvis' model of the me-sphere seemed to be accurate. It listed all of the ways I could think of that we get the news. The size of the circles containing each individual way we obtain the news also seemed to be a correct model of the amount each is employed. The largest circle was the "peers" source, which, in our class we determined was an increasingly common source of the news for us.

Overall, I believe that even though the two articles were fairly different, the authors had some of the same ideas on news and the transformations that have taken place with new technologies and ways to obtain and spread the news.

The Past, Present and Future of the Press & the News

Jeff Jarvis defines the press-sphere as what has replaced the previous way of obtaining news, which was news stories provided through the press straight to the public. Now encompassing a wide variety of sources as opposed to the simple world-to-press-to-public scenario of the past, the present press-sphere provides a number of ways to get the news. Jarvis lists peers, media, links, government, search, companies, work, and of course still the press all as "choices we call upon" for the news. Especially with today’s technological advancements, the old ways of the news have been almost completely transformed.
Jarvis’ statement “If the news is important, it will find me,” reminded me of our class discussion on how we obtained our news. As most of us concluded, we don’t really read the newspaper or technically seek out the news as much as we maybe should. This relates to Jarvis’ previous statement and his idea that we get a lot of our news today through peers and links online. Peers transferring stories and news has contributed greatly to the change from “the way things were” to how they are now.
I thought his “New News Process” illustration and discussion was rather unusual. The idea of the actual story only being a small point on the whole process of a news story was odd to me, when the actual story is seemingly the whole point of the news. I guess it does make sense if you view this as simply the polished written story being only a small point in the whole process of developing a story, but the whole process involves the actual story (or the information part of it). It is a kind of complex idea, though I assume it is different depending on how you define the news “story” (the actual written story, or the whole idea of what is written). Also, I was confused on how this process of creating a story might differ from the "old news process," if there is one. Jarvis mentions "Text and photos come in and paper goes out...Now a story never begins and it never ends," but I didn't really understand how the actual processing of a story might have changed. The new process includes the idea itself, discussion, questions, answers, interviews, reports, story, publishing, links, corrections, comments, follow-ups. To me, most of this sounds like it has always been a part of the news process and Jarvis' idea of the old process might have been over-simplified. When the newspaper was still the main source of news, they still had discussion of the story and reports before it was published. Then, readers could submit letters or comments by mail to the newspaper. Basically I think Jarvis' "New News Process" was rather confusing, but that may just be me.
I particularly liked his explanation of how the media has changed. He says that the discussion of the future of news is too press-centric. "It focuses on the press as if it were at the center of the world, as if it owned news, as if news depended on it, as if solving the press’ problems solves news. That’s not the ecosystem of news now. There’s a fundamentally new structure to media and there are many different ways to look at it."

Reading the 'New York Times'

Just as with my starting of writing a blog at the beginning of this course, following blogs (or online news) is also new to me. I have never really followed any one blog or kept up to date with stories posted on news sites for an extended period of time, though I have read a few posts on various blogs here and there while browsing around on the internet. The hardest part of this has been, embarrassingly so, the actual daily reading of the Times, simply because I am not yet used to checking it every day and have a tendency to forget things. (My schedule is rather odd most of the time, so remembering to check up on the blogs and the New York Times every day has been an unexpected challenge for me, but I guess that’s one of the advantages of Post-It note reminders...)

The articles that catch my attention most aren’t really the political or economic ones, but the articles on topics that I’m more interested in or those with fascinating titles. A few examples of those that I’ve read are: ‘Women: Intrinsically evil or tragically misunderstood?’, ‘Experts Puzzle Over How Flight Overshot Airport’, and ‘For Some Parents, Shouting Is the New Spanking’. I noticed these while looking in sections I’m interested in. In the art section, I saw the article ‘Women…’ about a controversial new film that was about to be released. I noticed the article about the overshot flight because, with a few family members being pilots, my family has always been into airplanes and such. Last year, in my psychology class, we spent a lot of time covering developmental psychology and parenting, so that’s why the last article that I mentioned caught my attention. By only looking at the articles that interested me I probably missed the important events going on in today’s society.

Reading the New York Times has helped me stay somewhat more informed on what’s going on in the world. Especially since, like I admitted in a previous blog, I don’t really watch or read the news ever, except for checking the New York Times recently. It has influenced how I think about the news a little bit by providing me with insight to current events. As I continue to read articles on the Times website, I will be more updated on world news than I have been in the past.

Analysis of the Artblog & Daily Kos

The blogs that I have been following, Daily Kos and the Artblog, are very different in subject matter—the first being a political blog with a liberal perspective and the second being a blog about the arts, primarily visual. The most basic similarity is that they are written by a number of writers all writing for the same essential purpose. Aside from this though, they both have such a wide variety of topics that they cover within the overall subject matter that the blog is based on.

Daily Kos is a collaborative blog that is contributed to by mostly liberal activists on political issues and other happenings in the government and society. Since it is written from a liberal point of view, it seems to be directed at a liberal audience that is interested in the current issues dealing with politics. The purpose of the blog is to inform readers about new issues and topics in politics from a liberal point of view.

The Artblog is also a collaborative blog. While it was founded by Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosof, there are many other authors interested in art and art fairs that contribute to the blog as well as the founders. It is directed at readers interested in all aspects of art: art festivals and shows, news on emerging and established artists, and news related to art from around the world and of many different styles. The purpose of the blog is to inform readers about what is going on in the art world: what’s new with certain artist’s projects, who has won awards recently, and news on recent art fairs for example.

Blogs I'll Be Following

I chose to read Daily Kos and The Artblog. The Daily Kos caught my eye at first from the required list of blogs because it's "one of the best-known liberal blogs." I was basically looking for a reputable liberal blog to read because most of my family and a good majority of my friends are conservative and since I'm not as informed politically as I probably should be, I thought it would be a nice contrast to the conservative side of everything that I've been hearing. I chose the Artblog because in comparison to other art blogs, this one seemed to be the most interesting, it includes a wide variety of aspects of art, and posts new blogs most frequently.

Our Generation & the News

A common theme that I think we all noticed in our habits involving the news was that we don’t expose ourselves to enough news. Even if we are inevitably exposed to some amount of news without really trying, overall most of us don‘t search out the news. There were a couple of people that made an effort to stay in the loop by watching, reading, or otherwise getting the news.

Many of us appeared to have a somewhat guilty feeling for not keeping up to date with what is going on in the world, yet don’t seem to be doing much to improve our knowledge of current events and important happenings in the world today. Especially with being our age, just starting college, trying to be responsible, and making an attempt to appear intelligent in conversation, there is a lot of pressure to keep up with the news and know about what is happening in the world, given that it is rather important to our society. In my opinion, we might sort of feel like, as young adults and newly independent individuals, we have a responsibility to society to care about what is happening, whether we really do care or not. It is increasingly easy to become engrossed in your own life and what is happening in the small sphere of society that you interact with. Therefore taking time away from this social sphere we surround ourselves with simply to hear about news that may seemingly not effect you just doesn’t always seem worthwhile or necessary.

The lack of motivation some of us have to seek out the news plays into Hedges’ thoughts on how the internet is effecting our intellect. These days it sort of seems that there is just generally not much inspiration, mostly in younger generations, to take time from our daily routines to keep up and hear about what is going on all over the world and keep up to date with the news.

The Grapevine

It's safe to say I don't actively seek out news on a daily basis. I'm slightly embarrassed to share that I never really watch the news, unless maybe I hear about something of interest that will be covered or if for some reason someone else turns it on. I'll read a newspaper on occasion ("on occasion" being once in the past few months) and thanks to the iPod, I don't really have the need to listen to the radio either - eliminating yet another common news source.

My source of news is ultimately the people I'm around. I hear about local and worldwide current events and happenings from friends and family. Usually, when I hear about an important or interesting bit of information, I'll find some form of news about it, either by looking it up on the internet or by watching the television news coverage of it.

The "grapevine" style news source that I've been relying on, while not quite complete and often skewed, is actually more appealing to me because in a sense it weeds out less important information by default. You might sit through an hour of local news and hear of a few interesting events and one or two important news stories, but between all that, you get countless advertisements and small filler type stories about a variety of seemingly unimportant topics and events. For this reason, I've come to prefer simply hearing about the important things through daily conversation and similar sources.

Of course, this does have its drawbacks. I don't get much news at all about politics (or many other intellectual topics for that matter) that isn't horribly distorted by opinionated viewpoints. The few avid followers of politics that I know and talk to regularly have rather strong opinions on any given topic dealing with the government, so in the end the "news" simply serves as a platform to present their views. Also, I obviously am not as knowledgeable on some world events, politics, and basically much else that would be covered on a news station.

Because of the lack of news I have been exposing myself to, I am looking forward to getting more involved in staying up to date.

Second Essay Draft

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0Ac7_MhwIgbuLZGd0aDR0bnpfMmM4aGMzOWhj&hl=en

^ Here is the second draft of my essay.