The New Renaissance of Writing

To Chris Hedges, the once great art of writing is becoming a thing of the past. We can no longer put together great essays, and our new journalistic style is an insult to the illustrious newspaper prose of historical times. We have become a nation that exists solely for entertainment purposes, and due to this, our democracy is bound to fail. While Hedges feels that the destruction of our great nation is imminent, Stanford Professor Andrea Lunsford feels that we are on the edge of literary breakthrough. The young people of America are writing more than ever before, and even a lot of that writing takes place outside of class. Whether it is texting, updating a status on Facebook, or blogging about your ideals, writing has become the cool thing to do. Hedges is correct in the fact that strictly journalistic writing has become a thing of the past, however writing is evolving rapidly. We write to entertain ourselves, and for an audience, mostly our peers, not just for professors as in previous years. It has become a social practice; we can check up on our friends and tell everyone our moods. The internet has indeed changed the way people write, but it has been for the better. It has caused young people to write more, and has not changed the language used in our academic papers. While Hedges thinks that our country is on the verge of collapse due to the appearance of the internet, we are actually on the edge of a new golden age of writing.