A Relationship With Blogs

Throughout the years, people across the world have trusted the New York Times for information on what is going on in the world today. With the coming of the internet, this publication seems to be making a good transition onto the internet as a great online source. The site has links to blogs and is very interwoven in the online literary community of today. As far as a comparison to my blogs, I find that I can obtain much more factual information from the Times, whereas the blogs that I am reading are mostly opinion related. Because of this I feel that my bubble for the Times is much bigger than the one for blogs in my press sphere. In fact, the Times is starting to become my main source for news due to my lack of television in my dorm room. While I may not get much news from my blogs, I do love reading them. I enjoy listening to the opinions of others on subjects that interest me. The basketball blog I read shows a lot about a player’s character and how the writer thinks they should behave. I completely agree with his views on behavior, which is probably why I enjoy reading it so much. I feel that I have a connection with the blogs that I read, much more so than to the New York Times. I share beliefs, ways of thinking, and a love of the same things with the bloggers that I read. That connection is very hard to obtain from a news website; their stories are all about getting the facts out, not what they think about them. Granted they do have opinion pages, but that is not the main reason people flock to a news website. They go for the facts, and can get their opinions elsewhere.

Jarvis and Sullivan

When I read Sullivan’s article side by side with Jarvis’s article about the press sphere, I found many striking similarities in their views on how the news is changing. Both agree that the age of the newspaper is nearing its end, and it shows. Many newspaper companies are suffering from terrible losses on the stock market, they simply cannot compete with news that is released on the internet. It is too fast, and much shorter than articles in the paper. I found that both men agree on the fact that the reader is slowly becoming the editor. Readers can comment on material posted on the internet, giving criticism or telling the author how they feel about the subject.
When you think about it, the readers of the past can actually become the writers of today with the help of the internet. A person can write how they feel about a historical event or anything that is newsworthy. One can read information straight from their peers instead of seeing it in a newspaper first. In the past you could still get the news from a friend, however they read about nit in a newspaper and it was past orally for the most part, whereas today it can be done in a blog, Facebook status, etc. I really could not find any differences in opinion, as I feel that Jarvis’s article had no opinion to it whatsoever, it was just written to inform people about the change in the way the press works. Saying that, I feel that Sullivan is much more passionate about the new form than Jarvis, who simply doesn’t seem to care either way.

The New Age of Nes

I think Jarvis makes a good point when it comes to describing the new ways that we obtain news. Newspapers are beginning to become obsolete, and we can now turn to the internet for answers to all our questions regarding what is going on in the world today. It is so much quicker and easier to type in a topic on a search engine rather than looking through a newspaper to find information about it. To him, the press sphere is the way we obtain information pertaining to the news. There are so many different ways to do so today rather than the straight line path of the past. With the internet, we can get information from companies, the government, witnesses, video evidence, or even the good old press themselves. In the past, information was obtained by the press and then passed onto the people in a straight line fashion. This is not so today, because of many advances in technology we can obtain our news from almost anywhere we choose, even straight from the source. This makes it much quicker to do so, and puts a lot less stress on the story and more on how quickly the information is released and who releases it first. In fact, the stress o speed actually reduces the need for editors due to the fact that people just want to hear it first, not in a well-written newspaper the next day. “Hear it first,” is actually starting to come around as the motto of some news organizations to show their speed in the release of a story. With all this stress on speed one can only wonder, will editors soon be out of a job in the near future?

The "Times" is Changing... Me

I have really enjoyed reading the New York Times so far. At first, I was a little apprehensive at the thought of reading a newspaper online. I have always seen reading the paper as something that older or middle-aged adults do, not a young college student lie myself. But after reading it for about a week now, I have seen that it contains information that peaks my interest while being very informative on current issues today.
I have really felt a strong draw to the opinions section, where a specifically remember an article about testing being done for an AIDS vaccine in Asia. I also like the science section, partly because of my inner nerd, and also the stories on the main page are very interesting. The two stories that have stuck out the most in my mind were the one about the AIDS vaccine, and another about a pregnant woman who lost her baby when she came down with the swine flu. I think these caught my eye because I have a great interest in epidemiology and how to treat diseases. I find the fact that there is actually an AIDS vaccine in the works remarkable, and it is even being used in human trials.
While I have a great interest in the science aspect of this paper, I fell that I may be over looking another very important aspect in America today, politics. I have never found myself to be a very political person, so it is hard for me to get motivated into looking at articles on that subject; I feel that they will bore me. However, most of the political articles I have read are actually very interesting and flow nice enough that I am not ready for nap after three lines. Maybe reading the Times will change my opinion in the future about this topic so that I am much more politically involved.

A Tale of Two Blogs

The two blogs that I am following are Hoop Thoughts and the Daily Dish. Hoop Thoughts is a blog written by Seth Davis. Davis is a written for Sports Illustrated magazine, and has been there since 1995. He is primarily a writer on all aspects of college basketball. The main audience for his blog would most likely be fans of college basketball that want to know more about the game than just what goes on the court. He writes about not only how good player within a team are, but also how they handle other situations such as dealing with the media. His purpose is to present a view of the game that outside of just what happens on the court. The blog involves issues such as how players deal with the media, whether tournament play should be done away with altogether and all the way to the character of coaches and players. I enjoy reading what he has to say because it shows that the athletes and coaches are also humans like us, not just some machines invented for the sole purpose of shooting a three point shot.
The other blog I will follow is the Daily Dish by Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan is a conservative, gay writer that has applied for citizenship to the United States; however he has been rejected due to the fact that he is HIV positive. The audience for his blog would most likely be conservatives with similar views as his own, or even people who do not share his views, as his blog is one of the more popular on the web. He writes his blog to express his views to his audience, and he also explains further reasons in his, “Why I Blog,” post located inside his blog. His posts contain information on a plethora of information, from recent historically significant events, to little entertaining videos that he designates as, “mental health breaks.” His site is chock-full of information on nearly everything, from funny to serious matters, and I am looking forward to reading it in the future.

The Blogs I Will Follow

I will follow Seth Davis's blog on fannation.com because I like his commentary on the world of sports. I will also follow Daily Dish because i enjoy reading most of Sullivan's material.

Similarities

As I read through the sources that other people use to obtain their news I can easily find one reoccurring theme; the internet. We, as college students almost all own a laptop or other computer, and have free access to the internet on campus, whether it be wirelessly or on a library computer. I also found that hearsay is another main way that we acquire information, we hear about a story while we are walking around, or from a friend, and then do further research on the topic. The internet has completely changed the way we get news, while not all go to the same source; it is an everyday stop for all college students. We can get news through our email accounts, Facebook pages, or at specific news sites. Some of these, “so-called,” news websites are extremely biased and will do anything to dish out the bad information or gossip on the latest celebrity, and others, such as the Onion, concoct entirely false stories altogether. People flock to these biased sites because they give out information that people want to hear, the regular American wants to know that every celebrity has problems just like them, and some even more severe. Personally, I do not visit these gossip sites because, I feel that, for one, the information in them really has no effect on my life whatsoever, and I really just don’t care about them. Most of the news that is important to us students will eventually get around to us whether we seek it or not, we will overhear someone talking, see a new status or Facebook or Twitter, or simply just receive an email about it. Sometimes it is easiest not to seek out the news at all.

The News for Me

For the past few years, I have always enjoyed staying up to date on what is going on in the world, and in my community. I have always been able to turn on a television and urn the dial MSNBC or Fox news and find out any reports that may interest me. This has always been my major source of information, as my parents normally hogged the newspaper in the morning. However, as I have made my transition to college life, and I have moved away from home I find that I am now lacking my primary source, the TV. I have not been able to purchase one since I have moved in, and for the first few weeks I felt lost without my source. I was not able to find a newspaper readily available, and I finally turned to the one source on hand, the internet. With it, I can select from many different news sites, some biased and others not. I feel that the internet is a great place to find news stories, but a major drawback is the difficulty to read a full article on a computer when there are so many other things available to do on the internet. One can easily get sidetracked by Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, etc. Normally I will skim headlines to find articles that peak my interest and then I will read the first few paragraphs. I hardly ever read through an entire article when I am using a computer, only on occasions of extreme boredom will I go through a full story. I also hear some news from other people around campus. I mostly overhear information from people, and then I will look up the story further online. The ways I used to get my news are a thing of the past, and now I am learning new ways to obtain reports about current events.