How Cell Phones are Changing the World
15 years ago
This Bear Is Up a Tree
photo by Scott Granneman
Monday, September 28, 2009
Calling All Journalism Majors
This a must read for writers as well as readers - including communications and poly sci majors. "How to Read a Column" written in 2005 by William Safire is so full of historical allusions and esoteric journalism lingo that it might take a while to get through, but I'm thinking the effort is worth it. Tell me what you think. Safire died Sunday after a distinguished career as journalist, grammarian and novelist - and, despite that grammar part, always interesting.
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I'll definitely read this! I'm in a journalism class right now, and we have a column due pretty soon. This should be a great help! :)
ReplyDeleteSo, what is this lede he's talking about?
ReplyDeleteI kind of had to laugh when he made the comment about lefties go for the JFK quotes while righties go for the Reagan quotes. I had never thought about it before, but it is so true. Makes perfect sense.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very informative informative article. I must agree with looking in the middle of the article for the meat or most interestiong part of the story. I do that while reading the Lariet. And it is obvious that columninst make errors in their articles.
ReplyDeleteI am also in a Journalism class this semester so this kind of insight is useful to me in many ways
ReplyDeleteIt is a fascinating article. I think it could be summed up by saying "be skeptical". I also like to add "look for the truth in the untruth, and the untruth in the truth".
ReplyDeleteOverall the points presented are pretty true. We do have a problem of news entertainment out there, but that's the nature of the free press. A lot of the pundits have really great points, even when it is easy to catch them in multiple fallacies. They are giving you a narrative based off of a philosophical position, which can be interesting as well as helpful in developing your opinions, beliefs, and values.
I try and get my news from a variety of sources - sources that are similar and in contrast to what I believe, sources that aim for factuality and a lack of bias, and those that are almost entertainment sources, but, because of this label, they are able to push buttons that the more "respectable" news sources/columns cannot.
All in all, I think this article is a good signpost of warnings as well as tools to dig into news and understand truth in a more realistic way, but at the same time, it should not be used as a check list of standards to decide if we should throw it out or not.
Yea I admit sometimes I'll get suckered in if I think a writer has a better vocabulary than myself. He knows more words, he must be more educated right? And if he's more educated his opinion must matter right? People to dress up and thesaurize their writings though.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this article and it made me question a little the way I read articles. I am guilty of a few of the things. I definitely skip to the middle to read what I believe is all the real important and informative information. I also, just like Chris, get "suckered in" to believing that the writing seems so much more educated than myself that surely the writer is correct and knows what they are talking about. I will definitely make sure to be more careful when reading columns.
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