Perspective(s)

Thanks, all, for the kind comments and emails re the new homepage design. The longer I look at it, the happier I am. I think it's pretty well set--I've added credits, and links both to email and a slightly dated version of my cv. Good enough for now, I think.

I'm gearing up for a dissertation defense later today, and took a break from poring over chapters to try and bring my aggregator under control. There's a couple of interesting pieces I wanted to point to. danah boyd takes the NYT to task for demeaning the unprecedented amount of blogging going on at the DNC this week. What's most interesting about this is that she was asked to expand on this entry, and to turn it into an essay for Salon. In it, she shifts gears quite a bit, and frames a pair portion of the essay in terms of the ideals of objectivity versus the virtues of multiple perspectives. It's an old, old debate, and one that's getting fresh legs as the mainstream media responds to blogging.

The essay is interesting in and of itself, but I recommend it also to those who plan on using (or already are using) blogs in their writing classrooms. Pairing these two essays might provide a really nice example of what it means to move from blog to essay, or simply to move from one audience or space to another. I was struck, for example, by the move from the first passage here to the second:

By framing bloggers as diarists, the NYTimes is demanding that the reader see blogs as petty, childish and self-absorbed.

In order to signify the difference between blogging and "real journalism," it is not that surprising that the New York Times drudges up connotations of 13-year-old girls writing about their lives. It helps to belittle the role of convention bloggers who have been given the same press credentials as reporters.

Neither of these is the "correct" or "better" one for me; each is effective given its context, and helps to point out some of the differences between those contexts. For the record, I'm guessing that "drudges" is simply a misspelling of "dredge," and not a subtle dig at the Drudge Report, but who knows?

The other pointer I have is to David Weinberger's site, where he likewise tackles the question of objectivity. In this case, he examines coverage from the Boston Globe, and discusses how the "necessity" of devising headlines and leads interferes with journalists' ability to be objective. It's a really nice reflection on the gap between convention and coverage, conceived in terms of the rhetorical demands of what are two very different media (speech v. news story).

And if I may be a disciplinary homer for a moment, what's most refreshing about DW's piece is that he uses the word "rhetoric" correctly. Yeah, he cites Heidegger too, but that's just gravy by the time I get to it. heh.