Jarvis vs. Sullivan

   Because Jarvis refuses to take a standpoint on either side of the goodness or badness of the new news model debate, it is difficult to compare Sullivan’s overtly optimistic attitude with that of the press-sphere advocate. Regardless, it is clear that both writers are very conscious of the changing times for how the news comes to us as well as how we react to it.
   Both writers give much credit to the all-powerful hyperlink for providing a quick means of connecting information to form a story with many contributing sources and without very easily-defined boundaries. Both highlight the phenomena of a link’s tendency to transform a reader into a collaborator with very little effort on the part of the reader, which, as Jarvis articulates, “changes the essential structure of a story.”
   That Sullivan describes the blogging world as “a conversation, rather than a production,” is echoed in Jarvis’ simple diagram of the “me-sphere.” Unlike Jarvis’ model of traditional news-gathering, which consists of arrows pointing in only one direction, his new model consists of a person in the midst of many external sources of information, the many multi-directional, reciprocating arrows only being implied, for the sake of a clean, uncluttered diagram.
   In another point of commonality between Sullivan and Jarvis, neither one allows himself to select one news outlet—the new, internet-dominated outlet or the old, paper-dominated outlet—as the superior, both authors instead accepting both outlets as serving separate and unique purposes in how we experience the news today.
   Sullivan and Jarvis are on the same page with regard to the topic of the changing news, the greatest disparity being the one between Sullivan’s passion and Jarvis’ apparent impartiality.

The "Press-Sphere"

  Jarvis defines the “Press Sphere” as the more accurate model for describing the relationship between the “press” and “us.” Unlike the familiar model of yesteryear, in which we are fed the news through the nearly-inescapable filter of the press, the Jarvis model—which may well have been illustrated by a toddler—places the individual amid a sea of alternative sources of news in addition to the press.
  Foremost, what does he mean by the “press”? I feel that he cannot be limiting the definition of the word only to popular newspapers. Instead, he must be talking about conventional sources of news in general, including both print sources as well as major, televised, network news. What is the difference between a paper and a TV news broadcast, really?
  Another question I have is whether Jarvis is trying to say that sections are “out of date” because they are more integrated than they used to be. If that is so, then why did they work for so long?
  Though I have no trouble seeing where he is coming from in his will to explicate the changing relationship between the press and the individual, I feel he oversimplifies to an embarrassing extent. The press has never been the only filter for news. There have always been observers—if not publically commenting on blog pages, perhaps just injecting their own feelings into a word-of-mouth news account. There has always been a separation between the press and the government whereby the two can be considered distinct entities.
  I feel he is right in his diagnosis that the “press stands in a different relationship to the world around it.” A concrete example of this fact is that we’re frequently getting news about the news outlets today, making them less of the unspoken, enigmatic beasts that, in their prime, could once practically control public sentiment. The perspective of the popular media is, now more than ever, met by many with a careful attention to intent.
  In general, I think the implications of the “me-sphere” are not so far-reaching as Jarvis suspects. People have always been capable of exploring the details of a story before its beginning and past its end. The internet has just made the process a little easier.

Has The Times Changed My Style?

  Thus far, my readings of the New York Times (which I access via the Times website) have been surprisingly pleasant. I never noticed how easily I enjoy reading the news until I had to read interesting news articles for an assignment and experienced how painless the process is.
  The stories that capture my attention are invariably the ones that appear on the top of the main page. Because the structure of a newspaper normally maintains an order arranged by importance, the case is usually true that the big stories — and often the most entertaining and well-written — are the ones that require little searching.
  Consequently, chances are good that I’ve completely overlooked stories that may be popularly seen as less relevant, but that I might happen to appreciate even more than the stories featured on the front page.
  Reading the Times probably hasn’t affected my habits very much. I have already been reading Yahoo! articles for quite some time. For a person like myself who may not be quite as refined in the art of analyzing sources, the Times doesn’t seem so very different from Yahoo!.
  However, having immediately read the Times before writing this blog post, I suspect that the short-paragraph format of that newspaper may have influenced the frequent paragraph breaks in this post, thereby influencing my writing habits on some small level, even if only temporarily.
  The first article I read today was Part 5 in an ongoing story about a journalist captured by the Taliban and the narrative of his escape. Being a part of “Generation Y,” naturally I’ve heard about journalists being kidnapped in the Middle East on more than one occasion throughout the past two decades. But until today, I had yet to read a detailed, first-person account.
  I could easily see how reading such articles could give people a better sense of what it might be like to experience what the authors experienced. Articles like what I read are effective because storytelling is, by nature, one of the most easily-retained ways of absorbing information. Through reading this particular article today and writing about what I’ve learned in doing so, I have come to better-understand the value of injecting feeling into the learning process.

News Sources

Overall, my news sources are fairly similar to my classmates'. I rely heavily on the internet for my news-gathering needs, especially websites that happen to be integrated into non-news-centered sites that I frequent, namely Yahoo and Google. The internet partiality struck me foremost in reading the comments of my classmates.
Many of us claim never to read the newspapers anymore, and I would be in that boat if it weren’t for one particular section I love; I save the newspapers for reading Annie's Mailbox, an amusing slot on the Features section of the C-J in which emotionally distressed people complain about how conflicted they are by cheating on their husbands, after which the authors, two middle-aged women, retort with very predictable comments. Whether or not this could be considered news is questionable, but it could be worth a discussion. I learn from it, and it comes out periodically, but it is probably not “necessary” to read such an article in order to be a responsible, involved citizen.
Before delving into the topic of whether or not we are capable of being considered “civically literate”, I want to say that to deny anyone from our class of this title does not make much sense to me. Being capable of carrying on the pressing discussions we find ourselves discussing in class and in these blogs is enough for me to overlook the possibility that we aren’t civic literates.
From our behavior, as we have blogged about it, I believe that we are not in nearly as bad of shape as Hedges might make out our age-group to typically be in. If someone were to walk into class and drop a topic on us, we could almost certainly discuss it intelligently, cite historical connections, etc. There’s nothing illiterate about us or our activities.

News Sources

I usually get my news from the embedded newsfeeds of my Yahoo Mail account. When checking my email, I tend to first read the attention-grabbing headlines that rotate in a cycle on the main page. These vary a great deal in their focus.
The second-most common source of my news comes from word-of-mouth. As a bagel shop employee, I occasionally make small-talk with the customers to pass the time, and they, in turn, gather their information from sources including (but not limited to) the internet, provided via a wireless internet hotspot, as well as newspapers, all of which are available for free public use at the bagel shop. The newspapers we carry include the Leo, Velocity, The Courier-Journal, and The New York Times; wireless access points, on the other hang, unlock limitless possibilities for web searches. Finally, a bulletin board allows for local events to be easily displayed, yet another form of information transfer. The bagel shop is, therefore, a bustling hub of the news, both around town and in the world at large.
I generally do not seek out the newspaper as a form of news-gathering, while the internet is one that is very convenient given my daily routine. School requires frequent use of the internet. Consequently, I find myself searching the web more frequently than I did in high school.
In my place of residence, I ordinarily stray away from television as a form of entertainment. Instead, I watch it with friends, and while we do not watch the news all that often, we do watch amusing shows that sometimes mention world events; this could be considered a form of news-gathering. For instance, a comedian discussing the recent spike in tobacco product prices could be the first source to inform me of the new legislation.
That is part of the magic of the internet. You can learn about what is going on in the world without even setting out to search for it. Even the Google homepage could be considered a very basic source of news, as significant days in history are sometimes honored with specially-themed Google logos.

Here's my final version of the mid-term essay!