Making my Blog Better

Hedge's once again comes out fighting in his article as he tries to explain how democracy is failing and that news is being turned into entertainment by corporations. He starts out by saying how the journalism industry is failing, and he states the facts that the stocks of many newspapers are falling. He does have links this time, but Hedges does not put the links to these facts unfortunately. What is the point? I don't know either. I agree that the newspapers stock prices were falling and could also see where it could be interpreted that newspaper companies were failing, but I would like to think that these facts may not have been taken in context. During that time not only newspaper companies were struggling with low profits, but also many other companies were struggling as well. This article was written around the time the economic recession started, and I believe after the article was written it was more noticeable that everything was going downhill. They may have been one of the first ones to get hit, but many stocks dropped as everyone well knows. Hedges believes that no one cares about the real facts anymore and says that the internet along with massive corporations are slowly destroying traditional media such as newspapers. Once again Hedges sounds like someone who is a little too afraid of change.

Now on to the second piece. Clive Thompson has a radically different opinion compared to Hedges. Thompson somehow believes that the internet is actually making us more literate. Hedges might blow a gasket if he saw this one. He uses scientific studies from Stanford university to go against the numerous amount of people who think that our new internet habits are destroying are reading and writing habits. The study shows that in the world today people are writing extensively outside of school and job related writing. We are definitely a different generation and will have some differences, but Thompson and Lunsford(the person who conducted Stanford's study) believe that it will benefit us in the long run. Thompson's article is much less assertive than Hedge's and makes you feel like if you do not agree with his view you still might live. People are afraid of the unknown. Yes the writing and reading habits of our new generations are changing, but it does not necessarily have to be for the worse. We are sailing uncharted waters and may come up with new discoveries comparable to the discovering of the Americas. Just think of all the people that were criticized for challenging current ideas, and then look at where we are today because of them. This new age may be the same way.

Pretty much the only thing I changed was the wording of my opinions to make them more compatible with the process of "countering" and "forwarding." I just used some of the "Yes, but.." and "Yes, and.." phrases to maybe make my argument better. Mainly i focused on countering in my article because it deals with two opposing views. I probably could have worked a little more on the non-critical aspect though.