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May 2001
- 39 participants
- 64 discussions
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1132-2001May8.html
Flocking Together Through the Web
By Joel Garreau
Suppose the Earth is all one big single living organism, with all the
elements of it -- from the people to the birds -- connected like cells
in a body. Suppose the goal of evolution is to link up individual
human minds, bringing an explosion of intelligence and even global
consciousness to this mammoth being.
For half a century, this idea has been batted around, much spurred by
the writings of the late French Jesuit scientist Pierre Teilhard de
Chardin. But the attention the notion received, especially in the
'60s, was of an airy, hand-waving, late-night-dorm-session sort. It
was hard for serious people to imagine how such a global consciousness
would ever be wired up in any practical way, and even harder to
observe any concrete evidence of its existence.
Until now.
It seems that the fastest-growing outdoor activity in North America by
far is bird watching, according to the National Survey on Recreation
and the Environment. More than 71 million Americans -- one in four !
-- watch birds, according to the NSRE.
For 101 years, the most devoted of these citizen scientists have been
conducting annual bird censuses at Christmas. But the friction in the
system, even for the most dedicated birders, was enormous. They had to
count their sparrows, fill out a form, put it in an envelope, mail it
to a compiler and wait a full year for publication in an obscure
journal.
Four years ago the National Audubon Society and the nation's foremost
ornithology lab at Cornell University started moving this process to
the Web.
You can now count birds without leaving your back yard and drop the
numbers into sites such as Bird Source or Journey North. In short
order you will see updated maps and numbers that show you how bird
populations are rising, falling and changing all over North America,
right now.
The projects are still embryonic -- perhaps 70,000 people contributed
this year. But those numbers are vastly greater than in the days of
paper and pen and have been doubling every year. The resulting
picture of the natural world is consequently becoming richer and more
complex.
That's not the earth-moving part, however. The earth-moving part --
literally -- is that, as a result, a movement is spontaneously
emerging that alters the physical nature of the planet so as to make
it more amenable to the birds that are indicator species of global
environmental health.
Some of this is as simple as town-house owners deciding to plant
lobelia in their back yards because these flowers please hummingbirds.
But others are more ambitious. One Fairfax County youth had his back
yard certified as a wildlife habitat by the National Wildlife
Federation, one of 600 such designated refuges in Fairfax County
alone.
Activists in Columbia, meanwhile, are spending this spring uprooting
some of the Rouse Corp.'s well-meant ornamental plantings to replace
them with habitat that woodcocks view as more homelike.
A 5,600-acre farm in Chestertown is replanting grassland to nurture
the dickcissel so that the bird, which had been nonexistent on the
Eastern Shore for decades, suddenly has eight breeding pairs there.
International Paper Co. -- the largest private landowner in the United
States -- has revamped forestry practices in South Carolina to create
a population explosion of the rare Swainson's warbler. The Department
of Defense, with its 25 million acres, has launched initiatives that
range from burning grasslands in Fort Riley, Kan., so as to encourage
native prairie and the Henslow's sparrow, to having Seabees construct
wetlands in Hawaii for the Hawaiian stilt, Hawaiian coot and the
Hawaiian moorhen.
All of these actions have roots in the new ease with which ordinary
individuals now find it natural to come together swiftly,
unceremoniously and improvisationally on the Net to create measurable
change.
These changes, in turn, have encouraged a "virtuous circle" in which
people are having their appetites whetted for more data about birds.
Pioneering volunteers are putting on their roofs microphones that are
attached to their home computers that are attached to Cornell. These
microphones pick up "chip calls," which are the beeps many birds make
when they migrate in order to keep in touch with the flock. The big
computers in Ithaca, N.Y., can take these remote recordings and figure
out how many white-throated sparrows flew over which house. At night.
Meanwhile, the Doppler radar so ubiquitous on TV weather picks up
signals that have long been misidentified as scattered showers in a
clear sky. No -- it's birds. Researchers at Clemson University can now
take the Doppler signals from some 150 installations continent-wide
and focus on the bird signals. With this vast array they can, for
example, track birds migrating up from South America across the Gulf
of Mexico. On a single autumn night several years ago, radar on Cape
Cod revealed 12 million songbirds passing overhead. In Florida, a
company called Geo-Marine Inc. is developing the technology to provide
daily bird forecasts and hourly updates for the U.S. Air Force, a
client that values both flying close to the ground and not sucking
12-pound geese into expensive jet engines.
Other enthusiasts are wiring birds with devices the weight of a nickel
that connect directly to orbiting satellites. These record the birds
moving from, say, Canada to New Jersey. Such migrations are displayed
on the Web for everyone to watch. The devices are getting so small and
cheap that scientists hope eventually to wire entire flocks of
Neotropical songbirds -- those that summer in the States but winter in
the tropics -- to the satellites.
Because bird watchers are such an enormous portion of the population
in rich and powerful nations -- such as those of North America and
Europe -- this is leading to modification of the terrain itself by an
unprecedented number of individuals, corporations and governments with
global reach. No one knows if poorer nations will follow their lead,
or when. But emerging countries are where the Web is growing fastest,
and environmentalists know that increased prosperity, as a rule,
brings with it environmental improvements like cleaner air and water.
In his 1940 magnum opus, "The Phenomenon of Man," Teilhard said that
someday our technology would allow us to create a web of thought and
action that would make the world more complex, diverse and alive,
moving mankind toward ultimate evolution.
In the mid-'90s, with the arrival of the World Wide Web, technos
started pointing to his ideas again, with computer designer Danny
Hillis saying in Wired magazine, "Now evolution takes place in
microseconds. . . . We're taking off. We're at that point analogous to
when single-celled organisms were turning into multicelled organisms.
. . . We are not evolution's ultimate product. There's something
coming after us, and I imagine it is something wonderful."
In the past decade, of course, such predictions seemed hypothetical or
even delusional.
What's new is that some scientists think they are looking now at first
evidence that maybe Teilhard was right.
Count, Care and Act
Humans have been changing the environment at least since man learned
to eat other animals faster than they could eat him. For the other
species -- including those that early humans drove to their slaughter
by deliberately setting forest fires -- this has not always been a
picnic.
"We typically think of humans as hellbent on ecosystem destruction,"
notes John W. Fitzpatrick, director of the Laboratory of Ornithology
at Cornell. Evidence, of course, abounds -- from clear-cutting of the
Amazon rain forest to the advance of global warming.
What's new is the rise of humans connected by the Internet, acting
like a flock without leaders, changing the physical planet a fraction
of an acre at a time, for the<em> benefit</em> of the other species
and thus the entire world.
"I think we're seeing history in the making," says Fitzpatrick.
"People are now noticing change, searching for bio-indicators and then
fixing the problem. What we're just beginning to realize is that
humans represent the internal control mechanism the Earth has long
sought. They're bringing feedback into the system, changing the
management of the system."
"You're gardening the planet for birds," says Frank Gill, senior vice
president for science of the National Audubon Society and author of
"Ornithology," the most widely used text in the field. "If you count
things, you care for them. If you care for them, you act. It's a
counting, caring and acting system. You make fields, manage forests in
certain ways. Even industrial forests are just gardens with woody
sticks coming out of them. You fix things up in the back yard. The
whole landscape becomes human-dominated and managed. That's just
gardening on a planetary scale. The whole restoration-ecology world is
now moving toward some ability to do that."
"Our long-term hope is that instead of the Weather Channel, you could
turn to the Bird Channel," says Fitzpatrick. "We'll be able to count
them, monitor them, observe their population crashes, on a continental
scale. We're preparing the world for times after I'm gone. If this had
been available in the 1800s, we'd still have passenger pigeons flying
over us by the billions.
"Global consciousness?" continues Fitzpatrick. "It's true. It is
exactly what we have been after. Our thesis is that the Internet is
the first point in human history in the creation of consciousness at a
massive and biologically meaningful scale. We've been trying to do
that with paper" -- the old-fashioned way of trying to link data to
action -- "but it's too damned expensive and lethargic.
"This is a fundamental power of the Internet," he says. "It drives a
huge growth in citizen engagement. We're definitely feeling the power.
It's the greatest thing. All of this is being done by school kids,
families, retired folks."
"If you look at the conservation of birds, you're really looking at
the stewardship of the landscape, using birds as indicators," says
Gill. "We're starting to manage the landscape in real time. What the
Web does is transform this into a global community on a local scale.
That ranges from rain forests in Guyana to urban America and
everything in between."
Audubon just sent a team to Guyana, setting up a project with the
Makushi Indians -- hunters and gatherers in the rain forest.
The Makushi "have discovered the Internet," says Gill. "Our goal is to
develop this count-care-and-act program so that it works for them.
They count things useful to them -- turtles, parrots. At the same
time, they share that monitoring with other communities across the
globe.
"It's closing the circle, changing their lives. Our goal is to change
the world. One place at a time.
"This is much more complicated than rocket science."
The Mating Fields
The woodcocks have returned to the singing grounds.
Less than three miles west of the Mall in Columbia, the show is about
to begin. Before a full moon, the quail-size males start their mating
ritual, sounding "peents" and then exploding up from the tufty
grassland, the wind through their feathers creating a whistling sound.
The woodcocks climb to great heights and then start their
crowd-pleasing gymnastics. They fall like autumn leaves, in
spectacular swoops with enticing chirps and whistles. Then they land
and do it again. And again. The female woodcocks are deeply impressed.
So are the humans who come to watch them.
The mating fields are called "singing grounds."
Brought together one recent Saturday afternoon by a flurry of e-mail
among their peers, seven volunteers from the Columbia area were
creating more singing grounds.
"We used the historical records we had," says Jeff Schwierjohann
(pronounced SWEER-john), the 32-year-old wildlife biologist who
manages the 1,000-acre Middle Patuxent Environmental Area just west of
Columbia. "When woodcocks were very dense, their singing grounds were
right in the areas where we're re-creating them now.
"The reason we manage for woodcocks is that they require a lot of
different habitats. If you manage for them, you manage for diversity
of wildlife and vegetation. Males will roost at night in tall meadow
and grassland. Females require young early forests -- saplings -- for
cover and food. It's important to have good soil because 90 percent of
their diet is earthworms."
The population of the woodcocks in Howard County had been declining
since the 1960s, says Schwierjohann, not so much because of the
disappearance of wild areas as because of the end of farming, with its
complex and man-made pattern of open land and forests, fallow fields
and crops.
The Rouse Corp., which developed Columbia and deeded to Howard County
the land that became the Middle Patuxent Environmental Area, several
decades ago carefully planted much of the area with ornamental autumn
olive trees and lawnlike fescue.
This recent Saturday, the volunteers from the Howard County Bird Club,
the Sierra Club and the League of Women Voters were taking lopping
pruners and pickaxes to the suburban growth. They were restoring the
land to tufts and open patches of native warm-season grasses that
offer cover for the wildlife, openings for small animals to move
around, and nesting areas.
"There were no recorded nests or displays of woodcocks here for
years," says Schwierjohann. "This year, there are more displays and
more singing than in the past several years combined."
This is hardly the first instance of mankind restoring bird species,
of course. Ending the use of DDT contributed to such famous success
stories as the return of the bald eagle and the peregrine falcon.
Those early successes, however, were a result of massive top-down
federal action, prompted by the Endangered Species Act of 1973. At the
Middle Patuxent Environmental Area, by contrast, initiatives like the
woodcock effort were generated by hundreds of volunteers from the
Scouts to the sheriff's office, self-organizing at the grass-roots
level with the kind of speed, fluidity and informality that was simply
too hard before the Internet.
Among the people who think that technology is allowing humankind to
evolve a global consciousness as a result of its new complex adaptive
systems is Murray Gell-Mann, winner of the Nobel prize in physics and
a pioneer in the study of complex systems at the Santa Fe Institute.
Gell-Mann is also a fanatic birder, the sort of person who flies off
to Madagascar to bird-watch, a man who took part in his first
Christmas bird count in 1940, when he was 11.
"The Internet has accelerated a phenomenon of people finding one
another with all sorts of consequences, some wonderful and some
terrifying," he says.
"It's always been true that birdwatchers and other amateur naturalists
were very much concerned about the issues directly related to nature
conservation. Lately they've understood the links to a much wider
spectrum of issues, such as energy, air and water pollution, a whole
range of population issues, and even problems posed by rural poverty.
"There has been an explosion of interest in the conservation of nature
as the number of amateur naturalists has grown fantastically, and
their awareness of interlinking, likewise. All of this is growing."
A most literal form of grass-roots work is taking place on the Eastern
Shore at Chino Farms, a 5,630-acre Queen Anne's County spread planted
primarily in row crops. Its owner, Henry Sears, a Massachusetts cancer
surgeon and amateur birder, decided to start restoring native Eastern
prairie. He got in touch with Douglas Gill, an evolutionary ecologist
at the University of Maryland, and two springs ago set aside 230 acres
to rebuild, re-create and restore native coastal warm-season grassland
comparable to what the first Europeans in America found.
The results have been "oh my God, phenomenal," says ecologist Gill.
"Within one month of planting, in came one of our target birds, the
grasshopper sparrow. It's in sharp decline nationwide, but they just
poured in. God knows where they came from. But boy did they find it.
We banded nearly 400 grasshopper sparrows. In the prairie's second
year another target species, the dickcissel, which migrates to
Venezuela and is on the watch list, showed up and there were eight
nesting pairs. It's unbelievable. We didn't expect to see those for
years."
More remarkable is how easily news of success now reverberates
throughout our wired world -- and to what effect. "What was a novel
initiative two years ago is now being copied all over the country,"
Gill says. "There are Web sites for grasslands restorers. It's serving
as a model. People are calling me up all the time, asking what I've
found. Managers of national wildlife refuges have been given their
marching orders -- manage not only for waterfowl, but for grasslands.
We're gardening grassland for the birds.
"The virtuous circle," says Gill -- citing the exact opposite of a
vicious circle, in which positive action leads to more positive action
in an ever-increasing spiral -- "is definitely there."
At the confluence of the Great and Little Pee Dee rivers in South
Carolina, in a 30,000-acre forest called the Woodbury Tract, is
another striking example of the emergent power of the Web. It is part
of a sustainable forestry initiative by International Paper, the
forest products behemoth.
"For the last 15 to 20 years, we have been concerned about the
declining populations of Neotropical birds," says Jimmy Bullock, the
company's manager for sustainable forestry and wildlife.
"The Swainson's warbler has been a particular species of concern. It's
a pretty rare species. We have found that if we make small clear-cuts
-- 30, 40 acres -- and distribute the cuts across the landscape
instead of having just a few large cuts, it performs like a natural
disturbance.
"The warbler apparently likes the type of hardwood habitat that comes
back 12 to 15 years after harvesting. Once the tree gets up to a
certain age, for whatever reason, it is not as attractive to the
warbler. So if we can get a mosaic of different age classes, the birds
can find optimal nesting and breeding habitat. We have 56 active nests
that we've found since 1997. That's unprecedented in the annals of
Swainson's warbler research."
In part, says Sharon Haines, manager of sustainable forestry and
forest policy for International Paper, this concern is reinforced by a
feedback loop.
"Of late, we've had to answer questions from our customers about our
sustainable forest activities. Some of the best information we have to
share with them are the things that we are doing with bird species."
Here's how an increasingly fast and frictionless virtuous circle
works:
"The customers' questions probably began about four to five years
ago," says Haines. "Might be a producer of lumber -- a Lowe's or
someone like that -- concerned about where their product is coming
from. It also can be an office products company like Staples. They're
getting questions, pressures, from their customers, from environmental
organizations. We're actually putting people on full time, dealing
with them.
"It's definitely the grass-roots community types. Now, because of the
Internet, they are much better able to share information."
"It's safe to say they are demanding more," acknowledges Haines. "I'm
not sure they understand what they are demanding."
Wiring the Planet
"This is just an example where the Web is mediating a collective
thought process that has feedback effects. It is affecting the
distribution of the species," says Robert Wright, author of "The Moral
Animal." It is reminiscent, Wright says, of Teilhard's idea that
technology would connect minds into a "brain for the biosphere as the
human species consciously assumes stewardship of the planet." It
explains, he says, why "serious people take Teilhard seriously."
"The bird-watching, Step 1, brings an increased sensitivity to the
role of the environment in the health and happiness of birds," says
Ralph H. Abraham, one of the progenitors of complex systems theory who
is a professor of mathematics at the University of California at Santa
Cruz.
"Then Step 2 is an extension of this sensitivity to the happiness of
the entire biosphere, including the living conditions for the human
species themselves. The emergent property is this global
consciousness.
"Before the World Wide Web, the bird watchers were a bunch of
independent agents. After, the emergent behavior is in the increase in
the connectivity between them, as in a neural net" -- the industry
term for advanced computers that can see patterns and learn from them.
"When you increase the connectivity, new intelligence emerges,"
Abraham says. "The World Wide Web makes the consciousness of birders
akin to a flock of birds, or a termite colony in which the individuals
act in harmony. A consensus emerges on what to do. The behavior of the
whole thing changes.
"The reason this is so exciting is that it is totally grass-roots,
bottom-up emergent behavior. The World Wide Web increases the
connectivity between individual birders into a kind of global
consciousness," Abraham concludes. "It cares in its altruistic loving
soul for the interest of the birds.
"What we're hoping for is a global increase in the collective
intelligence of the human species, without which we cannot survive on
this planet. All who dream of a sustainable future for their children
and grandchildren are begging for a quantum leap in the consciousness
of the human species. If that happens, it is the best and most
important thing to happen to the environment."
Although he died before the invention of the microchip, "Teilhard was
incredibly prescient," says Thomas M. King, the Jesuit theologian at
Georgetown University who has written or edited three books on the
paleontologist who strove to connect science to theology. "A global
culture is forming, as opposed to national cultures," King believes.
John Perry Barlow, a founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation,
the Internet civil liberties organization, goes further:
"We're not just wiring our consciousness, we're wiring the planet and
all its biological activity. Teilhard was talking about not simply our
consciousness, but evolution in its totality.
"The changing patterns of the birds are the consequence of their
consciousness interacting with our consciousnesses, being mediated by
the neuro-system of the Web. Previously there hasn't been a good
method for large-scale interaction between the greater 'us' and the
greater 'them.' Now there is a method for remediating. We can watch
what they're doing and they can watch what we're doing and respond to
it.
"It means that we're all just a little bit smarter, and the planet
itself is a little bit smarter. There is an increased likelihood that
a symbiosis is formed.
"Sounds good to me. Very promising. Speaking as a human being, and
also speaking as a friend of the birds."
BirdSource and its projects, such as the Christmas Bird Count and the
Great
Backyard Bird Count, can be found at <a
href="http://birdsource.cornell.edu
">birdsource.cornell.edu</a>; Journey North at <a href="
http://www.learner.org/jnorth">www.learner.org/jnorth</a>; BirdCast --
including Doppler radar images of birds -- at <a href="
http://www.birdcast.com">www.birdcast.com</a> and <a href="
http://www.birdcast.com/home.html">www.birdcast.com/home.html</a>; and
a
satellite map of a migrations at <a href="
http://www.learner.org/jnorth/images/graphics/d-e/eagle_e_map040301.html
">www.learner.org/jnorth/images/graphics/d-e/eagle_e_map040301.html</a>
1
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Copyright 2001 National Public Radio (R) -- National Public Radio (NPR)
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May 18, 2001, Friday
SHOW: ALL THINGS CONSIDERED (8:00 PM ET)
VIRAL MARKETING FOR MOVIES
ANCHOR: SCOTT SIMON
SCOTT SIMON, host: Now whether a movie succeeds or not at the box office
often has little to do with what we identify as quality. It can come up
or down to word-of-mouth recommendation, what one friend tells another.
Buzz might be the other word. Most famous example in recent years is
probably "The Blair Witch Project." That was a small-budget project which
became a hit based largely on the traffic of its Web site. Now that kind
of publicity has a name. It's called viral marketing, and it's most
successful, as you may expect, with the 18- to 24-year-old age group.
Viral marketing works by drawing people in by creating a cyberworld that
is related to the film but not explicitly so. It's advertising but not
obviously so. Amorette Jones is executive vice president of worldwide
marketing for Artisan Entertainment, a pioneer of viral marketing. She
insists that viral marketing is immensely successful.
Ms. AMORETTE JONES (Executive Vice President of Worldwide Marketing,
Artisan Entertainment): It absolutely works. A lot of people have talked
about "The Blair Witch Project" Web site.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
Ms. JONES: And I think what was so fantastic about that is that we really
recognized the power of the Web, how wide-reaching things happen and how
quickly you get the word out. You build that urgency and build the buzz
and enormous traffic. Since we had the experience with "Blair Witch
Project," we've followed up with several other Web sites that have had
that viral component...
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
Ms. JONES: ...that is all important in a campaign.
SIMON: Question of the day in these economic times: How do you get people
to visit a Web site?
Ms. JONES: Our first goal is to work with the filmmakers in a
collaborative effort to put together something incredibly creative and
original online. And we start out with that, and we then develop a
campaign that specifically targets users to develop that traffic. So in
the same way that we develop an overall marketing campaign for a
theatrical release, we also develop a campaign for the Web site launch.
What our goal is, is with these Web sites that don't necessarily have the
banner across the top, 'The movie's coming to your market on this date;
go buy your ticket,' we try and develop a site that's going to feel
authentic to the film, so it's going to feel that they worked together in
complement, although it's not necessarily a straightforward promotional
push.
SIMON: Mm-hmm. What were you trying to do with the "Center of the World"
Web site?
Ms. JONES: We have a film that was shot entirely on digital, picture
directed by Wayne Wang, and Wayne had decided within the body of this
film that he was really going to push the envelope and to develop a
picture that spoke to a lot of what's happening today in society. What
our goal was with the Web site is to work with Wayne and again...
SIMON: Let me interrupt you. You get to put some naughty pictures in
this, don't you?
Ms. JONES: Yeah, absolutely. We did. It wasn't for the sake of putting
naughty pictures up on the Web. What we attempted to do with the sites,
and I think what we successfully did, is we were able to develop a
provocative piece of advertising, of promotion.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
Ms. JONES: You know, in this site, as you go into the site, you go
through the rules, you go into a strip club, you participate in a
striptease. You then, as the user, can choose to have a lap dance. You
then take the next step and you go behind the scenes and have this very
voyeuristic experience in a dressing room with the dancer. And then, at
the end of the site, you have a one-on-one interaction with the dancer in
a very intimate setting, and there is a chat function in which the user
is able to communicate with this dancer. As the user, you're in this very
intimate setting and you're in this very provocative arrangement, yet
it's so not intimate. And that was one of the points that Wayne was
trying to make in the picture, and that's one of the points that we were
making with this Web site.
SIMON: Ms. Jones, thanks very much for speaking with us.
Ms. JONES: Absolutely. Thank you.
SIMON: Amorette Jones is executive vice president of worldwide marketing
for Artisan Entertainment.
And this is NPR, National Public Radio.
May 19, 2001
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Copyright 2001 National Public Radio (R) -- National Public Radio (NPR)
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Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
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http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/17/technology/17TALK.html
May 17, 2001
HE-MAILS, SHE-MAILS: WHERE SENDER MEETS GENDER
By JOYCE COHEN
WITH their wedding party scattered across 3,000 miles, Gladys We and
Tony Nathan did much of their wedding planning by e-mail.
For their first-anniversary gift last September, their bridesmaid Grace
Cheng compiled all the wedding correspondence into a handmade book. About
90 percent of the book consisted of messages sent among the bride and her
bridesmaids. A paltry 10 percent was messages among the men.
The women held forth not just on wedding minutiae like heel height and
earring style, but also on a whole lot more -- "stories about our days,
support over little frustrations, congratulations on little triumphs,"
said Ms. We, a graphic designer in Vancouver, British Columbia. "The
groomsmen sent a couple of wedding jokes and reminded each other of the
tux fitting."
Ms. We continues to exchange e-mail daily with her female friends. "A
message is a bright spot in the day," she said. "It's like a
kaffeeklatsch of girlfriends getting together to talk."
She added, "My husband finds it odd."
Of course he does. He's a guy.
But it does not seem at all odd to many e-mail users, who can't help
noticing that women are so often voluble and open on screen, while men
are terse and tight-lipped.
"My female friends write huge, long things -- the latest gossip and every
little, minute detail of what's going on, and really specific stuff about
school and social life and everything," said Leslie Wright, a student at
Barnard College. "With guys, it's more like an outline."
Indeed, communication researchers who are beginning to study the e-mail
behavior of men and women say they are finding real differences. But they
are also finding some surprises in how those differences are expressed.
In general, they say, women tend to use the electronic medium as an
extension of the way they talk -- lavishly and intimately, to connect
with people and build rapport. Men, in both speech and text, incline
toward a briefer, more utilitarian style, the researchers say -- a style
they variously term instrumental, functional or transactional.
But some researchers have detected something else going on. The
disinhibiting effect of e-mail, they say, makes it possible for people
of few words -- men, usually -- to convey thoughts and feelings that they
would find nearly impossible to say aloud.
David Becker, a Manhattan lawyer, fits the pattern of the taciturn male.
He uses e-mail often with a group of male friends from college and said
that "95 percent of the messages are coordinating stuff to do with our
free time."
He added, "There's usually a practical reason for the e-mail, like, `What
are we doing tonight?' or `Can you get out of work early?' not, `Let's
catch up.' " The replies are short and informational, he said, though
they sometimes include insults and clowning around.
E-mail messages from his former girlfriend, however, "read like a one-
sided phone conversation," Mr. Becker said.
"She would send me, literally, thousand-word e-mails with questions and
thoughts and all this stuff."
Though he would not always read the message immediately, "I would never
delete one without reading it," he said. "If I replied at all, it would
be, `My day is going fine, I'll talk to you later.' "
There are more subtle differences, as well. Ms. Wright and her female
friends tend to read their e-mail as soon as they receive it and reply at
once. "Even if I don't have a lot of time, I will respond right away and
be, like, `I don't have time now, but will write a longer e-mail later,'
"she said. "If I e-mail a guy, I have to wait a few days to get a
response. Guy friends are horrible that way, but guys who are interested
in you are better."
Dr. Linnda Caporael said she felt obligated to humanize her messages. Not
only does she answer her e-mail promptly, but she adds detail, even when
her correspondents are seeking a one-word answer.
"I say, `Yes, that's fine,' or `Yes, that's O.K.,' " said Dr. Caporael,
who teaches social science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy,
N.Y. A "no" answer gets a more elaborate explanation.
"Why can't I just say no?" she said. "If I know someone, I will answer
even longer."
Of course, many factors besides sex -- including age, income, education
and status -- influence what is said, and there are many forms of
electronic communication. There are private messages and public ones; e-
mail messages sent for social, business or romantic reasons; those traded
within single-sex or mixed groups; and notes between people who know each
other well, a bit, or not at all.
"No generalization applies to all forms of computer-mediated
communication," said Dr. Susan C. Herring, associate professor of
information science and linguistics at Indiana University at Bloomington.
"The key word is context."
Still, when it comes to public e-mail -- message boards, mailing lists
and chat rooms -- Dr. Herring and other researchers have noted how
typical speech patterns translate into online text. Her research shows
that in online groups, "men tend to make strong assertions," disagree
with others and use profanity, insults and sarcasm. By contrast, women
tend to use mitigated assertions along with questions, offers,
suggestions and polite expressions, she said. They are supportive and
agreeable, peppering their messages with more emoticons and
representations of laughter, like "haha," "heehee" and "lol," for
"laughing out loud."
Except for an inclination to start or fan flame wars, men in online
groups tend to limit the interaction, while women encourage others to
engage, said Dr. David Silver, an assistant professor at the University
of Washington and the director of the online Resource Center for Cyber
Culture Studies (www.otal.umd.edu /~rccs).
"Men come online to give information or give an answer, and in essence
stop the conversation," he said. "Women add a question, tweak a thread or
make things more complicated. I have found mailing lists dominated by
women to be much more interesting, collegial and communitarian."
Still, the loose-lips effect of e-mail, which leads people to write as
candidly as if they were writing in a diary, despite knowing their words
will be read on the other end, is especially powerful for some men. Those
who are usually reluctant to divulge personal information or betray
emotion often find that e-mail provides a layer of distance they find
liberating.
"The electronic distance that lets men write so freely is akin to their
preferred way of speaking -- without a direct face-to-face alignment that
makes a lot of men uncomfortable," said Dr. Deborah Tannen, a professor
of linguistics at Georgetown University and a pioneer in the field of sex
differences in language.
E-mail can impose a "beneficial distance" that is useful for times when
verbal communication is "too rich," Dr. Herring added. "For many men,
e-mail may take some of the emotional charge off loaded emotional
situations."
For example, Mike Murnane, a real estate broker in Palo Alto, Calif.,
finds it much easier to express his affection for his grown children --
three daughters and a son -- through e-mail.
"In person, my girls and my wife talk frequently and rapidly, and I don't
get a chance to say much," Mr. Murnane said. "With the phone, at least
for me, there has to be some reason to call. But with e-mail you can say
any random thing -- a thought or something that happened -- and send it
off quickly. It's easy for me to acknowledge what my children do in a
very loving way."
His middle daughter, Maria Murnane, keeps a computer file of her father's
e-mail messages. "I cherish them, because he is so shy and
nonexpressive," she said. "I get the sweetest e-mails and he says things
he never says in person."
E-mail works well, too, when it comes to conflict. Martin Ogawa, who
works at an online directory service in San Francisco, prefers e-mail
for difficult discussions with his fiancée, Cheryl Kaplan.
"When I know she is upset with me, I will send her an e-mail instead of
calling," Mr. Ogawa said. "It's less confrontational. It makes it easier
to resolve the issue and move forward."
Whatever the difficult subject -- a concrete one like finances or a murky
one like their relationship, "e-mail helps me approach the subject in a
less aggressive manner," said Ms. Kaplan, a lawyer. "On the phone, I
don't give Martin enough time to give his side because I'm too busy
giving him my version."
Still, she would always prefer a real conversation. "If I wrote a
response, I'd be typing for days," she said. "A million things are going
through my head, and all I want to do is pick up the phone and talk about
it."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/17/technology/17TALK.html
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Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
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Dear Friends,
I found the first story in here truly frightening -- and alas, fitting
some of the things I encounter around students (none working with me,
fortunately).
The other stories are interesting too.
This is the list of the Assoc of Internet Researchers.
Barry
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director
wellman(a)chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman
Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto
455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162
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Date: Sat, 19 May 2001 15:09:18 +0200
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From: Ken Friedman <ken.friedman(a)bi.no>
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DAILY NEWS, ETERNAL STORIES
Jack Lule uncovers seven myths that shape journalism. He uses the
example of Haiti to explain the unconscious racism of the U.S. press
The Myth In Journalism
05/16/01
http://www.mediachannel.org/views/oped/lule.shtml
Jack Lule's book, "Daily News, Eternal Stories: The Mythological Role of
Journalism" examines the difference between news as "information" and news
as "story" with characters, plot and theme. For Lule, myth does not mean
untrue tales, but rather great stories emphasizing "archetypal figures and
forms" and "exemplary models" that play crucial social roles for humankind.
In this definition, such figures, forms and models represent shared values
and help people better understand the complexities, good and bad, of human
life.
By analyzing case studies involving Black Panther Huey Newton, Mother
Teresa, baseball player Mark McGuire and Hurricane Mitch, among others,
Lule a great storyteller himself demonstrates seven master myths in the
news that shape our thinking about foreign policy, terrorism, race
relations, political dissent and other issues. He calls them The Victim,
The Scapegoat, The Hero, The Good Mother, The Trickster, The Other World
and The Flood.
As Lule writes in this selection, digital technology may either nourish "a
far-reaching medley of voices and stories" or else impose "the crushing
conformity of a few global scribes." He uses Haiti to illustrate the
latter, perceiving an unconscious racism in the coverage of Haitian
politics by The New York Times. Lule's reading is neither academic nor
literary but an insistence that storytelling, including its cultural and
social role, is crucial to the revitalization and survival of journalism.
Andrew Levy, ( Andrew(a)mediachannel.org) Editor
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
As Myth, News Will Be Crucial But Conflicted In An Online World
Myth and
the new technology may seem to be an unlikely pair. But we have already
seen that myth has adapted to every storytelling medium from tribal tales
to cable television. The new technology is no different. The combination of
myth and online news, though, will produce intriguing, paradoxical, perhaps
ominous, results.
The information model of journalism, already in great disrepair, will be
dismantled by the marriage of myth and new media. News is losing whatever
franchise it had on whatever information is. Information is no longer some
scarce resource, a commodity that newspeople can cull and sell. Our society
rapidly moved from information explosion to information overload.
Information is everywhere. From online events calendars to live, continuous
congressional coverage, anyone can give and get information online. If news
is only information, news is nothing.
Yet information overload offers opportunities to news: as myth. In the
throes of all this information, the need for myth increases. People grapple
with the meaning of rapidly changing times. People seek out ways in which
they can organize and explain the world. People need stories. Myth has long
played these roles. Myth has identified and organized important events in
the lives of individuals and societies. Myth has interpreted and explained
the meaning of the past, the portents of the future. Myth has offered the
stability of story in unstable times.
Decades ago, Marshall McLuhan foresaw the increasing need for myth to
organize experience in the face of information overload. "You cannot cope
with vast amounts of information in the old fragmentary classified
patterns," he told literary critic Frank Kermode in a 1964 interview. "You
tend to go looking for mythic and structural forms in order to manage such
complex data, moving at very high speeds."
"So the electric engineers often speak of pattern recognition as a normal
need of people processing data electrically and by computers and so on the
need for pattern recognition," McLuhan said. "It's a need which the poets
foresaw a century ago in their drive back to mythic forms of organizing
experience." And so myth and new technology offer opportunities to one
another. In a modern, wired world, the news provides pattern
recognition mythic forms of organizing experience.
State scribes stand poised to exploit these opportunities perhaps to the
detriment of society. Amid the chaos of the information explosion, the
authority of the storyteller seems likely to increase. In the din of a
million voices, the voice of an established storyteller, for better or
worse, attains even more status. We have already seen evidence of this
power in the infancy of online news. Dramatic events the election of a
president, a terrorist killing, a celebrity trial, a devastating
flood bring a rush of readers to the Web sites of traditional news
outlets, the established "brands," the state scribes.
And the power of the state scribes is being enhanced, politically and
economically, as they join together in huge global conglomerates. As
previous propositions affirmed, it's always been dangerous to have
storytelling power invested in a select social few. Power corrupts. And in
our times of consolidation of new and news media, the danger looms larger.
State scribes, long beholden to privileged and powerful rulers, now are
also compromised by their responsibilities to stockholders, corporate
owners, and even to other scribes to whom they have been married and
merged. It is a perilous world in which a very few voices, so compromised,
can signal to society what is important and what is not, how to act and how
not, who is worthy and who is not.
The Web, though, is terribly tangled. Myth and new technology may actually
pose threats to the state scribes as well. People are increasingly able to
seek out stories and storytellers who challenge and reject views of the
state scribes. People have the ability to find others who share and confirm
their views of the world, bypassing the communication of the scribes.
=46or example, people with disabilities can find each other online and
organize to challenge their exclusion from positions, power, and print.
Political candidates unaffiliated with the two major parties have a means
to reach a larger audience. Hate groups, isolated in their own communities,
can seek support from around the world. What happens online in all these
different connections? People share stories. They sustain each other with
stories that draw from archetypal figures and forms to offer exemplary
models and meaning for human life. They tell each other news as myth.
Through these disparate online stories, the status of state scribes quite
possibly can be challenged. Digital technology thus has the possibility to
nourish a far-reaching medley of voices and stories or to impose the
crushing conformity of a few global scribes.
Myth, News Values And A New World
With the end of the cold war and the beginning of a new century, U.S. news
coverage of international affairs finds itself at a crossroads. For
previous generations of reporters and editors, the world could be organized
and explained in relation to the political, military, economic and cultural
rivalry of two superpowers. News values the criteria by which the news
media select, order, report and give meaning to events were structured by
this one dominant model, a model that has tumbled with the stones from the
Berlin Wall. Today, the questions facing [The New York] Times and other
news organizations include: How is international news to be defined in this
new era? What news values will guide the selection and shaping of events?
As we have seen, two models have emerged. One model has embraced the era as
a time of promise for journalism. This model valorizes aggressive,
progressive news values that promote social justice, and might be called
the model of "a new global and human journalism." Other scholars have
offered a more pessimistic model, a model of international news dictated by
the actions and initiatives of U.S. foreign policy. This model might be
described as promoting "Fortress America" in a world of chaos.
This chapter has offered a preliminary assessment of the prospects for each
model through a case study: the work of one Times correspondent, the
reporting of Larry Rohter from Haiti. Analysis of that reporting supports
the most cheerless view of post-Cold War news values. In the amount of
coverage, the nature of the content, and the strategies offered, Rohter's
reporting for [The New York] Times can be seen as working in concert with
U.S. foreign policy. Even as that policy shifted course rejecting the
junta, warily restoring Aristide, but insisting that he accept U.S.
policy so too did the reporting. Fears that U.S. foreign correspondence
would become captive to U.S. foreign policy were realized in Rohter's
reports.
To restate the particulars: The influence of U.S. foreign policy can be
seen quite readily in the sheer amount of Rohter's Haitian coverage. As the
Clinton administration made Haiti one of its first major foreign policy
campaigns, Rohter gave over most of his work for almost two years to
following Haiti. The Caribbean correspondent of the Times over some 20
months [from July 1994 through February 1996] filed, for example, five
stories from El Salvador, three stories from Colombia, three stories from
Honduras, two stories from Trinidad and none from the Dominican Republic.
From Haiti, as previously noted, Rohter filed 120 stories.
The themes of Rohter's reporting also worked in concert with U.S. policy.
Rohter's reporting did not stray far from U.S. policy perspectives. As the
United States prepared for an invasion to remove Cedras, U.S. officials
postured mightily through Rohter's reporting. Rohter's denunciations of the
regime and his chronicling of the junta's repression made a case for U.S.
intervention. At the same time, his depictions of Aristide as the rightful
leader, whose return would bring peace and reconciliation, also bolstered
the U.S. case.
When Aristide and U.S. policy soon began to conflict, Rohter's themes
shifted. The uplifting portrayals of Aristide and the lavalas movement
segued to critical accounts of intransigent ideology and radical leftist
politics. As FRAPH continued to terrorize the population and U.S. forces
refused to move against them, Rohter's avoidance of the U.S.-FRAPH
relationship shielded Times readers from the U.S. establishment of a
conservative "counterweight" to Aristide's progressive politics. And
Rohter's depiction of Haiti as an "ungovernable" place whose people were
not "culturally or psychologically" equipped for the demands of democracy
captured the patronizing and paternalistic attitudes that have driven U.S.
imperialism in the Caribbean for decades.
Haiti As The Other World
Myth provides another, complementary way to understand Rohter's coverage.
Like all reporters, Rohter did not have to create brand-new story forms to
report events from Haiti. He, his editors and his sources consistently drew
upon an established narrative an eternal story that helped shape coverage
even as it explained and justified U.S. policy. In Rohter's reports, we can
see the unmistakable structure of the myth of the Other World.
Underlying the reporting of Haiti's political turmoil turmoil orchestrated
often by U.S. policies is a classic portrayal. Haiti is rendered as a
primitive land, filled with danger and chaos, and ruled by death squads and
paramilitary patrols who leave the streets littered with corpses. Its
helpless people perversely admire bloody shows of force as they engage in
animal sacrifice and bone-stealing voodoo rituals, even on Christmas. And
they passively remain under the sway of rogue leaders and psychotic priests
with no respect for order or reason or privatizing industry. It's a
nightmare world.
Rohter provides us with a modern depiction of the Other World, one that
also seeks to define our society in relation to other societies. As
[Jean-Pierre] Vernant argued [in "Myth and Society in Ancient Greece"],
myth "expresses how a group of people in particular historical
circumstances sees itself." The myth expressed in Rohter's reporting
portrays a mighty and superior people descending with fascination and
disgust into a primitive place on the globe. The Other World is a world to
be feared and perhaps someday avoided. But for now it's a world in
desperate need of U.S. guidance and military might.
The Other World In U.S. International News
The Other World is not a rare
portrayal in U.S. news. Close reading of the Times and other newspapers
shows that reporting of international affairs often relies on the myth of
the Other World. In fact, many nations do not appear in U.S. news unless
and until they provide stories that allow the myth to be told. From around
the world, U.S. reporters and editors apply news values that judge other
nations newsworthy when they provides stories of bloody coups, tribal
warfare, perverse politics, strange customs and other tales of the
underworld for the U.S. audience back home.
Even a cursory reading of international news shows the influence of the
myth of the Other World on news values. We find stories about animal
sacrifice in Taiwan; female genital cutting in Africa; the stoning of the
devil at Mecca; a thwarted coup in Qatar; Central American drug warlords; a
military junta in Sierra Leone; genocide in Rwanda; ethnic cleansing in
Kosovo; stolen Aboriginal children in Australia; and many other dark tales.
Once again, we can marvel at the durability of myth. A tale told for
centuries is told to usher the United States into the 21st century.
Modern mythology, Joseph Campbell said, confronts an enormously complex
"fact-world that now has to be recognized, appropriated and assimilated."
U.S. society today faces an enormously complex "fact-world," a post-Cold
War world in which the United States is the lone superpower on the world
stage. U.S. international news confronts that world through tales of the
Other World. It offers coverage that affirms U.S. superiority and other
nations' inferiority. It provides scary, fantastic stories of a world beset
by anarchy and chaos. It promotes the "image of 'Fortress America,' an
island of civilization in a sea of political barbarism." It does all this
with a myth as old as Odysseus.
-------------
Jack Lule is a professor of journalism and chair of the Department of
Journalism and Communication at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. He has
published widely and has won numerous awards for excellence in research and
teaching. A former bartender, truck driver and reporter, Lule continues to
be an avid observer of the American scene and a frequent contributor to
newspapers and periodicals.
-------
This essay was excerpted from the book "Daily News, Eternal Stories: The
Mythological Role of Journalism," by Jack Lule (New York: The Guilford
Press, 2001). Copyright =A9 2001. Reprinted with permission of The Guilford
Press.
--
Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Knowledge Management
Norwegian School of Management
School
+47 22.98.50.00 Telephone
+47 22.98.51.11 Telefax
Home office
+46 (46) 53.245 Telephone
+46 (46) 53.345 Telefax
Message: 4
email: ken.friedman(a)bi.no
--
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End of Air-l Digest
Dear Friends,
I found the first story in here truly frightening -- and alas, fitting
some of the things I encounter around students (none working with me,
fortunately).
The other stories are interesting too.
This is the list of the Assoc of Internet Researchers.
Barry
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director
wellman(a)chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman
Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto
455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162
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Today's Topics:
1. The No-Book Report: Skim It and Weep (Ken Friedman)
2. Authors in their Sites (Ken Friedman)
3. Re: The No-Book Report: Skim It and Weep (Steve Jones)
4. DAILY NEWS, ETERNAL STORIES (Ken Friedman)
--__--__--
Message: 1
Date: Sat, 19 May 2001 07:05:29 +0200
To: <air-l(a)aoir.org>
From: Ken Friedman <ken.friedman(a)bi.no>
Subject: [Air-l] The No-Book Report: Skim It and Weep
Reply-To: air-l(a)aoir.org
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(C) 2001 The Washington Post Company
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23370-2001May13.html
Monday, May 14, 2001; Page C01
The No-Book Report: Skim It and Weep
More and More Americans Who Can Read Are Choosing Not To.
Can We Afford to Write Them Off?
By Linton Weeks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Jeremy Spreitzer probably wouldn't read this story if it weren't about
him.
He is an aliterate -- someone who can read, but chooses not to.
A graduate student in public affairs at Park University in Kansas City,
Mo., Spreitzer, 25, gleans most of his news from TV. He skims required
texts, draws themes from dust jackets and, when he absolutely, positively
has to read something, reaches for the audiobook.
"I am fairly lazy when it comes to certain tasks," says Spreitzer, a
long-distance runner who hopes to compete in the 2004 Olympics. "Reading
is one of them."
As he grows older, Spreitzer finds he has less time to read. And less
inclination. In fact, he says, if he weren't in school, he probably
wouldn't read at all.
He's not alone. According to the survey firm NDP Group -- which tracked
the everyday habits of thousands of people through the 1990s -- this
country is reading printed versions of books, magazines and newspapers
less and less. In 1991, more than half of all Americans read a half-hour
or more every day. By 1999, that had dropped to 45 percent.
A 1999 Gallup Poll found that only 7 percent of Americans were voracious
readers, reading more than a book a week, while some 59 percent said they
had read fewer than 10 books in the previous year. Though book clubs seem
popular now, only 6 percent of those who read belong to one. The number
of people who don't read at all, the poll concluded, has been rising for
the past 20 years.
The reports on changes in reading cut to the quick of American culture.
We pride ourselves on being a largely literate First World country while
at the same time we rush to build a visually powerful environment in
which reading is not required.
The results are inevitable. Aliteracy is all around. Just ask:
* Internet developers. At the Terra Lycos portal design lab in Waltham,
Mass., researcher William Albert has noticed that the human guinea
pigs in his focus groups are too impatient to read much. When people look
up information on the Internet today, Albert explains, they are
"basically scanning. There's very little actual comprehension that's
going on." People, Albert adds, prefer to get info in short bursts, with
bullets, rather than in large blocks of text.
* Transportation gurus. Chandra Clayton, who oversees the design of road
signs and signals for the Virginia Department of Transportation, says,
"Symbols can quickly give you a message that might take too long to read
in text." The department is using logos and symbols more and more. When
it comes to highway safety and getting lifesaving information quickly,
she adds, "a picture is worth a thousand words."
* Packaging designers. "People don't take the time to read anything,"
explains Jim Peters, editor of BrandPackaging magazine. "Marketers and
packagers are giving them colors and shapes as ways of communicating."
For effective marketing, Peters says, "researchers tell us that the
hierarchy is colors, shapes, icons and, dead last, words."
Some of this shift away from words -- and toward images -- can be
attributed to our ever-growing multilingual population. But for many
people, reading is passe or impractical or, like, so totally unnecessary
in this day and age.
To Jim Trelease, author of "The Read-Aloud Handbook," this trend away
from the written word is more than worrisome. It's wicked. It's tearing
apart our culture. People who have stopped reading, he says, "base their
future decisions on what they used to know.
"If you don't read much, you really don't know much," he says. "You're
dangerous."
Losing a Heritage
"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who
cannot read them."
-- Mark Twain
One thing you can say for illiteracy: It can be identified, nailed down.
And combated. Scores of programs such as the Greater Washington Literacy
Council and the International Reading Association are geared toward
fighting readinglessness in the home, the school and the workplace.
Aliteracy, on the other hand, is like an invisible liquid, seeping
through our culture, nigh impossible to pinpoint or defend against. It's
the kid who spends hours and hours with video games instead of books, who
knows Sim Cities better than "A Tale of Two Cities."
It's the thousands of business people who subscribe to executive book
summaries -- for example, Soundview's easy-to-swallow eight-page
pamphlets that take simply written management books such as "Secrets of
Question-Based Selling" by Thomas A. Freese and make them even simpler.
It's the parent who pops the crummy movie of "Stuart Little" into a
machine for his kid instead of reading E.B. White's marvelous novel
aloud. Or the teacher who assigns the made-for-TV movie "Gettysburg"
instead of the book it was based on, "The Killer Angels" by Michael
Shaara.
There may be untold collateral damage in a society that can read but
doesn't. "So much of our culture is embedded in literature," says Philip
A. Thompsen, professor of communications at West Chester University in
West Chester, Pa. Thompsen has been watching the rise of aliteracy in the
classroom for 20 years, and "students today are less capable of getting
full value from textbooks than they were 10 years ago."
He adds that these aliterate students are "missing out on our cultural
heritage."
That literature-based past included a reverence for reading, a
celebration of the works and a worshipful awe of those who wrote.
To draw you a picture: Where we once deified the lifestyles of writers
such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, we now fantasize about
rock-and-roll gods, movie starlets or NBA super-studs (e.g. MTV's
"Cribs"). The notion of writer-as-culture-hero is dead and gone. Comedic
monologuists such as Jay Leno or David Letterman have more sex appeal
than serious fiction writers. The grail quest for the Great American
Novel has ended; it was a myth after all.
Where we once drew our mass-cult references from books ("He's a veritable
Simon Legree"), we now allude to visual works -- a Seinfeld episode (not
there's anything wrong with that . . .) or "The Silence of the Lambs"
(the movie, not the book). A recent story in Salon speaks of "learning to
read a movie."
Where we once believed that a well-read populace leads to a healthy
democracy, many people now rely on whole TV broadcast operations built
around politics and elections. Quick, name a Wolf Blitzer book.
Non-readers abound. Ask "Politically Incorrect" talk show host Bill
Maher, who once boasted in print that he hadn't read a book in years. Or
Noel Gallagher of the rock band Oasis, who has been quoted as saying he'd
never read a book. You can walk through whole neighborhoods of houses in
the country that do not contain books or magazines -- unless you count
catalogues.
American historian Daniel Boorstin saw this coming. In 1984, while
Boorstin was serving as librarian of Congress, the library issued a
landmark report: "Books in Our Future." Citing recent statistics that
only about half of all Americans read regularly every year, he referred
to the "twin menaces" of illiteracy and aliteracy.
"In the United States today," Boorstin wrote, "aliteracy is widespread."
Several of the articles in the report alluded to the growing number of
non-readers. In one essay, "The Computer and the Book," Edmund D.
Pellegrino, a former president of Catholic University who is now a
bioethicist at Georgetown University, observed: "The computer is simply
the most effective, efficient and attractive form for transmittal of
processed information. Added to the other nonbook devices like films,
tapes, television and the popular media, the computer accelerates the
atrophy of the intellectual skills acquired for personally reading the
books from which the information is extracted."
Reading for Bliss
Kylene Beers has talked about the evils of aliteracy for so long and so
loud, she's losing her voice. Today she's in the lecture hall of Oakton
High School bending the ears of 100 or so middle school teachers.
If someone graduates from high school and is aliterate, Beers believes,
that person will probably never become a habitual reader.
One of the few academics who have written about the phenomenon, Beers, a
professor of reading at the University of Houston, says there are two
types of reading: efferent and aesthetic.
Efferent, which comes from the Latin word efferre (meaning to carry
away), is purposeful reading, the kind students are taught day after day
in schools. Efferent readers connect cognitively with the words and plan
to take something useful from it -- such as answers for a test.
Aesthetic is reading for the sheer bliss of it, as when you dive deep
into Dostoevski or get lost in Louisa May Alcott. Aesthetic readers
connect emotionally to the story. Beers believes that more students must
be shown the marvels of reading for pleasure.
On this late afternoon, she is mapping out strategies for teachers who
hope to engage reluctant middle school readers. Teaching grammar and
parts of speech, such as dangling participles, is the kiss of death, she
says. "You don't want to talk about dangling anythings with
middle-schoolers," she says in her Texas drawl. And the room laughs.
Aliteracy, she continues, is no laughing matter. Using an overhead
projector, she explains that aliterate people just don't get it. Unlike
accomplished readers, aliterates don't understand that sometimes you have
to read efferently and sometimes you have to read aesthetically; that
even the best readers occasionally read the same paragraph over and over
to understand it and that to be a good reader you have to visualize the
text.
To engage non-reading students -- and adults -- she proposes reading
strategies, such as turning a chapter of a hard book into a dramatic
production or relating tough words to easier words.
She writes the word "tepid" on the acetate sheet. Then she asks the
audience to supply other words that describe water temperature. "Hot,"
someone calls out. "Freezing," somebody else says. Others suggest: cold,
warm and boiling. Beers arranges the words in a linear fashion, from the
coldest word, "freezing," to the hottest, "boiling." "Tepid" falls in the
middle of the list. This method, she says, will help reluctant readers to
connect words they don't know to words they do know. "Aliterates," she
tells the teachers, "don't see relationships."
Apparently, teachers don't always see the relationships either. Jim
Trelease is concerned that teachers do not read. The aliteracy rate among
teachers, he says, is about the same, 50 percent, as among the general
public.
There is some good news on the reading front, according to Trelease and
others. The Harry Potter series has turned on a lot of young readers and
megabookstores, such as Barnes & Noble and Borders, are acrawl with
people.
But there is plenty of bad news, too. Lots of aliterates, according to
Trelease, say they just don't have time to read anymore. "The time
argument is the biggest hoax of all," he says. According to time studies,
we have more leisure time than ever. "If people didn't have time, the
malls would be empty, cable companies would be broke, video stores would
go out of business. It's not a time problem, it's a value problem. You
have 50 percent in the country who don't value reading."
Like Beers, Trelease believes that youngsters should be encouraged to
read aesthetically. Reading aloud to children, according to Trelease and
other reading specialists, is the single best way to ensure that someone
will become a lifelong reader.
"Even Daniel Boorstin wasn't born wanting to read," Trelease says.
"Michael Jordan wasn't born wanting to play basketball. The desire has to
be planted."
Surfing Through Grad School
Trelease and Beers and others are scrambling for ways to engage
aliterates. For all kinds of reasons. "What aliteracy does is breed
illiteracy," Beers explains. "If you go through school having learned to
read and then you leave school not wanting to read, chances are you won't
put your own children into a reading environment."
"What you have to do is play hardball," says Trelease. He suggests
running public awareness campaigns on TV. "That's where the aliterates
are."
Trelease says we should try to eradicate aliteracy in the way we went
after tobacco. We should let people know, Trelease says, "what the
consequences are to your family and children if you don't read."
"Aliteracy may be a significant problem today," says Philip Thompsen.
"But on the other hand, a narrow view of literacy -- one that defines
literacy as the ability to read verbal texts -- may be a significant
problem as well."
Many of the messages that we have to interpret in day-to-day life,
Thompsen says, "use multiple communication media. I think it is important
to realize that as our society becomes more accustomed to using
multimedia messages, we must also expand our thinking about what it means
to be 'literate.' "
Olympic hopeful Jeremy Spreitzer plans to become a teacher and maybe go
into politics someday. For now, he's just trying to get through graduate
school.
He watches a lot of television. "I'm a major surfer," he says. He watches
the History Channel, A&E, Turner Classic Movies and all of the news
stations.
"I'm required to do a lot of reading," he says. "But I do a minimum of
what I need to do."
But how do you get through grad school without reading? Spreitzer is
asked.
He gives an example. One of his required texts is the recently published
"Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community" by Robert
Putnam. In the book, Putnam argues, among other things, that television
has fragmented our society.
Spreitzer thumbed through the book, dipped into a few chapters and spent
a while "skipping around" here and there.
He feels, however, that he understands Putnam and Putnam's theories as
well as if he had read the book.
How is that? he is asked.
Putnam, he explains, has been on TV a lot. "He's on the news all the
time," Spreitzer says. "On MSNBC and other places. Those interviews with
him are more invaluable than anything else."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23370-2001May13.html
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(C) 2001 The Washington Post Company
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--__--__--
Message: 2
Date: Sat, 19 May 2001 07:05:36 +0200
To: <air-l(a)aoir.org>
From: Ken Friedman <ken.friedman(a)bi.no>
Subject: [Air-l] Authors in their Sites
Reply-To: air-l(a)aoir.org
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(C) Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company -- The Boston Globe
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/134/living/Authors_in_their_SitesP.shtml
5/14/2001
Authors in their Sites
Fans turned archivists use the Web
to honor their favorite writers
By Mark Feeney, Globe Staff
The Web is the ultimate library, an assemblage of texts unprecedented in
human history. Within its virtual confines, one can even occasionally find
good, old, honest-to-Gutenberg authors - the kind who put words on paper
as well as screen.
There's one big difference, of course: On the Web, authors' writings
aren't found on shelves but at sites devoted to their lives and works.
The individuals who tend such sites may be the closest thing this global
library has to librarians.
Actually, as the three individuals profiled here demonstrate, "librarian"
doesn't begin to do their self-appointed vocation justice. Each is part
fan, part archivist, part technician, using the resources of the Web to
pay tribute to an author he or she loves. It's a unique joining of the old
fashioned with the up to the minute: for with these sites, as with
creation itself, in the beginning was the word.
Proprietor: Curt Gardner, 39
Home: San Francisco
Work: software implementer
Author: Don DeLillo
Address: www.perival.com/delillo
Began: early 1996
It was in college, as a computer-science major at Wesleyan, that Curt
Gardner first heard of Don DeLillo. Surfing the Web some 15 years later,
he was dismayed by how little he could find about the author. So Gardner
decided to try to come up with a site like the one he'd hoped to come
across.
''My vision was to create a place where the average DeLillo reader would
feel at home,'' he says. Gardner also had an aim that he describes as
''fairly grandiose,'' which is ''to essentially document everything known
about DeLillo.''
The contents of his site include what one might expect (reviews of
DeLillo's books, interviews with him) as well as what one might not (the
novelist Salman Rushdie reports on attending a Yankees game with DeLillo:
''He goes there with his mitt. He's up there for every fly ball.'').
Gardner doesn't find running the site to be at all onerous. During its
first year of operation, he recalls, he haunted the University of
California at Berkeley library system, tracking down material. Since
then, he estimates he's spent no more than two hours a week working on
it. ''It's a fun pastime,'' he says, ''and it puts me in touch with
DeLillo fans from all over. Almost daily I get e-mail from an
appreciative visitor, and I also get many postable items from people who
send me links.''
Gardner met DeLillo at a San Francisco reading in 1997 and sent him
printouts from the page. ''I respect his wishes to keep some things
private,'' Gardner says. ''But let's just say he gave his blessing to the
site.''
Proprietor: Richard Lane, 33
Home: New York
Work: editor, ''Dateline NBC''
Author: Thomas Pynchon
Address: www.pynchonfiles.com
Began: May 31, 1998
''I created the site out of a jaw-dropping admiration for the man,'' says
Richard Lane. Thomas Pynchon is an ideal subject for a Web site: a
famously reclusive author who has many fanatical readers interested in
any scrap of information about him they can come by. In addition, Lane
points out, ''The encyclopedic content of Pynchon's work lends itself
perfectly to the hyperlink format.''
Site contents range from photos of Pynchon as an 18-year-old Navy seaman
(and of the destroyer he served on) to the complete text of an obscure
report on public disturbances in Malta in 1919 that helped inspire the
epilogue to Pynchon's first novel, ''V.''
Lane sees his mission as ''providing a conduit for information that the
novelist isn't providing.'' Sometimes that can lead to a certain strain
on the conduit. ''There are foreign visitors who assume I'm [Pynchon],
others who wanted all his books and critical work sent along, gratis. And
soon.'' There was also a recent query from a prominent Web site wondering
how to get Pynchon to review restaurants. Lane, who has had no contact
with the author, could offer no help.
Such distractions are a small price to pay for the site, Lane feels.
''I've learned more by stepping on Pynchon's shadow than I ever could
have imagined from a novelist. The confluence of ideas and tangents that
merely thinking about his work induces is a great gift of which he should
be justly proud.''
Proprietor: Sandye Utley, 49
Home: Cincinnati
Work: administrative assistant, WCET-TV
Author: T. Coraghessan Boyle
Address: www.tcboyle.net
Began: Feb. 21, 2000
''There's such joy in his writing,'' Sandye Utley says. She was already a
fan of his novels and short stories when she met T. Coraghessan Boyle at
an award ceremony in Washington, D.C., 16 months ago. He accepted her
offer to set up a FAQ (frequently asked questions) page for the site
Boyle runs, www.tcboyle.com.
Utley came up with so many references to Boyle-related articles and
reviews she decided to set up a free-standing site.
''It could easily be a full-time job,'' she says, describing the site as
''a never-ending proposition.'' Contents run the gamut from audio clips
of Boyle interviews and readings to listings of his public appearances to
a recipe (in Dutch, no less) for Baked Camel With Filling, a dish that
figures in Boyle's novel ''Water Music.''
Utley estimates she spends $300 a year on tcboyle.net. The biggest
expense isn't financial, however, but temporal: the hundreds of hours she
has put into site construction and doing Boyle research. She doesn't
begrudge the commitment, though. She exchanges e-mail with Boyle, and it
gratifies her that he approves of the site (he described a recent
redesign as ''Molto cool. Very classy.''). Even more important, perhaps,
there's the sense of camaraderie the site inspires.
''The people I hear from are an intelligent, witty band of readers (some
of them Tom's own friends) who love the work. In sharing that common
bond, they all feel like my friends, too.''
www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/134/living/Authors_in_their_SitesP.shtml
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(C) Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company -- The Boston Globe
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Message: 3
Date: Sat, 19 May 2001 00:16:36 -0600
To: air-l(a)aoir.org
From: Steve Jones <sjones(a)uic.edu>
Subject: Re: [Air-l] The No-Book Report: Skim It and Weep
Reply-To: air-l(a)aoir.org
Interesting coincidence, this story, given this obituary from last week:
CLIFF HILLEGASS, 83, founder and former president of "Cliffs Notes,"
whose study guides helped generations of students through literature
classes; he founded "Cliffs Notes" in 1958 with a $4,000 loan and
wrote the guides in the basement of his home; in 1999, he sold
"Cliffs Notes" to IDG Books Worldwide for $14 million; May 5, in
Lincoln, Neb.
Sj
At 7:05 AM +0200 5/19/01, Ken Friedman wrote:
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> (C) 2001 The Washington Post Company
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23370-2001May13.html
>
> Monday, May 14, 2001; Page C01
>
>
> The No-Book Report: Skim It and Weep
>
> More and More Americans Who Can Read Are Choosing Not To.
> Can We Afford to Write Them Off?
>
> By Linton Weeks
> Washington Post Staff Writer
[stuff deleted]
--__--__--
Message: 4
Date: Sat, 19 May 2001 15:09:18 +0200
To: <air-l(a)aoir.org>
From: Ken Friedman <ken.friedman(a)bi.no>
Subject: [Air-l] DAILY NEWS, ETERNAL STORIES
Reply-To: air-l(a)aoir.org
DAILY NEWS, ETERNAL STORIES
Jack Lule uncovers seven myths that shape journalism. He uses the
example of Haiti to explain the unconscious racism of the U.S. press
The Myth In Journalism
05/16/01
http://www.mediachannel.org/views/oped/lule.shtml
Jack Lule's book, "Daily News, Eternal Stories: The Mythological Role of
Journalism" examines the difference between news as "information" and news
as "story" with characters, plot and theme. For Lule, myth does not mean
untrue tales, but rather great stories emphasizing "archetypal figures and
forms" and "exemplary models" that play crucial social roles for humankind.
In this definition, such figures, forms and models represent shared values
and help people better understand the complexities, good and bad, of human
life.
By analyzing case studies involving Black Panther Huey Newton, Mother
Teresa, baseball player Mark McGuire and Hurricane Mitch, among others,
Lule a great storyteller himself demonstrates seven master myths in the
news that shape our thinking about foreign policy, terrorism, race
relations, political dissent and other issues. He calls them The Victim,
The Scapegoat, The Hero, The Good Mother, The Trickster, The Other World
and The Flood.
As Lule writes in this selection, digital technology may either nourish "a
far-reaching medley of voices and stories" or else impose "the crushing
conformity of a few global scribes." He uses Haiti to illustrate the
latter, perceiving an unconscious racism in the coverage of Haitian
politics by The New York Times. Lule's reading is neither academic nor
literary but an insistence that storytelling, including its cultural and
social role, is crucial to the revitalization and survival of journalism.
Andrew Levy, ( Andrew(a)mediachannel.org) Editor
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
As Myth, News Will Be Crucial But Conflicted In An Online World
Myth and
the new technology may seem to be an unlikely pair. But we have already
seen that myth has adapted to every storytelling medium from tribal tales
to cable television. The new technology is no different. The combination of
myth and online news, though, will produce intriguing, paradoxical, perhaps
ominous, results.
The information model of journalism, already in great disrepair, will be
dismantled by the marriage of myth and new media. News is losing whatever
franchise it had on whatever information is. Information is no longer some
scarce resource, a commodity that newspeople can cull and sell. Our society
rapidly moved from information explosion to information overload.
Information is everywhere. From online events calendars to live, continuous
congressional coverage, anyone can give and get information online. If news
is only information, news is nothing.
Yet information overload offers opportunities to news: as myth. In the
throes of all this information, the need for myth increases. People grapple
with the meaning of rapidly changing times. People seek out ways in which
they can organize and explain the world. People need stories. Myth has long
played these roles. Myth has identified and organized important events in
the lives of individuals and societies. Myth has interpreted and explained
the meaning of the past, the portents of the future. Myth has offered the
stability of story in unstable times.
Decades ago, Marshall McLuhan foresaw the increasing need for myth to
organize experience in the face of information overload. "You cannot cope
with vast amounts of information in the old fragmentary classified
patterns," he told literary critic Frank Kermode in a 1964 interview. "You
tend to go looking for mythic and structural forms in order to manage such
complex data, moving at very high speeds."
"So the electric engineers often speak of pattern recognition as a normal
need of people processing data electrically and by computers and so on the
need for pattern recognition," McLuhan said. "It's a need which the poets
foresaw a century ago in their drive back to mythic forms of organizing
experience." And so myth and new technology offer opportunities to one
another. In a modern, wired world, the news provides pattern
recognition mythic forms of organizing experience.
State scribes stand poised to exploit these opportunities perhaps to the
detriment of society. Amid the chaos of the information explosion, the
authority of the storyteller seems likely to increase. In the din of a
million voices, the voice of an established storyteller, for better or
worse, attains even more status. We have already seen evidence of this
power in the infancy of online news. Dramatic events the election of a
president, a terrorist killing, a celebrity trial, a devastating
flood bring a rush of readers to the Web sites of traditional news
outlets, the established "brands," the state scribes.
And the power of the state scribes is being enhanced, politically and
economically, as they join together in huge global conglomerates. As
previous propositions affirmed, it's always been dangerous to have
storytelling power invested in a select social few. Power corrupts. And in
our times of consolidation of new and news media, the danger looms larger.
State scribes, long beholden to privileged and powerful rulers, now are
also compromised by their responsibilities to stockholders, corporate
owners, and even to other scribes to whom they have been married and
merged. It is a perilous world in which a very few voices, so compromised,
can signal to society what is important and what is not, how to act and how
not, who is worthy and who is not.
The Web, though, is terribly tangled. Myth and new technology may actually
pose threats to the state scribes as well. People are increasingly able to
seek out stories and storytellers who challenge and reject views of the
state scribes. People have the ability to find others who share and confirm
their views of the world, bypassing the communication of the scribes.
=46or example, people with disabilities can find each other online and
organize to challenge their exclusion from positions, power, and print.
Political candidates unaffiliated with the two major parties have a means
to reach a larger audience. Hate groups, isolated in their own communities,
can seek support from around the world. What happens online in all these
different connections? People share stories. They sustain each other with
stories that draw from archetypal figures and forms to offer exemplary
models and meaning for human life. They tell each other news as myth.
Through these disparate online stories, the status of state scribes quite
possibly can be challenged. Digital technology thus has the possibility to
nourish a far-reaching medley of voices and stories or to impose the
crushing conformity of a few global scribes.
Myth, News Values And A New World
With the end of the cold war and the beginning of a new century, U.S. news
coverage of international affairs finds itself at a crossroads. For
previous generations of reporters and editors, the world could be organized
and explained in relation to the political, military, economic and cultural
rivalry of two superpowers. News values the criteria by which the news
media select, order, report and give meaning to events were structured by
this one dominant model, a model that has tumbled with the stones from the
Berlin Wall. Today, the questions facing [The New York] Times and other
news organizations include: How is international news to be defined in this
new era? What news values will guide the selection and shaping of events?
As we have seen, two models have emerged. One model has embraced the era as
a time of promise for journalism. This model valorizes aggressive,
progressive news values that promote social justice, and might be called
the model of "a new global and human journalism." Other scholars have
offered a more pessimistic model, a model of international news dictated by
the actions and initiatives of U.S. foreign policy. This model might be
described as promoting "Fortress America" in a world of chaos.
This chapter has offered a preliminary assessment of the prospects for each
model through a case study: the work of one Times correspondent, the
reporting of Larry Rohter from Haiti. Analysis of that reporting supports
the most cheerless view of post-Cold War news values. In the amount of
coverage, the nature of the content, and the strategies offered, Rohter's
reporting for [The New York] Times can be seen as working in concert with
U.S. foreign policy. Even as that policy shifted course rejecting the
junta, warily restoring Aristide, but insisting that he accept U.S.
policy so too did the reporting. Fears that U.S. foreign correspondence
would become captive to U.S. foreign policy were realized in Rohter's
reports.
To restate the particulars: The influence of U.S. foreign policy can be
seen quite readily in the sheer amount of Rohter's Haitian coverage. As the
Clinton administration made Haiti one of its first major foreign policy
campaigns, Rohter gave over most of his work for almost two years to
following Haiti. The Caribbean correspondent of the Times over some 20
months [from July 1994 through February 1996] filed, for example, five
stories from El Salvador, three stories from Colombia, three stories from
Honduras, two stories from Trinidad and none from the Dominican Republic.
From Haiti, as previously noted, Rohter filed 120 stories.
The themes of Rohter's reporting also worked in concert with U.S. policy.
Rohter's reporting did not stray far from U.S. policy perspectives. As the
United States prepared for an invasion to remove Cedras, U.S. officials
postured mightily through Rohter's reporting. Rohter's denunciations of the
regime and his chronicling of the junta's repression made a case for U.S.
intervention. At the same time, his depictions of Aristide as the rightful
leader, whose return would bring peace and reconciliation, also bolstered
the U.S. case.
When Aristide and U.S. policy soon began to conflict, Rohter's themes
shifted. The uplifting portrayals of Aristide and the lavalas movement
segued to critical accounts of intransigent ideology and radical leftist
politics. As FRAPH continued to terrorize the population and U.S. forces
refused to move against them, Rohter's avoidance of the U.S.-FRAPH
relationship shielded Times readers from the U.S. establishment of a
conservative "counterweight" to Aristide's progressive politics. And
Rohter's depiction of Haiti as an "ungovernable" place whose people were
not "culturally or psychologically" equipped for the demands of democracy
captured the patronizing and paternalistic attitudes that have driven U.S.
imperialism in the Caribbean for decades.
Haiti As The Other World
Myth provides another, complementary way to understand Rohter's coverage.
Like all reporters, Rohter did not have to create brand-new story forms to
report events from Haiti. He, his editors and his sources consistently drew
upon an established narrative an eternal story that helped shape coverage
even as it explained and justified U.S. policy. In Rohter's reports, we can
see the unmistakable structure of the myth of the Other World.
Underlying the reporting of Haiti's political turmoil turmoil orchestrated
often by U.S. policies is a classic portrayal. Haiti is rendered as a
primitive land, filled with danger and chaos, and ruled by death squads and
paramilitary patrols who leave the streets littered with corpses. Its
helpless people perversely admire bloody shows of force as they engage in
animal sacrifice and bone-stealing voodoo rituals, even on Christmas. And
they passively remain under the sway of rogue leaders and psychotic priests
with no respect for order or reason or privatizing industry. It's a
nightmare world.
Rohter provides us with a modern depiction of the Other World, one that
also seeks to define our society in relation to other societies. As
[Jean-Pierre] Vernant argued [in "Myth and Society in Ancient Greece"],
myth "expresses how a group of people in particular historical
circumstances sees itself." The myth expressed in Rohter's reporting
portrays a mighty and superior people descending with fascination and
disgust into a primitive place on the globe. The Other World is a world to
be feared and perhaps someday avoided. But for now it's a world in
desperate need of U.S. guidance and military might.
The Other World In U.S. International News
The Other World is not a rare
portrayal in U.S. news. Close reading of the Times and other newspapers
shows that reporting of international affairs often relies on the myth of
the Other World. In fact, many nations do not appear in U.S. news unless
and until they provide stories that allow the myth to be told. From around
the world, U.S. reporters and editors apply news values that judge other
nations newsworthy when they provides stories of bloody coups, tribal
warfare, perverse politics, strange customs and other tales of the
underworld for the U.S. audience back home.
Even a cursory reading of international news shows the influence of the
myth of the Other World on news values. We find stories about animal
sacrifice in Taiwan; female genital cutting in Africa; the stoning of the
devil at Mecca; a thwarted coup in Qatar; Central American drug warlords; a
military junta in Sierra Leone; genocide in Rwanda; ethnic cleansing in
Kosovo; stolen Aboriginal children in Australia; and many other dark tales.
Once again, we can marvel at the durability of myth. A tale told for
centuries is told to usher the United States into the 21st century.
Modern mythology, Joseph Campbell said, confronts an enormously complex
"fact-world that now has to be recognized, appropriated and assimilated."
U.S. society today faces an enormously complex "fact-world," a post-Cold
War world in which the United States is the lone superpower on the world
stage. U.S. international news confronts that world through tales of the
Other World. It offers coverage that affirms U.S. superiority and other
nations' inferiority. It provides scary, fantastic stories of a world beset
by anarchy and chaos. It promotes the "image of 'Fortress America,' an
island of civilization in a sea of political barbarism." It does all this
with a myth as old as Odysseus.
-------------
Jack Lule is a professor of journalism and chair of the Department of
Journalism and Communication at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. He has
published widely and has won numerous awards for excellence in research and
teaching. A former bartender, truck driver and reporter, Lule continues to
be an avid observer of the American scene and a frequent contributor to
newspapers and periodicals.
-------
This essay was excerpted from the book "Daily News, Eternal Stories: The
Mythological Role of Journalism," by Jack Lule (New York: The Guilford
Press, 2001). Copyright =A9 2001. Reprinted with permission of The Guilford
Press.
--
Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Knowledge Management
Norwegian School of Management
School
+47 22.98.50.00 Telephone
+47 22.98.51.11 Telefax
Home office
+46 (46) 53.245 Telephone
+46 (46) 53.345 Telefax
email: ken.friedman(a)bi.no
--
--
Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Knowledge Management
Norwegian School of Management
School
+47 22.98.50.00 Telephone
+47 22.98.51.11 Telefax
Home office
+46 (46) 53.245 Telephone
+46 (46) 53.345 Telefax
email: ken.friedman(a)bi.no
--
--__--__--
_______________________________________________
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Air-l(a)aoir.org
http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l
End of Air-l Digest
1
0
Spate. Drat! Distracted while hitting "send" and what does spell-check know?
>There have been a slate of recent articles
1
0
But perhaps there is increased visual literacy? Obviously computer
fluency. The longtime success of radio to MP3 players and cell phones
suggests that the audio channel remains important.
The pedagogical challenge is to make textual literacy compelling for
audio/visual learners and those who are trained to skim a few lines, get
the gist and move on -- necessary skills in the face of info overload, not
to mention incessant advertising, which requires critical thinking to
filter out? This is well trodden Postman territory for which the Net is
only the latest pop culture/media/tech culprit.
There have been a slate of recent articles, which I don't believe have
shown up on AoIR, about information deficit and multitasking to the extent
that concentration in general suffers. Not only is sustained reading
difficult, but any task that requires doing or listening for a prolonged
period of time is tough to sustain. The media spin on this one is that
we're becoming an ADD society. We're losing permanence. Relationships are
suffering, the environment isn't a serious concern, jobs are taken on a
free-agent basis without consideration for long term corporate or customer
outcomes, et al.
1
0
DAILY NEWS, ETERNAL STORIES
Jack Lule uncovers seven myths that shape journalism. He uses the
example of Haiti to explain the unconscious racism of the U.S. press
The Myth In Journalism
05/16/01
http://www.mediachannel.org/views/oped/lule.shtml
Jack Lule's book, "Daily News, Eternal Stories: The Mythological Role of
Journalism" examines the difference between news as "information" and news
as "story" with characters, plot and theme. For Lule, myth does not mean
untrue tales, but rather great stories emphasizing "archetypal figures and
forms" and "exemplary models" that play crucial social roles for humankind.
In this definition, such figures, forms and models represent shared values
and help people better understand the complexities, good and bad, of human
life.
By analyzing case studies involving Black Panther Huey Newton, Mother
Teresa, baseball player Mark McGuire and Hurricane Mitch, among others,
Lule a great storyteller himself demonstrates seven master myths in the
news that shape our thinking about foreign policy, terrorism, race
relations, political dissent and other issues. He calls them The Victim,
The Scapegoat, The Hero, The Good Mother, The Trickster, The Other World
and The Flood.
As Lule writes in this selection, digital technology may either nourish "a
far-reaching medley of voices and stories" or else impose "the crushing
conformity of a few global scribes." He uses Haiti to illustrate the
latter, perceiving an unconscious racism in the coverage of Haitian
politics by The New York Times. Lule's reading is neither academic nor
literary but an insistence that storytelling, including its cultural and
social role, is crucial to the revitalization and survival of journalism.
Andrew Levy, ( Andrew(a)mediachannel.org) Editor
=======================================
As Myth, News Will Be Crucial But Conflicted In An Online World
Myth and
the new technology may seem to be an unlikely pair. But we have already
seen that myth has adapted to every storytelling medium from tribal tales
to cable television. The new technology is no different. The combination of
myth and online news, though, will produce intriguing, paradoxical, perhaps
ominous, results.
The information model of journalism, already in great disrepair, will be
dismantled by the marriage of myth and new media. News is losing whatever
franchise it had on whatever information is. Information is no longer some
scarce resource, a commodity that newspeople can cull and sell. Our society
rapidly moved from information explosion to information overload.
Information is everywhere. From online events calendars to live, continuous
congressional coverage, anyone can give and get information online. If news
is only information, news is nothing.
Yet information overload offers opportunities to news: as myth. In the
throes of all this information, the need for myth increases. People grapple
with the meaning of rapidly changing times. People seek out ways in which
they can organize and explain the world. People need stories. Myth has long
played these roles. Myth has identified and organized important events in
the lives of individuals and societies. Myth has interpreted and explained
the meaning of the past, the portents of the future. Myth has offered the
stability of story in unstable times.
Decades ago, Marshall McLuhan foresaw the increasing need for myth to
organize experience in the face of information overload. "You cannot cope
with vast amounts of information in the old fragmentary classified
patterns," he told literary critic Frank Kermode in a 1964 interview. "You
tend to go looking for mythic and structural forms in order to manage such
complex data, moving at very high speeds."
"So the electric engineers often speak of pattern recognition as a normal
need of people processing data electrically and by computers and so on the
need for pattern recognition," McLuhan said. "It's a need which the poets
foresaw a century ago in their drive back to mythic forms of organizing
experience." And so myth and new technology offer opportunities to one
another. In a modern, wired world, the news provides pattern
recognition mythic forms of organizing experience.
State scribes stand poised to exploit these opportunities perhaps to the
detriment of society. Amid the chaos of the information explosion, the
authority of the storyteller seems likely to increase. In the din of a
million voices, the voice of an established storyteller, for better or
worse, attains even more status. We have already seen evidence of this
power in the infancy of online news. Dramatic events the election of a
president, a terrorist killing, a celebrity trial, a devastating
flood bring a rush of readers to the Web sites of traditional news
outlets, the established "brands," the state scribes.
And the power of the state scribes is being enhanced, politically and
economically, as they join together in huge global conglomerates. As
previous propositions affirmed, it's always been dangerous to have
storytelling power invested in a select social few. Power corrupts. And in
our times of consolidation of new and news media, the danger looms larger.
State scribes, long beholden to privileged and powerful rulers, now are
also compromised by their responsibilities to stockholders, corporate
owners, and even to other scribes to whom they have been married and
merged. It is a perilous world in which a very few voices, so compromised,
can signal to society what is important and what is not, how to act and how
not, who is worthy and who is not.
The Web, though, is terribly tangled. Myth and new technology may actually
pose threats to the state scribes as well. People are increasingly able to
seek out stories and storytellers who challenge and reject views of the
state scribes. People have the ability to find others who share and confirm
their views of the world, bypassing the communication of the scribes.
For example, people with disabilities can find each other online and
organize to challenge their exclusion from positions, power, and print.
Political candidates unaffiliated with the two major parties have a means
to reach a larger audience. Hate groups, isolated in their own communities,
can seek support from around the world. What happens online in all these
different connections? People share stories. They sustain each other with
stories that draw from archetypal figures and forms to offer exemplary
models and meaning for human life. They tell each other news as myth.
Through these disparate online stories, the status of state scribes quite
possibly can be challenged. Digital technology thus has the possibility to
nourish a far-reaching medley of voices and stories or to impose the
crushing conformity of a few global scribes.
Myth, News Values And A New World
With the end of the cold war and the beginning of a new century, U.S. news
coverage of international affairs finds itself at a crossroads. For
previous generations of reporters and editors, the world could be organized
and explained in relation to the political, military, economic and cultural
rivalry of two superpowers. News values the criteria by which the news
media select, order, report and give meaning to events were structured by
this one dominant model, a model that has tumbled with the stones from the
Berlin Wall. Today, the questions facing [The New York] Times and other
news organizations include: How is international news to be defined in this
new era? What news values will guide the selection and shaping of events?
As we have seen, two models have emerged. One model has embraced the era as
a time of promise for journalism. This model valorizes aggressive,
progressive news values that promote social justice, and might be called
the model of "a new global and human journalism." Other scholars have
offered a more pessimistic model, a model of international news dictated by
the actions and initiatives of U.S. foreign policy. This model might be
described as promoting "Fortress America" in a world of chaos.
This chapter has offered a preliminary assessment of the prospects for each
model through a case study: the work of one Times correspondent, the
reporting of Larry Rohter from Haiti. Analysis of that reporting supports
the most cheerless view of post-Cold War news values. In the amount of
coverage, the nature of the content, and the strategies offered, Rohter's
reporting for [The New York] Times can be seen as working in concert with
U.S. foreign policy. Even as that policy shifted course rejecting the
junta, warily restoring Aristide, but insisting that he accept U.S.
policy so too did the reporting. Fears that U.S. foreign correspondence
would become captive to U.S. foreign policy were realized in Rohter's
reports.
To restate the particulars: The influence of U.S. foreign policy can be
seen quite readily in the sheer amount of Rohter's Haitian coverage. As the
Clinton administration made Haiti one of its first major foreign policy
campaigns, Rohter gave over most of his work for almost two years to
following Haiti. The Caribbean correspondent of the Times over some 20
months [from July 1994 through February 1996] filed, for example, five
stories from El Salvador, three stories from Colombia, three stories from
Honduras, two stories from Trinidad and none from the Dominican Republic.
From Haiti, as previously noted, Rohter filed 120 stories.
The themes of Rohter's reporting also worked in concert with U.S. policy.
Rohter's reporting did not stray far from U.S. policy perspectives. As the
United States prepared for an invasion to remove Cedras, U.S. officials
postured mightily through Rohter's reporting. Rohter's denunciations of the
regime and his chronicling of the junta's repression made a case for U.S.
intervention. At the same time, his depictions of Aristide as the rightful
leader, whose return would bring peace and reconciliation, also bolstered
the U.S. case.
When Aristide and U.S. policy soon began to conflict, Rohter's themes
shifted. The uplifting portrayals of Aristide and the lavalas movement
segued to critical accounts of intransigent ideology and radical leftist
politics. As FRAPH continued to terrorize the population and U.S. forces
refused to move against them, Rohter's avoidance of the U.S.-FRAPH
relationship shielded Times readers from the U.S. establishment of a
conservative "counterweight" to Aristide's progressive politics. And
Rohter's depiction of Haiti as an "ungovernable" place whose people were
not "culturally or psychologically" equipped for the demands of democracy
captured the patronizing and paternalistic attitudes that have driven U.S.
imperialism in the Caribbean for decades.
Haiti As The Other World
Myth provides another, complementary way to understand Rohter's coverage.
Like all reporters, Rohter did not have to create brand-new story forms to
report events from Haiti. He, his editors and his sources consistently drew
upon an established narrative an eternal story that helped shape coverage
even as it explained and justified U.S. policy. In Rohter's reports, we can
see the unmistakable structure of the myth of the Other World.
Underlying the reporting of Haiti's political turmoil turmoil orchestrated
often by U.S. policies is a classic portrayal. Haiti is rendered as a
primitive land, filled with danger and chaos, and ruled by death squads and
paramilitary patrols who leave the streets littered with corpses. Its
helpless people perversely admire bloody shows of force as they engage in
animal sacrifice and bone-stealing voodoo rituals, even on Christmas. And
they passively remain under the sway of rogue leaders and psychotic priests
with no respect for order or reason or privatizing industry. It's a
nightmare world.
Rohter provides us with a modern depiction of the Other World, one that
also seeks to define our society in relation to other societies. As
[Jean-Pierre] Vernant argued [in "Myth and Society in Ancient Greece"],
myth "expresses how a group of people in particular historical
circumstances sees itself." The myth expressed in Rohter's reporting
portrays a mighty and superior people descending with fascination and
disgust into a primitive place on the globe. The Other World is a world to
be feared and perhaps someday avoided. But for now it's a world in
desperate need of U.S. guidance and military might.
The Other World In U.S. International News
The Other World is not a rare
portrayal in U.S. news. Close reading of the Times and other newspapers
shows that reporting of international affairs often relies on the myth of
the Other World. In fact, many nations do not appear in U.S. news unless
and until they provide stories that allow the myth to be told. From around
the world, U.S. reporters and editors apply news values that judge other
nations newsworthy when they provides stories of bloody coups, tribal
warfare, perverse politics, strange customs and other tales of the
underworld for the U.S. audience back home.
Even a cursory reading of international news shows the influence of the
myth of the Other World on news values. We find stories about animal
sacrifice in Taiwan; female genital cutting in Africa; the stoning of the
devil at Mecca; a thwarted coup in Qatar; Central American drug warlords; a
military junta in Sierra Leone; genocide in Rwanda; ethnic cleansing in
Kosovo; stolen Aboriginal children in Australia; and many other dark tales.
Once again, we can marvel at the durability of myth. A tale told for
centuries is told to usher the United States into the 21st century.
Modern mythology, Joseph Campbell said, confronts an enormously complex
"fact-world that now has to be recognized, appropriated and assimilated."
U.S. society today faces an enormously complex "fact-world," a post-Cold
War world in which the United States is the lone superpower on the world
stage. U.S. international news confronts that world through tales of the
Other World. It offers coverage that affirms U.S. superiority and other
nations' inferiority. It provides scary, fantastic stories of a world beset
by anarchy and chaos. It promotes the "image of 'Fortress America,' an
island of civilization in a sea of political barbarism." It does all this
with a myth as old as Odysseus.
-------------
Jack Lule is a professor of journalism and chair of the Department of
Journalism and Communication at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. He has
published widely and has won numerous awards for excellence in research and
teaching. A former bartender, truck driver and reporter, Lule continues to
be an avid observer of the American scene and a frequent contributor to
newspapers and periodicals.
-------
This essay was excerpted from the book "Daily News, Eternal Stories: The
Mythological Role of Journalism," by Jack Lule (New York: The Guilford
Press, 2001). Copyright © 2001. Reprinted with permission of The Guilford
Press.
--
Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Knowledge Management
Norwegian School of Management
School
+47 22.98.50.00 Telephone
+47 22.98.51.11 Telefax
Home office
+46 (46) 53.245 Telephone
+46 (46) 53.345 Telefax
email: ken.friedman(a)bi.no
--
--
Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Knowledge Management
Norwegian School of Management
School
+47 22.98.50.00 Telephone
+47 22.98.51.11 Telefax
Home office
+46 (46) 53.245 Telephone
+46 (46) 53.345 Telefax
email: ken.friedman(a)bi.no
--
1
0
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(C) 2001 The Washington Post Company
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23370-2001May13.html
Monday, May 14, 2001; Page C01
The No-Book Report: Skim It and Weep
More and More Americans Who Can Read Are Choosing Not To.
Can We Afford to Write Them Off?
By Linton Weeks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Jeremy Spreitzer probably wouldn't read this story if it weren't about
him.
He is an aliterate -- someone who can read, but chooses not to.
A graduate student in public affairs at Park University in Kansas City,
Mo., Spreitzer, 25, gleans most of his news from TV. He skims required
texts, draws themes from dust jackets and, when he absolutely, positively
has to read something, reaches for the audiobook.
"I am fairly lazy when it comes to certain tasks," says Spreitzer, a
long-distance runner who hopes to compete in the 2004 Olympics. "Reading
is one of them."
As he grows older, Spreitzer finds he has less time to read. And less
inclination. In fact, he says, if he weren't in school, he probably
wouldn't read at all.
He's not alone. According to the survey firm NDP Group -- which tracked
the everyday habits of thousands of people through the 1990s -- this
country is reading printed versions of books, magazines and newspapers
less and less. In 1991, more than half of all Americans read a half-hour
or more every day. By 1999, that had dropped to 45 percent.
A 1999 Gallup Poll found that only 7 percent of Americans were voracious
readers, reading more than a book a week, while some 59 percent said they
had read fewer than 10 books in the previous year. Though book clubs seem
popular now, only 6 percent of those who read belong to one. The number
of people who don't read at all, the poll concluded, has been rising for
the past 20 years.
The reports on changes in reading cut to the quick of American culture.
We pride ourselves on being a largely literate First World country while
at the same time we rush to build a visually powerful environment in
which reading is not required.
The results are inevitable. Aliteracy is all around. Just ask:
* Internet developers. At the Terra Lycos portal design lab in Waltham,
Mass., researcher William Albert has noticed that the human guinea
pigs in his focus groups are too impatient to read much. When people look
up information on the Internet today, Albert explains, they are
"basically scanning. There's very little actual comprehension that's
going on." People, Albert adds, prefer to get info in short bursts, with
bullets, rather than in large blocks of text.
* Transportation gurus. Chandra Clayton, who oversees the design of road
signs and signals for the Virginia Department of Transportation, says,
"Symbols can quickly give you a message that might take too long to read
in text." The department is using logos and symbols more and more. When
it comes to highway safety and getting lifesaving information quickly,
she adds, "a picture is worth a thousand words."
* Packaging designers. "People don't take the time to read anything,"
explains Jim Peters, editor of BrandPackaging magazine. "Marketers and
packagers are giving them colors and shapes as ways of communicating."
For effective marketing, Peters says, "researchers tell us that the
hierarchy is colors, shapes, icons and, dead last, words."
Some of this shift away from words -- and toward images -- can be
attributed to our ever-growing multilingual population. But for many
people, reading is passe or impractical or, like, so totally unnecessary
in this day and age.
To Jim Trelease, author of "The Read-Aloud Handbook," this trend away
from the written word is more than worrisome. It's wicked. It's tearing
apart our culture. People who have stopped reading, he says, "base their
future decisions on what they used to know.
"If you don't read much, you really don't know much," he says. "You're
dangerous."
Losing a Heritage
"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who
cannot read them."
-- Mark Twain
One thing you can say for illiteracy: It can be identified, nailed down.
And combated. Scores of programs such as the Greater Washington Literacy
Council and the International Reading Association are geared toward
fighting readinglessness in the home, the school and the workplace.
Aliteracy, on the other hand, is like an invisible liquid, seeping
through our culture, nigh impossible to pinpoint or defend against. It's
the kid who spends hours and hours with video games instead of books, who
knows Sim Cities better than "A Tale of Two Cities."
It's the thousands of business people who subscribe to executive book
summaries -- for example, Soundview's easy-to-swallow eight-page
pamphlets that take simply written management books such as "Secrets of
Question-Based Selling" by Thomas A. Freese and make them even simpler.
It's the parent who pops the crummy movie of "Stuart Little" into a
machine for his kid instead of reading E.B. White's marvelous novel
aloud. Or the teacher who assigns the made-for-TV movie "Gettysburg"
instead of the book it was based on, "The Killer Angels" by Michael
Shaara.
There may be untold collateral damage in a society that can read but
doesn't. "So much of our culture is embedded in literature," says Philip
A. Thompsen, professor of communications at West Chester University in
West Chester, Pa. Thompsen has been watching the rise of aliteracy in the
classroom for 20 years, and "students today are less capable of getting
full value from textbooks than they were 10 years ago."
He adds that these aliterate students are "missing out on our cultural
heritage."
That literature-based past included a reverence for reading, a
celebration of the works and a worshipful awe of those who wrote.
To draw you a picture: Where we once deified the lifestyles of writers
such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, we now fantasize about
rock-and-roll gods, movie starlets or NBA super-studs (e.g. MTV's
"Cribs"). The notion of writer-as-culture-hero is dead and gone. Comedic
monologuists such as Jay Leno or David Letterman have more sex appeal
than serious fiction writers. The grail quest for the Great American
Novel has ended; it was a myth after all.
Where we once drew our mass-cult references from books ("He's a veritable
Simon Legree"), we now allude to visual works -- a Seinfeld episode (not
there's anything wrong with that . . .) or "The Silence of the Lambs"
(the movie, not the book). A recent story in Salon speaks of "learning to
read a movie."
Where we once believed that a well-read populace leads to a healthy
democracy, many people now rely on whole TV broadcast operations built
around politics and elections. Quick, name a Wolf Blitzer book.
Non-readers abound. Ask "Politically Incorrect" talk show host Bill
Maher, who once boasted in print that he hadn't read a book in years. Or
Noel Gallagher of the rock band Oasis, who has been quoted as saying he'd
never read a book. You can walk through whole neighborhoods of houses in
the country that do not contain books or magazines -- unless you count
catalogues.
American historian Daniel Boorstin saw this coming. In 1984, while
Boorstin was serving as librarian of Congress, the library issued a
landmark report: "Books in Our Future." Citing recent statistics that
only about half of all Americans read regularly every year, he referred
to the "twin menaces" of illiteracy and aliteracy.
"In the United States today," Boorstin wrote, "aliteracy is widespread."
Several of the articles in the report alluded to the growing number of
non-readers. In one essay, "The Computer and the Book," Edmund D.
Pellegrino, a former president of Catholic University who is now a
bioethicist at Georgetown University, observed: "The computer is simply
the most effective, efficient and attractive form for transmittal of
processed information. Added to the other nonbook devices like films,
tapes, television and the popular media, the computer accelerates the
atrophy of the intellectual skills acquired for personally reading the
books from which the information is extracted."
Reading for Bliss
Kylene Beers has talked about the evils of aliteracy for so long and so
loud, she's losing her voice. Today she's in the lecture hall of Oakton
High School bending the ears of 100 or so middle school teachers.
If someone graduates from high school and is aliterate, Beers believes,
that person will probably never become a habitual reader.
One of the few academics who have written about the phenomenon, Beers, a
professor of reading at the University of Houston, says there are two
types of reading: efferent and aesthetic.
Efferent, which comes from the Latin word efferre (meaning to carry
away), is purposeful reading, the kind students are taught day after day
in schools. Efferent readers connect cognitively with the words and plan
to take something useful from it -- such as answers for a test.
Aesthetic is reading for the sheer bliss of it, as when you dive deep
into Dostoevski or get lost in Louisa May Alcott. Aesthetic readers
connect emotionally to the story. Beers believes that more students must
be shown the marvels of reading for pleasure.
On this late afternoon, she is mapping out strategies for teachers who
hope to engage reluctant middle school readers. Teaching grammar and
parts of speech, such as dangling participles, is the kiss of death, she
says. "You don't want to talk about dangling anythings with
middle-schoolers," she says in her Texas drawl. And the room laughs.
Aliteracy, she continues, is no laughing matter. Using an overhead
projector, she explains that aliterate people just don't get it. Unlike
accomplished readers, aliterates don't understand that sometimes you have
to read efferently and sometimes you have to read aesthetically; that
even the best readers occasionally read the same paragraph over and over
to understand it and that to be a good reader you have to visualize the
text.
To engage non-reading students -- and adults -- she proposes reading
strategies, such as turning a chapter of a hard book into a dramatic
production or relating tough words to easier words.
She writes the word "tepid" on the acetate sheet. Then she asks the
audience to supply other words that describe water temperature. "Hot,"
someone calls out. "Freezing," somebody else says. Others suggest: cold,
warm and boiling. Beers arranges the words in a linear fashion, from the
coldest word, "freezing," to the hottest, "boiling." "Tepid" falls in the
middle of the list. This method, she says, will help reluctant readers to
connect words they don't know to words they do know. "Aliterates," she
tells the teachers, "don't see relationships."
Apparently, teachers don't always see the relationships either. Jim
Trelease is concerned that teachers do not read. The aliteracy rate among
teachers, he says, is about the same, 50 percent, as among the general
public.
There is some good news on the reading front, according to Trelease and
others. The Harry Potter series has turned on a lot of young readers and
megabookstores, such as Barnes & Noble and Borders, are acrawl with
people.
But there is plenty of bad news, too. Lots of aliterates, according to
Trelease, say they just don't have time to read anymore. "The time
argument is the biggest hoax of all," he says. According to time studies,
we have more leisure time than ever. "If people didn't have time, the
malls would be empty, cable companies would be broke, video stores would
go out of business. It's not a time problem, it's a value problem. You
have 50 percent in the country who don't value reading."
Like Beers, Trelease believes that youngsters should be encouraged to
read aesthetically. Reading aloud to children, according to Trelease and
other reading specialists, is the single best way to ensure that someone
will become a lifelong reader.
"Even Daniel Boorstin wasn't born wanting to read," Trelease says.
"Michael Jordan wasn't born wanting to play basketball. The desire has to
be planted."
Surfing Through Grad School
Trelease and Beers and others are scrambling for ways to engage
aliterates. For all kinds of reasons. "What aliteracy does is breed
illiteracy," Beers explains. "If you go through school having learned to
read and then you leave school not wanting to read, chances are you won't
put your own children into a reading environment."
"What you have to do is play hardball," says Trelease. He suggests
running public awareness campaigns on TV. "That's where the aliterates
are."
Trelease says we should try to eradicate aliteracy in the way we went
after tobacco. We should let people know, Trelease says, "what the
consequences are to your family and children if you don't read."
"Aliteracy may be a significant problem today," says Philip Thompsen.
"But on the other hand, a narrow view of literacy -- one that defines
literacy as the ability to read verbal texts -- may be a significant
problem as well."
Many of the messages that we have to interpret in day-to-day life,
Thompsen says, "use multiple communication media. I think it is important
to realize that as our society becomes more accustomed to using
multimedia messages, we must also expand our thinking about what it means
to be 'literate.' "
Olympic hopeful Jeremy Spreitzer plans to become a teacher and maybe go
into politics someday. For now, he's just trying to get through graduate
school.
He watches a lot of television. "I'm a major surfer," he says. He watches
the History Channel, A&E, Turner Classic Movies and all of the news
stations.
"I'm required to do a lot of reading," he says. "But I do a minimum of
what I need to do."
But how do you get through grad school without reading? Spreitzer is
asked.
He gives an example. One of his required texts is the recently published
"Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community" by Robert
Putnam. In the book, Putnam argues, among other things, that television
has fragmented our society.
Spreitzer thumbed through the book, dipped into a few chapters and spent
a while "skipping around" here and there.
He feels, however, that he understands Putnam and Putnam's theories as
well as if he had read the book.
How is that? he is asked.
Putnam, he explains, has been on TV a lot. "He's on the news all the
time," Spreitzer says. "On MSNBC and other places. Those interviews with
him are more invaluable than anything else."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23370-2001May13.html
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(C) 2001 The Washington Post Company
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www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/134/living/Authors_in_their_SitesP.shtml
5/14/2001
Authors in their Sites
Fans turned archivists use the Web
to honor their favorite writers
By Mark Feeney, Globe Staff
The Web is the ultimate library, an assemblage of texts unprecedented in
human history. Within its virtual confines, one can even occasionally find
good, old, honest-to-Gutenberg authors - the kind who put words on paper
as well as screen.
There's one big difference, of course: On the Web, authors' writings
aren't found on shelves but at sites devoted to their lives and works.
The individuals who tend such sites may be the closest thing this global
library has to librarians.
Actually, as the three individuals profiled here demonstrate, "librarian"
doesn't begin to do their self-appointed vocation justice. Each is part
fan, part archivist, part technician, using the resources of the Web to
pay tribute to an author he or she loves. It's a unique joining of the old
fashioned with the up to the minute: for with these sites, as with
creation itself, in the beginning was the word.
Proprietor: Curt Gardner, 39
Home: San Francisco
Work: software implementer
Author: Don DeLillo
Address: www.perival.com/delillo
Began: early 1996
It was in college, as a computer-science major at Wesleyan, that Curt
Gardner first heard of Don DeLillo. Surfing the Web some 15 years later,
he was dismayed by how little he could find about the author. So Gardner
decided to try to come up with a site like the one he'd hoped to come
across.
''My vision was to create a place where the average DeLillo reader would
feel at home,'' he says. Gardner also had an aim that he describes as
''fairly grandiose,'' which is ''to essentially document everything known
about DeLillo.''
The contents of his site include what one might expect (reviews of
DeLillo's books, interviews with him) as well as what one might not (the
novelist Salman Rushdie reports on attending a Yankees game with DeLillo:
''He goes there with his mitt. He's up there for every fly ball.'').
Gardner doesn't find running the site to be at all onerous. During its
first year of operation, he recalls, he haunted the University of
California at Berkeley library system, tracking down material. Since
then, he estimates he's spent no more than two hours a week working on
it. ''It's a fun pastime,'' he says, ''and it puts me in touch with
DeLillo fans from all over. Almost daily I get e-mail from an
appreciative visitor, and I also get many postable items from people who
send me links.''
Gardner met DeLillo at a San Francisco reading in 1997 and sent him
printouts from the page. ''I respect his wishes to keep some things
private,'' Gardner says. ''But let's just say he gave his blessing to the
site.''
Proprietor: Richard Lane, 33
Home: New York
Work: editor, ''Dateline NBC''
Author: Thomas Pynchon
Address: www.pynchonfiles.com
Began: May 31, 1998
''I created the site out of a jaw-dropping admiration for the man,'' says
Richard Lane. Thomas Pynchon is an ideal subject for a Web site: a
famously reclusive author who has many fanatical readers interested in
any scrap of information about him they can come by. In addition, Lane
points out, ''The encyclopedic content of Pynchon's work lends itself
perfectly to the hyperlink format.''
Site contents range from photos of Pynchon as an 18-year-old Navy seaman
(and of the destroyer he served on) to the complete text of an obscure
report on public disturbances in Malta in 1919 that helped inspire the
epilogue to Pynchon's first novel, ''V.''
Lane sees his mission as ''providing a conduit for information that the
novelist isn't providing.'' Sometimes that can lead to a certain strain
on the conduit. ''There are foreign visitors who assume I'm [Pynchon],
others who wanted all his books and critical work sent along, gratis. And
soon.'' There was also a recent query from a prominent Web site wondering
how to get Pynchon to review restaurants. Lane, who has had no contact
with the author, could offer no help.
Such distractions are a small price to pay for the site, Lane feels.
''I've learned more by stepping on Pynchon's shadow than I ever could
have imagined from a novelist. The confluence of ideas and tangents that
merely thinking about his work induces is a great gift of which he should
be justly proud.''
Proprietor: Sandye Utley, 49
Home: Cincinnati
Work: administrative assistant, WCET-TV
Author: T. Coraghessan Boyle
Address: www.tcboyle.net
Began: Feb. 21, 2000
''There's such joy in his writing,'' Sandye Utley says. She was already a
fan of his novels and short stories when she met T. Coraghessan Boyle at
an award ceremony in Washington, D.C., 16 months ago. He accepted her
offer to set up a FAQ (frequently asked questions) page for the site
Boyle runs, www.tcboyle.com.
Utley came up with so many references to Boyle-related articles and
reviews she decided to set up a free-standing site.
''It could easily be a full-time job,'' she says, describing the site as
''a never-ending proposition.'' Contents run the gamut from audio clips
of Boyle interviews and readings to listings of his public appearances to
a recipe (in Dutch, no less) for Baked Camel With Filling, a dish that
figures in Boyle's novel ''Water Music.''
Utley estimates she spends $300 a year on tcboyle.net. The biggest
expense isn't financial, however, but temporal: the hundreds of hours she
has put into site construction and doing Boyle research. She doesn't
begrudge the commitment, though. She exchanges e-mail with Boyle, and it
gratifies her that he approves of the site (he described a recent
redesign as ''Molto cool. Very classy.''). Even more important, perhaps,
there's the sense of camaraderie the site inspires.
''The people I hear from are an intelligent, witty band of readers (some
of them Tom's own friends) who love the work. In sharing that common
bond, they all feel like my friends, too.''
www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/134/living/Authors_in_their_SitesP.shtml
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May 17, 2001
Report of the a(o).i.r. executive committee
Prepared by Steve Jones
AoIR Executive Committee
President: Steve Jones
Vice-President: Nancy Baym
Secretary: Matt Stoner
Treasurer (on leave): Benjamin Bates
Interim Treasurer: Wes Shrum
Open Seats: Beth Kolko and Sean Cubitt
Appointed Seats: Diane Witmer and Fay Sudweeks
Student Seat: Matt Williams
Publications Officers: Jeremy Hunsinger and Charlie Breindahl
2001 Conference Coordinator: John Logie
2001 Conference Program Chair: Leslie Shade
Ethics Working Group Chair: Charles Ess
1. Introduction & General (Jones)
Below is the monthly report from AoIR executive committee members.
2. Executive Officers' Reports
2.1 President (Jones)
2.1.1. Kagi works, and we've heard far better reports about it than
about PayPal, so that migration has been successful.
2.1.2. Speaking of migrations, hats off to Jeremy for getting us
moved onto our own server!
2.1.3. The executive committee will be drafting descriptions of the
roles they've played in AoIR and making recommendations about the
association's structure, in advance of upcoming elections. It is
likely that such activity will also involve revision to the AoIR
bylaws. Keep an eye out for information and announcements, and
please, participate, volunteer, stand for election, etc.!
2.2 Vice President (Baym)
2.2.1 Nothing to report.
2.3 Secretary (Stoner)
2.3.1 Nothing to report.
2.4 Treasurer (Shrum - interim)
2.4.1 Nothing to report.
2.5 Open Seats (Kolko, Cubitt)
2.5.1 Kolko: No report.
2.5.2 Cubitt: No report.
2.6 Appointed Seats (Witmer, Sudweeks)
2.6.1 Witmer: Nothing to report.
2.6.2 Sudweeks: No report.
2.7 Student Seat (Williams)
2.7.1 No report.
2.8 Publications Officers (Hunsinger, Breindahl)
2.8.1 Hunsinger:
2.8.1.1. april was very busy, in order of time in some manner. I
spent time with Leslie and the program committee. I spent time
migrating systems. I spent time with John getting him set up for
posting stuff on the webpage. I spent time on various and sundries.
2.8.2 Breindahl: Business as usual. Jeremy did all the work and left
me to twiddle my thumbs :) After the server move, I am trying to
take over after Steve as list manager of air-l.
2.9 2001 Conference (John Logie, Coordinator and Leslie Shade, Program Chair)
2.9.1 Logie: This month the local team was focused on establishing a
reasonably complete website <<
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/aoir/local.html >> designed to address the
questions which have been repeatedly e-mailed to the Conference
Coordinator and Program Chair. This work was completed in concert
with U of MN's Professional Education and Conference Planning office,
which has established a website for conference registration
<<http://pware.com/index.cfm?eventdisp=02%2D2703&clientid=2383>>.
With the assistance of "beta testers" Jeremy Hunsinger and Steve
Jones, these sites are now up and running, and as of today, 11
attendees have successfully registered and paid.
Speaking of payment, the IR 2.0 account within the Rhetoric
Department is, at long last, fully functional, and it will serve as
the core fund for deposits and budgeted expenses between now and
October. Not all of the pledged funds have yet arrived, but there is
enough funding within this core account for all major expenses
between now and the concert, and additional gentle nudges will likely
produce the remainder in the coming weeks.
Negotiations with potential food providers are ongoing, but so far
the options seems reasonable. We have been considering the
posssibility of securing sponsorship for the Thursday night reception
and/or the Friday night banquet. Once the budget numbers are
finalized, we will take this matter up with AoIR-Meet and/or
AoIR-Exec.
More generally, I am working to finalize a core team of graduate
students and colleagues to take on management of book exhibits, tech
support, website maintenance, and the like. In the coming weeks, I
will be introducing you all to the "point people" on these issues,
and improving the overall routing of questions and tasks.
2.9.2 Shade: Paper acceptances have been going out - so far the
number of people who
are saying they are coming has far exceeded the number that say they can't
attend (2). Here are the stats, with many thanks to Jeremy:
current stats
type accept reject rate
papers 230 135 63%
panels 28 5 84%
Art 2 4 33%
workshop 0 9 0%
about 85 - 90 sessions compared with about 60 last year 1/3 more
about 330 people on panels compared with about 220 last year about 1/3
more again
2.10 AoIR Ethics Working Group (Charles Ess, Chair)
2.10.1 No report.
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