HW 9: Huffington's interview

“Punching Holes In Old Faded Mirrors” is an interesting interview with Arianna Huffington. She is a social and political activist, who is trying to strengthen the impact that blogs are having on national conversation. “She is about to move blogging from the realm of the anonymous individual to the realm of the celebrity collective.” (Kline 343) Throughout her interview Huffington makes a lot of interesting points that I had never taken into consideration. She goes into detail that blogs allow everybody to be their own reporter and what is so great about that is because these people are driven by passion rather than deadlines. Also she confirmed something that I had questioned, she states, “The great thing about the blogosphere is that it can be self-correcting. If there’s a fact that a blogger puts out that’s wrong, the chances of it being corrected quickly are very great.” I thought it was extremely important that Huffington made this clear because I think a lot of people are probably skeptical about the information that they are receiving through blogs. One thing that I disagree with is when Huffington claims that blogs have made a huge difference in the mainstream media. I THINK HUFFINGTON IS MISTAKEN BECAUSE SHE OVERLOOKS the fact that so many people are still unaware about blogging in general. Yes, it has made an impact but I don’t think that the mainstream media would be in any trouble without blogging.

HW: 7 Teenagers on blogging

I disagree that parents should monitor everything that their middle-school child writes online. I personally think that the internet is a good way for teenagers to express their emotions. If parents were strict about what they allowed their children to do online, they would then express their feelings in a different way perhaps a way that is more dangerous way. Teenagers need a place that they can go and literally vent about the current days events or about how they are feeling. Blogging allows kids to express themselves and even get feedback from peers and friends. In the article “My So-Called Blog” Emily Nussbaum describes how young people today are dominating the blogging world and how they have somewhat transformed it. “The vast majority of bloggers are teens and young adults. Many teen blogs are short-lived experiments. But for a significant number, they become a way of life, a daily record of a community’s private thoughts—a kind of invisible high school that floats above the daily life of teenagers.” (Kline and Burstein 351) This quote emphasizes how blogging is ultimately good for teenagers today. Blogs allows kids to let out their emotions in a safe manner and let them communicate with the people around them. Teenagers need their freedom, parents monitor enough things today already, and kids should be able to freely write what they want online. It is up to them to decide how much they want to share with others and what kind of information they want to put out there for other people to read.