L Blogger

“Apologies to Virginia Woolf”

Woolf describes the women in the book as looked down upon by men and not as intelligent. She quotes a man in her book saying, “ the best woman was intellectually inferior to the worst man”, which means that the smartest woman is as smart as the stupidest man. I found an article on Jezebel called Will Hilary’s “Tonya Harding Option” Leave Country to Eastern Bloc Hooverite John McCain?” Whenever I think of women being put down, I think of the upcoming election and Hilary Clinton. Some people don’t think Hilary could be our next president and I think she can relate to Woolf’s. Hilary puts her self in the position to try and become something no one has ever done. As being woman, we have always been put down by society and have “lowered” standards to man. Although women are climbing the ladder of success, we still get teased and referring to Virginia Woolf is a perfect example because that where it all started.After reading over the article, once again I noticed people over exaggerate Clinton’s perception of how she would run the country.

Patriarchy is a system that puts males superior to females. I believe that the United States shows patriarchy in some society stereotypes. The article I chose was on Huffingtonpost.com. They posted about how Hilary Clinton is always wearing pant suits and how its more feminine to wear skirts.  Female Fox news anchor, Ainsley Earhardt cracks a joke on her male co-host anchor saying how she has worn a pant suit before but “We don’t wear the pants.” Was she trying to make a comment toward her male bosses or going along with her male co-host being anti Hilary? Oh she was totally going with him on this one ladies and gentlemen. She continues asking Brian, male anchor if he wants them to wear pants but he says he’s a pro-skirt man. Surprise response? Ha, of course he is a pro-skirt male, have you ever met a male that isn’t?
“Most woman have no character at all,” Woolf quotes the Pope.(81) She sees this as an insult and I cant imagine living in a time like this where men would say this about the opposite sex. Women are seen as the “weaker sex” I learned in psychology. We are suppose to cook, clean, do laundry, this and that. We aren’t suppose to be the “ breadwinner”. We are suppose to obey our husband and abide by his rules of the house. “ ‘ Men know that woman are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If think did not think so, they could never be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.’
….In justice to sex, I think it but candid to acknowledge that, in a subsequent conservation, he told me that he was serious what he said.” -Boswell, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.     Men, in these days think they are above and beyond the best and woman are superior to them. Thank god things have changed for woman.

“Blogs (short for “web logs”) are periodically updated journals, providing online commentary with minimal or no external editing . They are usually presented as a set of “posts,” individual entries of news or commentary, in reverse chronological order. The posts oftern include hyperlinks to other sites, enabling commentators to draw upon the content of the entire World Wide Web. Blogs can function as personal diaries, political analysis, advice columns on romance, computers, money or all of the above. Their number has grown at an astronomical rate. In 1999, the total number of blogs was estimated to be around 50; five years later, the estimates range from 2.4  million to 4.1 million. The Perseus  Development Corporation, a consulting firm that studies Internet trends, estimates that by 2005 more than 10 millions blogs will have been created. Media Institutions have adopted the form as well, with many television networks, newspaper, and opinion journals now hosting blogs on their Web sites, sometimes featuring dispatches from their own correspondents, other times hiring full-time online columnists. “ (Kline, 85)

This paragraph is important because it shows the importance and the increase in growth of blogs today. We have over millions on blogs on the internet. Blogs provide us with information that is useful and honest, which sometimes its not true about the television media. Also in Web of Influence, it tells us that bloggers will be the ones who tell the sites like NY times and CNN when they post a story too quickly and report the wrong information. In other words, They correct the mainstream media when they are in the wrong and My claim is it’s good thing bloggers catch their mistakes. Journalists are smart and intelligent but I feel like bloggers take more time when they are posting their posts. Blogging has become so big for other interests like advertising for companies and more. Knowing the material for blogging is important because some day blogging could be the number one source to go to. Not only do people not know a lot about blogging but what it can do and the honesty of it.My point is that the statistics in this paragraph are pretty significant to us because the increase of blogs are tremendous in the past 10 years.

DailyKos and Wonkette are very eye-catching blogs, which both bring a lot of discussion to the table about politics. In the coming election, I think that Wonkette would influence me more for the upcoming election. I like Wonkette because of the way Ana Marie Cox writes. Cox writes not too formal but at a level, that a reader of any age understands and can relate to. I like how it’s a conversational voice with a little bit of professional writing. Teens and young adults can understand and read the blog like if they were writing it. Wonkette is a unique blog with an original set up. I like the set up because the webpage is simple and easy to read. With the DailyKos, my eyes wonder and its hard to find out what I am looking for. There site has too many sentences and words, it’s not very organized. Wonkette also covers more than just politics which is very convenient for bloggers. I’m not a big fan on politics, so it would be interesting to find out a lot about the subject and be able to look up what else I’m interested in on the same blog.

Jezebel follows some of the guidelines of Scoble’s principles. “Tell the truth. The whole truth, nothing but the truth.” (Kline & Burenstine,132) Jezebel is not a site that sugar coats any subject. They broadcast news whether its good or bad, that’s what I like about them. Their stories are unique and creative with a little spice to it. Even if its bad, they will criticize the person or subject. The good thing about Jezebel, you will never see a story with false information. Most of their stories aren’t in main stream media either. They cover a lot of politics to the newest gossip of celebs. Another positive aspect of Jezebel is that they don’t write like they are high-tec journalists. They write what they mean like a conversation. The only guideline I don’t think Jezebel meets the principle that states “Link to your competitors and say nice things about them.” They don’t have any links really besides you tube videos. I think if you want to have different standards for your blog, that’s okay. These guidelines are just idea’s when you are thinking about making a blog and I think they are the basic elements for creating one. They are just some idea’s you should think about that a professional is giving advice about.

Nick Denton’s interview was a good position on blogging and how it effects the media and the people. However, he supports that blogging will become a bigger phenomenon in the near future but, it will never take over the New York Times. In addition, he writes “The NY Times have made some mistakes but its been generally authoritative in its reporting on the search.” After all, he is very up in the air about blogging, he was quoted in the press about dampening the advertisement about blogging although he is a big blogging entrepreneur. Besides blogging readers going up 20 percent a month, he believes it will still increase in the next five years more on politics, sex, society, culture and business. Therefore, Nick tells us that bloggers need to build loyalty. Accordingly, Denton makes a good point, that the people of today think that blogging is a new occurrence but has been around for a long amount of time.

“Blogs are different. They evolve with every posting, each one tied to a moment.” I think that the impact of blogging on business is more important that just communication. Blogging is opening new doors to marketing and strategies. Jason Goldman makes a perfect point, “Blogs are what’s causing the Web to grow.” Google,  Microsoft, and more are using blogging to promote and sell advertising for the company. 40,000 new blogs are created everyday that could be in your interest and might possible carry information that you might want or need to know. Bloggers give support to the companies to help build and make it bigger than what is already was. “As the bloggers read each other, comment and link from one page to the next to the next, they create a global conversation.” (Baker, 228) Not only blogging but the Internet provides  us with the knowledge that mainstream media doesn’t, and blogs are known for having more accurate information than the regular media. Blogs provide us with more range of topics while the regular media posts what they want to put in the public eye.

My favorite blog of the week was from Jezebel. This blog caught my attention, http://jezebel.com/357683/us-editor-claims-women-want-covers-that-exploit-female-celebs. I am a huge fan of the gossip magazines even though they are not always true, I still in enjoy reading them. This caught my eye because it mentions how most covers of US. Weekly are mainly about the female celebrities like Britney Spears with all of her problems. The editor insists that “Women don’t want to read about men unless it’s through another woman: a marriage, a baby, a breakup.” This is statement is so true. When you look back a while ago when Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston were on the covering of every magazine, it was all because of the break up/ secret affair that sold so much. Women love to gossip and these magazines prove that. Ms. Min points out, “the fact remains that as a woman in Hollywood, your life is ripe for plundering by gossip blogs and tabloids.” Hollywood has this effect if you’re a celeb. If you want to be popular, your probably in the tabloids because you went out last weekend to a party, got wicked drunk and got a DUI like a certain Lindsey Lohan, has pulled a couple of times. Britney Spears has been criticized in the media for the past couple of years because of all she has been through. I think that she should be left alone, although I like to read about certain gossip but when you invade someone’s privacy like B.Spears, it needs to stop. She needs help and being in the spot light doesn’t help. The only male I have seen in the spot light or on a cover was Owen’s Wilson recently because he tried to commit suicide. Sometimes the paparazzi go too far and get up and personal with a celebrity. If they push too much, something like Princess Diana’s accident might happen again.

I looked up Globalvoicesonline.org. This website is very simply laid out. It has the title Global Voices in green letters at the top of the screen. On top, they have a row of links to click on like countries, authors, links and search.  On the left side of the screen, it has a summary of all the articles on it. Then if you click onto the title, it brings you to the full article. On the right side, it has a map of a country and links below to click on such as the Middle East, North Africa and more countries. The background color is white, simple and neat. These people who blog are from all over the world like Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Mexico, Madagascar, and many other places. This blog is international and they are written by regular every day people, not necessarily anyone famous or specific. There are a couple of articles on elections in different countries, another couple of articles on everyday news in a certain country, and more. Rebecca KacKinnon states, “We want to point out the most interesting and important information that’s coming off the international blogosphere, because if you look at the mainstream media large parts of the world are almost never mentioned.” I think that Global voices definitely are different from the mainstream media. I looked at Cnn.com and looked at some of their top stories and compared them to globalvoicesonline.com, both sites had an article on the Pakistan election. The Global Voices article on the election was a blogger who was telling us how they will or will not vote. While CNN’s article was on the history of the elections and previous prime ministers/candidates this differs from Global Voices. I think when MacKinnon says that blog focuses more on specific and uncovered stories it is true. Mainstream media has provoked only the big news, just like every channel. It is all the same stories on different channels, for example WMUR, CNN, Fox, Abc; they all provide us with the same information unlike blogs. Many bloggers would object that mainstream media is a reliable source for stories. I would totally agree too. J

Blogging is so crucial in our world today and for this one person it was a moment of savor. Waldman posted her thoughts, her sex life and her family on her blog. She was a writer and fell in to loving blogs. I believe when she says, “It’s a remarkable phenomenon to meet thousands of strangers who lend each other emotional support. It’s also a phenomenon to see people open up this intimate and heart breaking aspect of their lives by perusal by strangers.” I agree with that because I was talking to my roommate and she gave me the perfect example of this situation. My roommates brother is a reserved quiet person and doesn’t always express his emotions to his family. Last May, my roommates dad lost his job and while her mother has a debilitating illness, she is unable to work. This caused a lot of hard times and stress for both my roommate and her brother. Instead of holding it in, he visited and joined a pray blog online. They gave him the support that people around him could not give him at that time. Then a couple weeks later, they received a letter from the pray blog group and said that my roommates family was in their thoughts and would pray for them. My roommates brother found support from a blog community just like Waldman did, with the support of the woman who read the suicide note on her blog. Many people turn to blogging when having a hard time or being in a tough situation, to lend a hand.