Thompson and Hedges

Hedges, in his article Bad Days for Newsrooms—and Democracy, is overly pessimistic about the United States and the new generation. He starts out by stating that newspapers are on the rapid decline. He spends a couple of paragraphs supporting his point that newspapers are on the decline by stating various statistics from various newspaper companies.

Hedges then talk about how newspapers are very important to society. In Hedges’ words, “Newspapers, when well run, are a public trust. They provide, at their best, the means for citizens to examine themselves, to ferret out lies and the abuse of power by elected officials and corrupt businesses, to give a voice to those who would, without the press, have no voice, and to follow, in ways a private citizen cannot, the daily workings of local, state and federal government”. These veritable facts shown in the print cannot be compared to the writings on the internet, especially those of bloggers according to Hedges. This, Hedges says, is because of the lack of credibility of the bloggers. No one fires the bloggers and they almost never acknowledge their own faults.

Hedges goes on to say that the Internet cannot take up the mantle of newspapers mainly because the internet is made for browsing not reading and according to Hedges, it shows. People spend much less time on newspaper sites than they do on newspaper themselves. Because of this, Hedges thinks that these days are bad days for newsrooms.

When I compare Clive Thompson piece on the New Literacy to the articles by Hedges, I see many differences and no similarities between them. Clive Thomson is very optimistic in his piece compared to Hedges who is completely pessimistic of everything and everyone. Clive Thompson pulls up a new idea that there is an ongoing “literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization” as compared to Hedged certainty that we are on the path to destruction. Thompson writes that most students today write much more than students did fifty years back. Also, he writes that there is no destructive change in academic writing as a result of the new forms of short-hand typing such as texting or Twitter updates.

Thompson piece, in my opinion, though very short, forms a view of the “New literacy” that is much more believable than Hedges views. This is because Hedges never does any serious research and most of his statements aren’t validated with proper sources. And even if Hedges did quote any sources, it would be validating information not critical to proving his point, but rather some statistics to prove what the obvious – such as the decline of newspapers. Thompson, on the other hand, reinforces his view completely with veritable facts such as the opinion of Andrea Lunsford, a professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford University whose opinion is based upon a study of college students between their academic and social writing. This cited evidence is very strong and also addresses the main point Thompson is trying to make – we are in the midst of a literacy revolution.