I think you've read enough of my reading reflections to know my obvious distant for all history related things so I'll spare you the rant. In other news this chapter was much like the newspaper chapter. Although I see that magazines survived the emergence of television much better than newspapers did. I think that might be because of the visuals magazines bring to the table. Newspapers look tedious and boring while magazines aim to look more fun and entertaining. I understand that newspapers are serious and are very important in order for us to obtain "hard news" but have you ever really looked at a newspaper? It's font? It's not appetizing. While magazines are entertaining and different news papers are boring and stick to that same routine. I was thinking this the majority of the time while reading this. Also, have you ever thought that maybe the yellow journalism idea came from magazines in an effort to be more appealing to readers? I certainly think that may be a definite possibility.
Before I start this reflection I'd like to give you a bit of information about myself... I hate history. Well more like I strongly dislike reading history. So the beginning of the chapter that talks about the history of newspapers was not my favorite. To this you may say, "but last week you almost drooled over books and their 'diurnal's'" and to that I'll say, "the book bias is strong in this one". Seriously though the history on books did not bother me as much as it bothered me in this biography on newspapers. Honestly, it's like it would never end. Of course it did, eventually, but while I was reading it I thought I might die before that last sentence finally presented it's self. Besides that the chapter was okay. It was cool to learn (not read) about how newspapers organized themselves in specific groups for specific audiences. It's weird because I knew most of this stuff but I never really paid close attention to it's intentional use in my life. While I was in high school there was a time when I was on the track team and every once in a while my coach or teammate would boast about one of us ending up in the paper. At the time I'd only took brief moments to wonder about who actually read the paper. Is this a sports newspaper? Does the whole state of Maryland get this paper? Then I read this and found myself to connecting to that time and realizing that Fairmont Height, or maybe Capital heights, had their own newsp
aper company that collected and distributed news in that area. I know, common sense, but I really didn't connect those dots. What I did know about though was the decline in newspaper readership. Doesn't everyone? |