Oh, the Places I’ll Go

The places I have never been to, and would normally never go, are pretty much impossible to go to, and certainly difficult to spend only two hours there.  I’m talking of course about the moon, the top of a mountain, the bottom of the ocean, and Fort Knox.  I’m normally pretty comfortable experiencing new things, [...]

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About the Author

What is voice?
Well, technically speaking, it’s the way we sound when we open our mouths and phonate.
So what is our voice when we write?
As I’ve been enveloping myself in Joe Wenderoth’s The Holy Spirit of Life recently, I can’t help but notice his very distinct voice. He fearlessly (perhaps carelessly) crosses the “line” and sarcastically [...]

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Egad! I think I’m hearing voices!

Or rather, I’m reading them off the pages of interesting writing…
In my opinion there are only four things that can possibly make for interesting reading—fiction, subject matter, point of view, and the voice of the author. And since we are living in the context of nonfiction, only the latter three are left for us to [...]

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more adventurous

More Adventurous by Rilo Kiley is, at its bare bones, a love song.  And, like the love songs written before it, More Adventurous is effective in eliciting an emotional response.  It differs, however, in how it unfolds lyrically.  An exploration of the song’s message is what substantiates the value and meaning of the experience, of [...]

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Regina’s ‘Far’ keeps me close to home

Surely everyone has woken from a deep slumber regretting something. One particularly biting emotion that I have woken to is that of having wasted. Time, others’ time, money, potential, a friendship, an opportunity…the list of possible morning regrets is endless.
Often the regret—for me, at least—is also associated with some sort of epicurean rampage that had [...]

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Amy Amy Amy

When Back to Black, Amy Winehouse’s sophomore effort, debuted in 2006, it won five grammy awards and went on to become the biggest selling album of the year in 2007. But I am not here to defend the album. I am here to defend the genius behind it.
Amy Winehouse is my idol. Most people tell [...]

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From a Journalist’s Point of View

As a journalist, I’m naturally inclined to defend my line of work. We have as many problems as any profession, but due to the very nature of our work, are scrutinized more widely and publicly. The world is quick to attack the media with very little concept of how difficult journalism really is. Extricating the [...]

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Joni Mitchell Melancholy

My childhood was one of Montessori school, whole-grain-bread sandwiches, and television relegated to rationed amounts of whatever happened to be playing on PBS.
It was a fourth grade slumber party, before I listened to popular music. When the first strains of “Hit Me Baby One More Time,” blasted my virginal ears with synthesized force.
But my enduring [...]

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John Stewart on Crossfire

This clip is old, but if you haven’t already seen John Stewart’s diatribe against the hosts of CNN’s “Crossfire,” please follow the link posted above and prepare to be impressed with Stewart’s gutsy statement.  His frustration with the theater involved in some venues of political reporting embodies my own criticism of [...]

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Rylynn

These days it seems as if all of my hobbies and extraneous dreams have been left by the wayside as I pursue that elusive and highly enchanted “good life”—you know, the one that always seems just close enough to glimpse in the distance but never close enough to grasp. The only legit distraction I can [...]

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Where oh where has Walter gone?

When Walter Kronkite passed away this summer I tried to see how long I could go without bringing it up to my Dad, knowing that the passing of such an icon was sure to be the final nail in the coffin of my wearied “state of journalism,” defense, implicit in which is a recognition of [...]

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Romeo Save Me

“Love Story” was released a few months prior to the debut of Taylor Swift’s second album entitled “Fearless.”  When I first listened to this song, I couldn’t help but feel warmed by its fanciful and somewhat childish portrayal of love.  The song reinvents the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet with a fairytale ending where all [...]

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A little poetry never hurt nobody.

I’ve got few quarrels with the news. Few with journalism. I just don’t trust much of what I read. I take my journalism with a grain of salt and a chaser of disbelief. I’ve never heard the same event described the same way twice. Sometimes it’s done well, and sometimes not. Sometimes it’s moving, sometimes [...]

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I’ll be loving you always.

In my spare time, perhaps solely for my sanity, I have this not-so-secret habit of writing music. Usually I’ll sit down at some completely unorthodox hour, when only teenagers and raccoons are awake, and muse about love, life, and the untouchable things that are so often appropriately expressed through music. Not that I claim [...]

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Wikipedia killed the newspaper journalist

So I suck, and kind of just realized that I can’t just post to my own blog, but have to post to the 208. I’m about to crowd this with my long overdue contributions:
When I was making my decision as to which colleges I would apply to, one of my biggest factors was the size [...]

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Pissing in our Grazing Patch

Garbage, fluff—sensationalist frivolity.
Bias, liberalism—presumptuous rhetoric.
Apathy, carelessness—irresponsible editing and publishing.
Error, misrepresentation—inadequate sourcing.
One might rip on contemporary journalism for all of its countless minor failings, but then, one would be here all day today, and all day tomorrow, and every day for many weeks hereafter—an endeavor far beyond the scope of any simplistic blog posted by a [...]

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One of the best videos of all time

I’m going to say something very controversial: I agree with Kanye West.
I’m referring, of course, to the infamous Kanye West-Taylor Swift incident.

Now before you accuse me of being a callous country music-hater who likes to step on kittens, I want to clarify that I do not support Kanye West’s actions – [...]

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What Photoshop can do to a president

The image of the president in the public’s imagination is, quite literally, darkening day by day.

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Why I spend money on movies like Transformers 2

When we think of art, we tend to think of masterful works that leave us inspired, completely awed by the powerful emotions they instill upon us and the deep thoughts they leave us with. I’m the same way, especially with film. I love movies that make me think, and show me the world from an [...]

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Mirror

Be warned, trying to find the source of this film’s power is a mistake. It’s power is indelible, but impossible to grasp. Mirror is a film by Andrei Tarkovsky, a Russian filmmaker. When originally asked to see it, I chose not to. I know Tarkovsky, I’d seen his other films, and loved them, but was [...]

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Kind of Blue

While sitting around my room, trying to think of a topic for the second blog post and mostly failing, my eyes were lead to the font on the banner at the top of this page.  Where had I seen that before?  A few minutes of soul- and google-searching later, I found my answer, and, conveniently, [...]

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What journalists need: a return to lyricism

What I’d like to see is a new generation of journalists who transfer their passion to the audience so that it catches immediately, like fire on timber in a dry forest.

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Lost in Huffington

Often, I imagine a sorting hat of sorts (yes, this is a reference to Harry Potter; no, I do not dress up for the theatrical releases) that determines one’s news source inclinations. Hmm…so I’m a young liberal, I attend a well-respected university, and I have tendencies toward compulsively watching YouTube clips and tracking Lindsay Lohan’s [...]

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The Rise of Immediacy

I know that most people will see this as a somewhat cliche response, but I personally believe that the world’s increasing connectivity is the biggest reason for journalism’s struggles in the modern world. As an elementary school student, I would always excitedly open up the sports page of my local newspaper to read about all [...]

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The Quick and the Easy

The world is getting faster.  With the Internet becoming more and more of a necessity in our lives, we’re instantly, and constantly, informed about everything.  If something important happens, we’ll know about it within minutes.  Coming out of a movie theater this summer – Transformers 2 was the movie, unfortunately – my friends and I [...]

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Journalists should study up!

I’m not entirely sure when it happened, but at some, not-so-long-ago point, I stopped buying Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Allure – the usual fare – and started exclusively buying health magazines. I exchanged my celebrity gossip websites for fitness blogs; I can peruse the articles on – don’t judge me – bodybuilding.com for hours on end, whereas [...]

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