December 7, 2007
Who's News?
This will probably be my final blog of the semester, but I have been meaning to mention this for the past week and simply ran out of time. I went home on Thanksgiving and began reading our two local area weekly newspapers. I found that I had a whole new perspective of them since taking this class. These papers are important to our local communities and because of that they are filled with community news, but not much else. They include the happenings of the area schools, the new business that came into an area town, and there are even columns written by community members that include who ate dinner with who, the health of neighbors, and who attended church last Sunday. I mention this experience because it made me laugh imagining Dr. Cline looking at one of these during class and explaining this and that or rolling his eyes at the mention of some of it being "news", because I clearly realized the differences and often errors that we discuss in class everyday. Then it also made me laugh because these are the papers I grew up with, and it shows a lot about where I come from, which is both good and perhaps a tiny bit frightening, but never the less the articles made me smile.
Posted by cgiddings at 11:57 AM | 218 Words
Good Story News-Leader
An article printed in the Springfield News-Leader on Wednesday, December 5th, caught my attention. “Prater honored for her work” is an article describing the honorable and abundant contributions that Marie Prater has made in the Springfield community. Marie Prater received the CFO Humanitarian of the Year Award and according to the article it was very much deserved. The lead in the story starts right away with her name, what the story is about, and when it all began. It then shows figures of what Prater has accomplished and that she received the award. This alone drew me into the article and then as I continued to read and learn more about Prater and her family my interest was sparked and by the end I had the image of an energetic, active, and caring woman in my mind. I feel that the structure and the writing were good and enabled readers to get a feel for Prater herself as if you might have met her.
Posted by cgiddings at 11:35 AM | 164 Words
December 6, 2007
World AIDS Day
I want to respond to a story written in The Standard on Tuesday, December 4th, titled “Bad timing for depressing idea with good intentions”.
Upon reading the article I was frustrated with the author, as well as confused. Within the second paragraph my guard went up. When discussing how money can be sent to help AIDS victims, the response from the author was “But, dude. Kids? I’m struggling with a cat. And if I just sent money what kind of step-father am I?” Well just maybe the kind that saves that child’s life or at the very least puts a pair of shoes on their feet. The comparison of this situation to owning a cat I found ridiculous and a total loss of credibility for the author.
The author then attacks the idea of praying for hope for these victims. Try criticizing the message of hope to someone with the virus who has only hope to hold on to.
I became confused when he questions if lack of awareness is really the problem because of the reasoning, “who haven’t heard about the AIDS thing?” The problem is that people have heard about it, but that doesn’t always equate to knowing about it. Later in the article he changes is tune and does comment on how it is heartening to see improvements in treatment since the 1990s. How do you think this progress took place? Awareness. People began talking about the virus, awareness was raised, and people took getting tested more seriously. Like other social issues, silence is the enemy. Silence allows the abuse, addiction, or disease to continue. By speaking up, raising awareness that silence is broken and progress can occur. STDs and virus’s such as AIDS are a common and everyday occurrence in the world we live in. Thank goodness that someone stood up and said it’s time to do something about it and created a World AIDS Day.
Posted by cgiddings at 12:15 AM | 320 Words
