Week 7: Peer Review & Revision

In class this week, you will be afforded the time to give and receive feedback from your peers, revise your work, and conference with me on how to improve your work. Coming prepared to class is not only the best way to maximize your use of this time, it is also the best way to do thoroughly better on your final paper.

In order to come prepared for class, please bring three copies of a completed version of your essay that meets all the demands of the assignment, especially page length. It is always much harder to revise a paper when you haven't finished writing it.

HW:
Tuesday:
Working Draft Due. Bring three hard copies. 
Current Event Due

Thursday: 
EasyWriter, 37-41

Revision Day. Bring hard and electronic copies of your paper. 


Friday:
Second GLA due. 

Week 6.2: Brooke Gladstone and Josh Neufeld, The Influencing Machine

Reading:
Brooke Gladstone and Josh Neufeld, The Influencing Machine, 103-complete
Invention Exercises


Study Questions:
1. What is the difference between journalistic objectivity and journalistic disclosure? What caused these various journalistic styles to emerge?

2. At the end of the book, Gladstone tells us, "Our limits are purely human. Our enemies are not the digital bits that dance across our screens but the neural impulses that animate our lizard brains. We get the media we deserve" (155-6). What does she mean by this? Use evidence from earlier in today's reading to justify your answers.

Week 6.1: Brooke Gladstone and Johsn Neufeld, The Influencing Machine

This week we will begin our current event project. The directions for this assignment have already been passed out in class and can be found along with the paper assignment descriptions on the website. The purpose of this assignment is three fold:

1) Reading a newspaper is important to being a well-informed citizen. The chart above details both political biases of major news sources in the United States while also evaluating their journalistic integrity. As you know from today's reading, political bias is just one type of bias in journalism and Gladstone does not think it to be the most influential. Nonetheless, it is worth considering in conjunction with journalistic quality. In order to be well-informed citizen who is capable of making rational decisions, you must know what is going on in the world and you must be able to consider where this information is coming from.

2) Our second paper will be focusing on The Influencing Machine and its explanation of the news media. While you are not required to reference the news reports you have read for this paper, it is important to consider her ideas in reference to actual media reports. In our final portfolio assignment, you will incorporate parts of the second paper but you will have to cite directly from the news stories you have read.

3) Our final exam will ask you to take a stand on a contemporary issue of public importance. Being well-informed on these issues will help you make a stronger argument. Taken collectively, thirty percent of your grade is tied to doing the current event project.

Reading:
Brooke Gladstone and Johsn Neufeld, The Influencing Machine, 57-102
Current Event Assignment Part 1 (upload to turnitin.com)

Study Questions:
1. In your own words, define the various types of journalistic bias that Gladstone identifies in The Influencing Machine.


2. Look closely at the story you selected for today's current event assignment. How do the types of bias Gladstone identifies influence the story you've selected?

Week 5.2: Brooke Gladstone and Johsn Neufeld, The Influencing Machine

Reading:
Brooke Gladstone and Josh Neufeld, The Influencing Machine, xi-56

Study Questions:
1. According to Gladstone, are the media an influencing machine? Read carefully.


2. Gladstone writes, "We slip back but we recover our footing. The media exposure corruption and build pressure for change -- but the government still has the loudest voice. So when seizing up White House assertions . . . Take the advice of the president who sized up Kremlin assertions . . . 'Trust but verify.' . . . embrace this truth from one of journalism's greatest skeptics. "All government's lie." . . . and accept that there's no free ride in democracy. 'The price of freedom is eternal vigilance'" (33). Use the material from pages 3-32 to support Gladstone's conclusions. 

Week 5.1: Cause and Effect

Being president is hard on the body. What is the cause in the previous sentence? What is the effect?

Cause and effect essays seek to explain how something happened. In order to trace this change, the author of a cause and effect argument must first explain the way things were. The author then needs to explain how things changed and explain why these things changed. Again to review, a cause and effect essay must discuss the following three elements:

• A discussion of the way things were
• A discussion of what changed
• An argument about what caused this change

Similarly, many cause and effect arguments evaluate if the changes they discuss were positive. For instance, in the book that we are about to read--Brooke Gladstone and Josh Neufeld's The Influencing Machine--the authors are interested in understanding why the news media is the way it is. In order to do this, the authors will look at the history of the news media and what forces caused it to change.

To give an example of a cause and effect argument, let's look at the photo above. On the left is President Obama upon his first election. He is a very youthful looking forty-seven. Almost eight years later, President Obama looks his age (if not older) at fifty-four. What happened? This would be the basis of my cause and effect argument. I could argue that the job of the presidency is so physically demanding that President Obama has aged faster. However, I could also argue that his seeming accelerated aging was caused by genetics. I could also argue that it was caused by a number of factors. The strength of any of these arguments would depend on the evidence I can marshal to my advantage.

HW:
The Transition to College Writing, 138-63
EasyWriter, 181-8, 256-63 (Exercises 28.1 & 29.2)