Death of the author

| Trackback | Permalink | August 21st, 2008

So we’re doing all this ‘death of the author’ stuff in my communications course, and lo and behold I stumble onto this site:

I am a newspaperman.

For some unexplainable reason, I am compelled to say that tonight.

Something is coming, some turn in the media universe, a turn in the future of my newspaper. A turn that will mean the end of me, of us. There will be reporters. Editors. Something called online producers and multi-media coordinators. Mojos. Slojos and Nojos. Bloggers, froggers and twitters.

But there won’t be newspapermen. At 58, I am among the last of a dying race.

And what a race it was. An American archetype.

A newspaperman was a writer. An author. The true, first voice of history. A newspaperman chronicled the life of his times on old Remingtons with faded ribbons. A newspaperman wrote on copy paper, one story in one take. If he wanted a copy, he used carbon paper. If it didn’t sing, it was spiked….

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So has the ‘author’ really died or will it continue through digital media?? I suppose its an interesting problem to comprehend, because ‘journalism’ is clearly being taken over by citizen journalism today. The internet just makes things so much easier to find and getting news from different sources makes so much more difference than watching half an hour of fluff and puff pieces!!

And I gotta say, if the old media corporations want to get with the times, they should probably make things more interactive with their blogs….eg. New York Times. Plus their blogroll could also go to small timer, regular people’s blogs - not just journalists in high places. I mean just read this article and tell me what you think of the writing -_- Seriously the author, Elizabeth Farrelly even says: “The blogosphere is often offered as evidence of the mass amateurisation of publishing. And not in a good way.” The hell??? I’m sorry to say but I think 90% of bloggers out there agree this piece of writing is pretty amateurish in itself! I didn’t even know what her point is until I read the last paragraph on the second page. You know, if I wanted an article of how bad the Olympic coverage is over here, I could just surf over to Yahoo forums. They seem to be having a ball bashing Channel 7!! (me included xD)

Anywho I’d love to hear some other people’s thoughts on the ‘death of the author’…just leave a comment!

~ Jakki posted at 1:21 am

See also...

• Is Cover Art dead?
• ‘ONE NATION UNDER CCTV’