Ahh.. the therapy of blogging.

[WARNING: this post may a get a little sentimental.]

 I am a pretty big advocate of the blogging-is-separate-from-journalism camp, but over the past few days, I have realized one way in which blogging may be better, believe it or not.

 Now, I do not quite know how to preface this, because an outpouring of sympathy is by no means what I want or need. This past weekend wasn’t the best. A close friend of mine from the University of Chicago died in a car accident Saturday night. Seems unrelated, but here’s what it made me realize about BLOGS:

 1. They are supportive and therapeutic: whether it is through supportive comments or just going on the site to read everyone else’s posts (which I have done about 29583723 times in the past few days). I would absolutely not go to a highly journalistic news website to cheer me up or find support.

2.  They let you express how you feel. I can’t pretend that I am giddy and hyper and happy right now, so I can’t right a post that sounds giddy and hyper and happy (which, unfortunately, I think I usually do—yikes). Blogs can be about anything and express whatever emotion they want at the time. News cannot.           

So, while I still stand that blogging and journalism are completely separate entities, I have a new respect for blogging. I feel like in all our discussions we have felt a need to make one ‘good’ and the other ‘bad,’ but really, that is not the case. Blogging and journalism serve different social functions, and right now, I’ve turned to blogging.

 Thanks for keeping this so entertaining, everybody!                                             

Another great form of multimedia

I accidentally discovered another kind of multimedia this week, all thanks to my Dad.

I wasn’t sure anyone still used snail-mail until I moved into my own apartment at school and started receiving—literally—weekly (sometimes bi-weekly) letters from my dad. They rarely have any real message in them, but just one or two newspaper clippings that reminded him of me. (I’m not sure my dad knows how to go online yet actually, but hey, he’s supporting print newspapers!)

One of the articles he sends every week is a Sunday New York Times fashion column by Bill Cunningham. Cunningham is actually a photographer, but, as we know will be required of us when we find jobs, is multi-tasking by writing the column that is surrounded by his photos.

It was just this week that I realized there was a URL and keyword at the bottom. I checked it out, and every week, Cunningham produces a ‘narrated slideshow’ of his photos. So here, a fashion photographer is still doing what he loves, but also writing the column and narrating a compilation of his photos. So don’t give up hope!

The slideshows are pretty interesting, if you like fashion. If not, I’m sure theTimes online uses this feature in other areas of interest. Here is a link to one I just watched: Cunningham talks about how fashions changes in direct relation to how the economy changes.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/01/10/fashion/20090110-street-feature/index.html

Here’s what it looks like in print, courtesy of my dad, possibly the only snail-mailing newspaper reader left: