Arguments Count

Arguments Count
Mary Hamilton

According to Hedges, America is once again quickly degenerating into an image-based society that cannot distinguish between fact and opinion. This is not a good thing, Hedges explains. It means "the loss of civic and public responsibility." He goes on to list practices in the newspaper and media business that blur the lines between fact and opinion. Using a very terse and vivid style, Hedges clearly tries to provoke the reader into worrying about the status quo. He does not back up any of his data with sources and he does not tell the reader what should be done to stop the decline. Instead, he leaves the reader with a vision of a bleak world. I've seen this literary technique in novels such as Orwell's 1984 or Kafka's Metamorphosis. I'm dubious that this technique works in this article because it's not well supported with sources, it's disorganized, and it's more effective in fiction. I also am unconvinced by Hedges' argument that Americans are becoming mindless watchers of pictures. I am equally unimpressed with his lack of research and organization.

Clive Thompson's article begins similarly to Hedges'. "An age of illiteracy is at hand, right?" Thompson then launches into a study conducted by Stanford professor Andrea Lunsford. The study concluded that young people write more than previous generations even though they write differently. Adapting their tone to meet the audience, young people use argument and debate whereas more traditional forms of writing use narration and formal analysis. Thompson concludes that the younger generation is not becoming rapidly illiterate. Rather, they've discovered a new, different way to write--on the Internet. "New Literacy" is a much more convincing article than "Bad Days for Newsrooms" since it supports its argument with data and comes to a conclusion. Both articles try to persuade the reader, but "New Literacy" does it much more effectively and I'm more inclined to agree with Thompson.