It is a mock blog formatted similar to a newspaper and founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti. The blog offers information and news on politics, entertainment, media, business, the economy and much more. "The Huffington Post" is designed to elicit strong feelings and purposefully meant to embrace the humor in politics, think John Stewart's favorite political blog. The blog receives over a million comments each month and is one of the more famous blogs. It leaves the fear of government up to its reader's minds and focuses more in simply the information, with a little bit of a humorous twist. Enjoy!
After looking at the blog, I chose to focus on the post "A Cautionary Tale of Three Black Men." This post was controversial in it's discussion about the three "most powerful black men today," Juan Williams, Michael Steele and President Obama, all of which have been accussed of "acting white." The blogger gives his opinion in stating that he is more than sick of hearing the "acting white" slur and the effects that it has on the African American community. He states that, "through their hard work and determination, they have forever changed the perception that blacks were incapable of reaching success at the highest levels. These three men are acting right, rather than acting white."
ReplyDeleteI found the comments interesting because it seems that many commenters were African American themselves. Many people seemed to strongly disagree with Juan Williams and Michael Steele being two of the most powerful black men. However, I feel that the readers valued the blog in the sense that they all appreciated someone defending them and arguing against the "acting white" slur; they agreed upon this as a community.
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It is extremely difficult for a true "blog" to garner as much respect and have as many readers as the Huffington Post does, but it is not out of pure luck that it got the way it is.
ReplyDeleteThe Huffington Post almost functions like a well-known news outlet such as Fox News; everything is covered, and if you were to read a couple of the posts, you would notice that they are written similarly to that of professional news articles. It is much more difficult to pinpoint instances of un-professionalism in THP as it was in previous blogs. That isn't to say that the other blogs are bad; however, a professional apperance and writing style in posts does attract more readers.
What makes The Huffington Post different than others we have featured is that you can visit the site to get your daily political news. With other blogs, there is often too much explicit bias to feel like you're getting the entire story. While all writers want to make you think a certain way when reading their work, THP is able to do so without omitting information that supports the other side.
As I have done in the last few weeks, my main goal is to determine whether or not this blog "actually does anything". It is fairly obvious (and if it isn't, read "HuffPost Readers Weigh In on How to Restore Sanity to America" to see how many people responded to the question the blog asked readers to answer) that the answer is yes...
Prompt 7. I am responding to the article "Why you shouldn't praise your childs intelligence?" In the video it posts it states that Ethan sailed through middle school getting very good grades. When he would come home his parents would praise him on how smart he was. Truth was Ethan's classes just required no effort and it was easy for him to do well in. When he got to junior high he noticed he had to start putting effort in his classes. He was not used to this therefore his grades fell. This article states that the parents should of praised Ethan fro his hard-work. This appeals to the child's efforts and not its "unchangeable, gifted mind."
ReplyDeleteAfter browsing several articles on the blog, I mainly focus on the article: “Foreclosures Surge in Unexpected Regions: See the 10 Cities with the Highest Foreclosure Rates (PHOTOS)”. It provides the readers with a lot specific data about the current housing price and foreclosures in the US. According the article, the US are facing a strong crisis about housing and more and people are losing home either because of losing jobs or the banks going to bankrupt. And at the end of the article, there are ten beautiful pictures of the top ten cities with the highest foreclosure rates. As a non US citizen, I was shocked by the information the article provides and kind of generated a feeling of fear that the US is still in a terrible economics condition. However, after I read the comments, I found out most people don’t agree the opinion in this article. They claimed that the article hides the truth that most people who get tripped in the housing crisis got their loans from non-depository lenders and only three to four cities the article mentioned are the big or real places ordinary people will choose to live in. But why the article said that? It is probably an article from the people who against the current government and they are using it to make people think the government is doing nothing about unemployment and credit crisis. Then, people would all against the government.
ReplyDeletei am working on the topic 7 with "Terror Alert: Explosives On US-Bound Planes"... this blog give us lots information like a news. and this one would influence people like some terrorist, because they eod us that the test security system can find you. and we should be areful out there. as a citizen, we need be careful about plane terrorist.
ReplyDeleteIn response to 1:
ReplyDeleteAs soon as the blog page comes up, 'POTENTIAL TERRORIST THREAT' is at the top of the page in very large font and red letters. Right below is a picture of police vehicles on an airport runway. Right away you can tell that the page is related to the fear of terrorism. Red is associated with fear as well as the capital letters. Also, the picture implicitly tries to increase our fear of terrorism because of the attacks in 2001. Every post on the site is related to politics. The blog is trying to create a fear of how the government opperates.
Prompt Number 1.
ReplyDeleteOut of all of the blogs that I have analyzed the interface for, Huffington Post looks the most like a reliable source for information. Though the first thing that the reader notices is the headline "'POTENTIAL TERRORIST THREAT'
Fighter Jets Escort Passenger Plane To JFK... Al Qaeda Cargo Plot Feared" plastered on the front page. The font is quite large on this headline in order to draw the attention of the reader. Featuring breaking information is a contributing factor to the sense of timeliness and modernity of the blog. There are not any obtrusive ads and the blog uses a very professional color scheme. Also with the buttons to connect to facebook and twitter being featured on the blog, this also gives the impression that it is a very modern source for information and attracts to the younger generation.
This blogs interface does a good job of making the blog look like a credible source for information and also being a very current source for information.
I’ve never read the Huffington Post before, but I had an enjoyable time navigating through the site. The first thing I noticed was the massive amount of information that can be found on the front page alone. Instead of having a full article followed by another full article followed by another full article like most other blogs, this one gives each story a small box with just a picture and a headline with links to the full story. This allows for many more stories to fill the front page and allows readers to easily choose the one that interests them. The left side of the front page contains previews to op-ed columns. These are all arranged in boxes with the columnists name, credentials, and the first few lines of the column. Having the credentials of all the columnists makes the whole site, well, credible. The layout of this site conveys that there is a wealth of information to be found. The banner at the top breaks stories into 25 different categories so you can find stories that relate to whatever you are interested in.
ReplyDeleteOverall I found this site to be very impressive. Although it leans liberal/progressive, it offers a variety of opinions and doesn’t spend time slandering opponents or causing chaos. It is the first blog I’ve seen that may be able to contribute to the political conversation in a helpful way.
After reading the post “Woman fired from temp job for having poor credit”, I realized that credit check truly like a coin of two sides. On one hand, there are numerous concrete data in this post shows how credit scores affects people pursuing their suitable jobs, although they possess ability to perform the job.
ReplyDeleteWhat is more, those employers use the low credit check as an excuse to prevent those people who are eager to pay for their bills. That is to say, owing to their unemployment, they still maintain their low credit scores; it would be a vicious circle. As a matter of fact, I extremely doubt that view about someone would be a threat for stealing money from the bank because he or she behind on a few bills. Why those human resource directors think they are dangerous, instead of believing those people would work harder for pursuing the bonus since they are lack of money than others? Is that means their security system vulnerable? How fragile excuse it is!
However, I totally argue for Congress to prohibit the use of credit checks for the purpose of making adverse employment decisions. People need chance to prove they are able to repay the debt.
I am responding to question number one. The Huffington Post is unique to most blogs because it does not focus on only one topic or ideology. On the main page there are different posts varying from politics, business, to entertainment. It is hard to say who exactly the target audience is since it has so many different genres for people to read. Rather than a blog The Huffington Post is more like a newspaper that everyone can comment on. The main page does use pictures and interesting headlines to pull different audiences in. It has many different stories and topics to appeal to different audiences. Overall the Huffington Post is a "blog" geared to all different people, of all different ages, and beliefs.
ReplyDeleteResponding to prompt number 7. I have heard of "The Huffington Post" and its rumor of being a great news site many times in the past but never really got the opportunity to look into it. The initial impression I received from the site was its casualty and simplicity. This image compliments its reputation as a humorous news site but raises doubts as a serious source of information. As I read through the site, I have found that the topics range from "Obama Signals Shifts on Gay Marriage Support" to "Charlie Sheen Found Nude In Restaurant, Screaming N-Word." Even though I find having a variety of articles to be interesting, I see some of these may be distracting readers from the serious messages that some authors are trying to convey. A key element of this blog is its large user and comment base. The numbers of the comments differ greatly from topic to topic, some articles even contain doubled to tripled the comment of the others, showing the interest of the user base, which can be interpreted as a good microcosm of today's society. This information is very useful towards finding the modern citizen's interest at a given time, for example, an article on terrorism received 10,391 comments while the Obama's gay marriage article only received 1013 comments. This site not only provides users with useful and entertaining news, but also allows researchers and scholars to find trends of the modern society by carefully observing the number and the content of the comments.
ReplyDeletePrompt number 7. I am responding to an article written about The Rally on Fear and Sanity. The article seems to be well written however focuses more on the journalists experience rather than the issues expressed in the rally. I personally liked this website because there seems to be a lot of followers. On this particular article there are over 7000 comments. Although some of the comments seem to be well written there is still bashing and mean comments. After reading the comments it seems like most bloggers like this particular journalist and read these articles for fun or for entertainment rather than to learn about particular issues. The website is very formal and well organized however I believe the articles written do not effect the readers ideas but the article does focus on the interest of readers.
ReplyDeleteI am responding to option number 7. I feel like a lot of the blogs we read are about politics. This is a topic that I do not have much interest in but I feel like this blog helps spread awareness. I read a post about legalizing marijuana in California. The blog gave statistics of different reactions to the bill and I feel it helped people to learn more about the issue. A lot of the current posts are about the upcoming election. Some of the blogs are negative towards the election but most of them are supportive and are giving people information on different topics and bills that will show up during the election. Most of the blogs on this site also have a lot of comments which means readers give a lot of their own feedback. Looking at the comments, there was a mix of positive and negatives but in general I think this blog is doing its job.
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