80-89: Essays, or, Books as Boxes of Chocolates

As far as I can tell, the 80s are dedicated to collections of short works on assorted subjects. The two I chose from the public library were as follows:

Fraud by David Rakoff, which I picked because I mistakenly thought for some reason that he was the author of Every Person on the Planet, which I loved but isn't by him. Also, it is supposed to be funny and has pictures drawn by the author. It's the pictures that really are reminding me of something, although, not, as it turns out, the work of Bruce Eric Kaplan. Did Rakoff ever do cartoons for the New Yorker? Did he illustrate someone else's books? This is driving me slightly nuts, and the interwebs, which usually can answer such a question so quickly, are only interested in his writing, not his drawing, so if anyone can help me, I'd appreciate it. Meanwhile, I am looking forward to enjoying Rakoff's work, which gets stellar reviews. It appears to be a collection of essays most of which were originally written for This American Life, so that's a pretty good pedigree.

A Calendar of Wisdom, which I picked because it was compiled by Leo Tolstoy, who I correctly thought was the author of Resurrection and War and Peace, both of which I had greatly enjoyed. It seems to be a sort of semi-secular devotional, a collection of quotes and short essays by the great man himself and many others about how great wisdom is and of what it consists. Not the kind of thing one reads cover to cover, but I'm looking forward to leaving it around. I'm particularly interested in it because I am trying to write a devotional right now for my own personal use, because I can't find one that is exactly what I am looking for.

Before I went to the public library, I decided that I would try, whenever possible, to read from our own church library. When I hit the 200s, this will be very easy, of course, although pickings are slim elsewhere in the Dewey numbers, and only half our holdings are even assigned a number yet. But it so happens we have one book numbered 082, a slim collection of CS Lewis's ephemera, originally published in newspapers and magazines, and covering a wide range of topics. It is ironically titled Present Concerns even though it is about things people were concerned about in 1945. But CS Lewis was such a great writer he could make shopping for groceries interesting, so I will give it a fair trial.

As always, you can click on the images below to explore these books further.

 

What Now? Blur

I spent a long time with Blur: How to Know What's True in the Age of Information Overload. One thing that was really nice about it was that it assumed that there was such a thing as truth and that the reader might care to know what that was. Previous posts have outlined the authors' strategies for getting at the truth. The authors close by bringing up a related issue. It's good to fact-check the information that comes our way... but it's even more important to make sure we are getting the information we need.

Most of us just kind of let the news flow towards us. Whether it's our Facebook feeds, TV and radio, or even a print source, we expose ourselves to far more than we can really process, but yet are exposed to only what someone else thought was important enough to bring to our attention. So I am hearing a lot about the Ice Bucket Challenge, but nothing about-- well, I don't know, because I'm not hearing anything about it. What's in your feed is determined partly by who else has responded to the items available... you can't respond if it doesn't show up in the first place... so maybe your view of the news is skewed not by deliberate inaccuracy but just by the happenstance of what gets picked up, what gets traction as the flavor of the day.

So what to do? The authors suggest that we make a list of the ten things we are most worried about, interested in, or involved with. We can then seek out the news that pertains to those concerns, and skip what doesn't... although I would have missed a lot of interesting information that way. Maybe an even more interesting question, once I've decided the topic matters, is: what is this piece of reportage telling me? Is there really anything new here, or is it just a rehash? How reliable is the stuff that seems new to me?

Ultimately, if I really want to contribute to the public discourse, just reading The Week or watching the news the same way I read a novel or watch Jeopardy isn't good enough. I have to start asking myself more questions.
 

How to tell real news from fake (More from Blur by Kovach and Rosenstiel)

I'm still reading Blur by Kovach and Rosenstiel. It's great information, but definitely leaves me wondering how I would ever have time to implement all the suggestions they provide for vetting news stories.

For example, one should ask oneself, apparently, where the information comes from. Was the journalist herself a witness or credentialed expert? Were first-hand witnesses the sources for an event? If so, how recently did they see it? How many of them are there? What were their perspectives, both literally and figuratively? If experts are quoted for analysis or commentary, what are their agendas? And are they offering facts, or opinions? What about "anonymous sources? And when opinions and analysis are offered, do the same catchphrases ("death-panels;" "welfare queens;" "boots on the ground") keep cropping up? If so, you may not be hearing sources so much as parrots of official talking points. The ideal source is risking something and gaining nothing by providing information.

These questions only have meaning if you are reading what the authors call "the journalism of verification," whose writers are committed to producing only what they can prove to be true, not what they believe to be true. So all forms of evidence can be tested: what is offered? How was it vetted? Has opposing evidence also been presented? What conclusions have been drawn-- are they supported? Could other conclusions be drawn from the same evidence? Are you getting breaking news that may be incomplete, or something that should have been properly analyzed? This reminds me of the book I read about Confidential magazine, and how for years they avoided lawsuits by meticulous fact-checks of their gossip pieces!

Every communication has three levels: the denotation (what it says), the connotation (what it means), and the annotation (how it feels; the tone). So, does a news story follow the scientific method? Is it true in denotation, that is, are all the facts accurate? In connotation, that is, are the facts assembled to make a true story? Is the tone fair? I think of weather reports, which often exaggerate certain evidence and take on a hysterical tone, because otherwise, why would we tune in?

Perhaps one could also think of the scientific method, which involves forming a hypothesis and then testing it with evidence. We do this all the time in real life: did I leave my keys in the church library? Well, let me go look, knowing it's possible that I did not. Any piece of journalism that purports to be investigative should certainly address the possibility that the hypothesis was wrong.

A lot of what passes for informational programming is just talking heads with talking points and a moderator who discourages moderation. In such a situation, the interviewer or emcee often lets false statements go by, because her job is really just to facilitate her guests' expression of their own ideas. In such a case, we may be in the realm of the "journalism of affirmation," which seeks only to comfort with well-worn ideas and theories. Such "journalism" cherry-picks facts, ascribes unusually evil motives to the other 48% of Americans, and indulges in ad-hominem attacks and ultimately the creation of alternate realities. We like this kind of "news," which is both entertaining and affirming, but let's not kid ourselves that we have learned anything from it!

Googling something once does not make you an expert on it: Blur by Kovach and Rosenstiel

This is a sort of book report on Blur by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel. The problem they are trying to solve is nicely summarized in the subtitle: How to Know What's True in the Age of Information Overload. They propose six steps to evaluating news, regardless of medium of delivery:
1. Determine what kind of content you are looking at.
2. Determine whether the account is complete.
3. Assess the sources.
4. Assess the evidence.
5. Question the reporter's explanation or understanding of the evidence.
6. Explore whether the news is meeting real needs.

The writers identify four kinds of content:
-Verification, which asks whether the material is accurate and fairly contextualized. In this model, it is the reporter's job to fact-check, to know his beat, to distinguish between fact and analysis, and to know what he still doesn't know.
-Assertion, which just passes on as much raw information as possible without evaluation. In this model, there is usually no time to fact-check, analytical statements are tossed off by sources as if they were facts,  and not challenged, and sheer quantity substitutes for story.
-Affirmation, which chooses content that will confirm the opinions of its audience. This is distinguished from  opinion journalism, as found in, say, The National Review,  which does not expect to be your source of news but of news analysis. Affirmation expects you to "hear it here first," but only if it matches what you were expecting to hear.
-Interest-group journalism, which is designed to look like news but is dedicated to serving only the purposes of the funding group. Look for shady funding sources or for repetitive themes and conclusions in every story.

These models can be combined in an aggregate, such as The Week, that collects and edits news and opinion, attempting to tell you both what happened and what people thought about it, but the very act of editing is an act of filtering that can be driven by a desire to inform, affirm, or propagandize.

We all remember the 5 Ws and an H, but here's something that is often missing from reports of all kinds: the Q-- Questions that remain unanswered or that were raised by the info in the story. If the news doesn't even give the who, what, where, when, why and how, it is certainly not complete and is not a good example of verification journalism. If it does answer those questions, it may legitimately go on to try to make sense of those answers. It may also try to authenticate things stated in previous reports. It may even be assembling information in such a way as to draw attention to new paradigm. For example, this article I just read today in the New York Times magazine: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/03/magazine/the-kids-who-beat-autism.html?_r=0 introduces facts that suggest that there may be a cure for autism available to some children. This is certainly a new idea. Do the facts presented in the story support it? That is what the authors are challenging us to discover.

Wow, see why this is the book I wanted to read? It's not exactly relaxing, but it is very clear and easy to follow and discusses a challenge that I deal with every day: the information that is coming at me. So often those who act like they know what they are talking about get the credit they expect, but really, all they did was Google something-- it's just raw, random, uncontextualized data, or it's spin, or it's sheer fabrication, and it's a big project to really tell which is which. Now I'm going to read about how to evaluate sources.

70-79: Journalism, Broadly Defined

The 70's are meant to focus on newspapers. However, the bulk of the books on offer seemed to be memoirs. Maybe they were journalistic in that they had originally been blogs? Or maybe they were by or about journalists, or about people's interactions with newspapers? I wasn't sure, but I picked up MWF Seeks BFF, a "stunt biography" about a woman going on 52 "first dates" with different women in her new town, looking for a new BFF. It looked entertaining and similar to other books I have read and enjoyed, but I wasn't sure what it had to do with journalism or how it achieved my goal of forcing myself to learn about a wider variety of topics, so I also selected Blur: How to Know What's True in the Age of Information Overload, which seemed more like a "real" 070s book.

Well, less like a book I would read like a novel, anyway. I'm a little ways into it and really appreciating it, but I have been keeping the Book Darts (TM) handy, because it does require some study and attention. They are addressing the problem of over information