Ugh

[altivo]

I think I'm getting the cold that Gary has had all week. Wanna go to bed but I still have work to do.

Tomorrow: The Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival, Jefferson County Fairgrounds. Picking up a fellow spinner and friend at 8 am and driving up, planning to be back mid-afternoon at the latest. There should be lots to see and plenty of temptations to avoid spending money on. Barring a very extreme deterioration in my health before morning, I will still be going, as this opportunity comes but once a year.

Started listening to The Country Beyond by James Oliver Curwood, in the Librivox audio book version. This is one I've never read, but it definitely features much description from the point of view of a mongrel dog called Peter. Set in the north woods of Canada, of course, as are most of Curwood's stories (even though he was a US citizen like Jack London.) A plug here for Librivox. If you like audio books, these are free, public domain recordings made by volunteers. The texts are public domain novels and poetry from Project Gutenberg. Quality varies, of course, but most I've tried have been quite good overall.

The first issue of Harvard's new newspaper came out today. Harvard, Illinois had at least one newspaper, sometimes two or three, continuously from the mid-1860s until 1986. At that time, the Harvard Herald was bought out by a county-wide newspaper, but Harvard soon was forgotten in the coverage that focused almost entirely on the wealthy and populous towns at the eastern end of the county. Three years ago the library started publishing a biweekly "paper" that was little more than a community calendar, a listing of events with whatever filler could be squeezed into it. "Harvard Happenings" was first published under a grant, and then continued after the grant ran out. Two weeks ago, we printed the last issue, suspending our production in favor of the new paper, The Harvard Mainline that is named for the once-busy and still functioning railroad line that provided the excuse for Harvard's beginnings back before the Civil War. Fittingly, the library's centennial celebration that took place last month is featured on the front page, with the header "Party like it's 1909." My mate Gary is in the photo, providing musical entertainment with his friends Neal, Rob, and Dawn.

I've been meaning to say something disparaging about newspapers. Not the small weeklies, but the big dailies are my target. For months we've been hearing how they are losing readership and going bankrupt. Many have in fact declared bankruptcy, and some have ceased print publication. The long established and once high quality Chicago Tribune is among them.

Supposedly the internet is killing the newspapers. Judging by what I'm finding in the Trib, though, the newspapers are killing themselves. More and more feature articles are obviously just pasted together with clips from various web pages. Worse, it seems that the "writer" or "editor" really aren't paying attention. So you'll find that an article about fashion has an odd paragraph pasted into the middle that isn't about fashion at all, but about gardens. Similar problems are visible in every issue. At first I couldn't figure it out, and then I realized: each time I see this, there is a key word involved that has multiple meanings. A Google search with that keyword will pull in both subjects that have been mixed in the article.

Could we really have reached the point already where newspapers are hiring reporters who learned to write in the schools that teach "writing" by using Google and cutting and pasting together bits and pieces, rather than actually reading source material and digesting it in your own words? I fear this has come to pass.

Writing, my friends, is becoming an endangered species.

Comments

[frith]

That's incredible! News items "written" by people that don't actually read? Newspapers just reprinting glib company 'newsreleases' is bad enough but this takes the cake.

[altivo]

Yep. Twenty years ago I'd have said it was impossible. But the evidence is so clear, I can draw no other conclusion. Based on various statistics and studies, and the evidence I see myself daily, fully half of US residents now consider reading to be a chore that is not usually worth the effort involved. It's no wonder that magazines and newspapers are scrambling to survive.

[mondhasen.livejournal.com]

Ah, I do so love audio books. I saw last night that Gutenberg had audio (been a while since I had been to that site) and might try them, too. Thanks for the tip on Librivox.

Our library is one of many that uses ezone. I used to like this service until some bug or another with them caused the stories not to restart at the point I stopped at last. The books synch without the 3 minute markers so that each 'part' is over an hour: when a section is interrupted it might start over or it might advance to the beginning of the next part. Fast-forwarding on the Sansa is cumbersome and exasperating.

Now just I rip 'em from the disks themselves, which always works well, if I can find the story I want (I've been looking for _Catching Fire_ by Suzanne Collins on audio but none of our branches carry it). Haven't been able to talk our YA librarian into ordering it.

[quoting-mungo.livejournal.com]

My impression has been that schools have (here) gotten better at catching and preventing Google-plagiarism, and at teaching students that It Is Bad. Of course, you still get the students who think they can get away with it, and the rare student who ends up being right. That rare student is probably the biggest problem.

If I was interested in the news, I'd get a paper newspaper. I've found that I'm better off, emotionally, not getting involved with what happens in the rest of the world, however. Newspapers are fine and good, but news are not, for me.


-Alexandra

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

Writing, my friends, is becoming an endangered species.



So is spelling and grammar. I am finding myself second guessing my spelling (when I write with a paper and pen) now that I have used computers with spell checkers for so long. It's quite scary how easy it is to forget.

EDIT: I am not alone either. My local newspaper made four mistakes on article the other day. I frequently make errors on my LJ posts too, but *I* am not a journalist.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

What's really bad is second-guessing yourself and having to realize, "Yes, that really is the right way" because you've seen so much bad spelling on the net for so long that the wrong version(s) seem to be the norm and the right versions of things cause a stumble.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I just cataloged Catching Fire. It's brand new, give it a couple months and someone will probably have the audio.

Another possibility is audible.com, of course. They get most of the new titles right away. I'm pretty sure the Sansa players are compatible with Audible formats. Forgetting your place is a common characteristic in audio files that use the Windows WMA format rather than MP3. I think it's a defect in the way the format itself is designed and used.

We rip CD books to MP3 for our own use as well, but they are much bulkier that way than the Audible format, which I recommend highly.

Gutenberg's audios are mostly computer-generated voice. I find that unacceptable. Maybe someday it will be good enough, but not yet. Librivox are live readers, and admittedly some are not the best but many are very good. It has the added advantage that it costs nothing to try, so nothing but download time is lost if you don't like the reader. The limitation of course is that it only contains public domain works.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Schools here are not good at anything, and they're getting worse. Judging by what I see in the library, the teachers and administration alike are nearly all morons. Part of it is the level of micromanagement introduced during the Bush administration, which tried to introduce "quality control" but in such an ineffective way that instead it removed all the content.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The first thing I do in any word processor is turn OFF the damned spelling checker. I find it is wrong as often as it is right, and its vocabulary is never adequate so it constantly flags me for things that are correct.

At the same time, these cheap "aids" cause a false sense of security. We see frequent errors in newspapers and magazines that involve misuse of homonyms, such as "their" vs. "there" vs. "they're," and I'm sure the spelling checker approved every one of them. At one time there were copy editors and proofreaders who caught many such errors but now they've all been eliminated because the computerized spelling wrecker is cheaper.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I haven't had that problem yet. What I do tend to have is dropped letters or transpositions from typing too fast on poor quality keyboards.

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

You might have put your finger on something there. That's exactly what happens to me sometimes.

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, I do not have trouble with homonyms. My particular grammar curse is the correct use the apostrophe.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, "its" and "it's" are homonyms. ;p The spelling checker won't get those either.

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

I've been meaning to say something disparaging about newspapers.

But that would be "piling on", as they say in football. :) But yeah, most newspapers have become pretty laughable. And they've brought it on themselves. They haven't figured out how to use the new technology, and they haven't figured out how to keep any quality in the face of their distress. Sure, ad revenues are down, but they've compromised their real purpose so severely, who would want to advertise in them?

As for writing itself, I almost don't want to even go there. Over a dozen years ago, I had conversations with The Ott Lake Rambler over writing at the college level (he's a professor, and I was reviewing writing samples from prospective new hires at the time) and we'd both just shake our heads and sigh. It's not getting any better.

[mondhasen.livejournal.com]

I've been here too long to start paying for my books, I fear. Audible may have it, but I see it's a commercial service.

I was lucky enough to get Hunger Games ripped, and was just hoping to listen to this one before I forgot everything important to the story. I'm also hoping that they didn't change readers.

Inkheart was a wonderfully narrated story. When I got hold of Inkspell, the reader had changed. Dustfinger's character changed so dramatically with the new reader that I never got past the first couple of chapters.

And thinking of the grammar thread going on below by avon_deer, I was going to apologize for the little underscores I use as underlines and/or italics... and when I posted the comment including the slash/i tag, it worked... so I had to delete and repost.

Now if I can work on all those ...'s

Hope your health improved.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes, and the attitude both in the general population and in the schools is that "it doesn't matter." That's the scary thing. Where literacy and the ability to write clearly were once highly valued and respected, now they are regarded as "irrelevant."

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Sure, Audible is a commercial service. Authors, readers, and producers are certainly entitled to something for their effort. I still buy books regularly even though I work in a library. For one thing, I find that libraries just don't supply everything I want.

Audible offers subscription plans, sort of like a book club. You pay a monthly fee and get one or two audiobooks of your choice for that fee. I subscribe at a two book level and generally get $60 to $100 in value for $19.95 or so.