His Girl Friday Blog Day One

Journalism here is hectic; fast paced and probably can’t mess up very much on the typewriters. Obviously, this is old fashioned and the way it used to be. Everyone seems to be very interactive, friendly, and home-like with each other as well. This paper and these people are political as well (being that the paper is democratic). They want to be the first ones to break a story as well; just like the coal mine (he missed their honeymoon in the original place).
What these people are like is Walter is the typical, do anything journalist. He even shoved aside his honeymoon from his new wife to be the first one in the country to break the big coal mine story. Walter talks fast and speaks his mind, maybe talking to much. Basically, with this personality he will cover anything and do anything for a story. He has a lot of “charm” according to Bruce.
Hildy was a young college grad when she broke into the business “five years ago.” Walter calls her a journalist and argues with her to stay at the paper. He wants her to keep staying with the business. Bruce says no one knows what she is going to say or do, hence being a good “newspaper man,” because she is spontaneous and will do anything. According to Walter, she has a “woman’s touch” for certain stories.

Jimmy Breslin Thoughts

Then post your response to Breslin's writing. What do you like? What do you not like? Is this stuff literature? What is literature? Is it journalism? What's journalism, for that matter? What do you think Breslin means when he says he's not a journalist, he's a reporter ... a reporter is a guy who works for a living ... what's the difference to you? Which would you rather read? Which would you rather write?

Well first of all I do agree that he is very opinionated. I like the way he writes, but I may not agree with what he writes. However, he speaks his mind and says what he feels, which I do like. You can see the passion he has in his writing as well, obviously he is VERY left winged. I do think the stuff is literature, because when I read it he seems to be telling a story. Even though he is opinionated he does have facts, even though I don't know how valid everything is. He does write very well though, with everything flowing in the few articles that I read. I do think he is a reporter more so than a journalist because he likes to give and list facts. The article that stuck out in my mind about the facts he was giving was "In case we all forgot, Americans are still dying in Iraq." In this he lists many names of people who served their country and died, with a little bit of information on each of them. Instead of giving numbers, he gives names and facts about people, which makes more of an impact than a statistic that people just seem to be numb to anymore. What he means by he works for a living is that he does do a lot of research it seems like to get these stories straight. I would rather read this style of writing because I like to feel a connection with the piece and I am not a big fan of statistics being thrown around. I would rather be like him, sticking to my opinions and not really caring what people think. However, he does back up his information with facts, and I like that. I like how he writes and reports, and I like his backbone for saying what he feels and believes in.

What do I expect to learn

I don't really know what to expect to learn since this is the being of the semester. What I would like to learn is more about the literay aspect, hence the title of this class. I haven't done much literature style of learning in college, and not since grade school to it will be interesting to see how much I can learn this semester. Still though I don't know what really to expect so far.