Devon Bowie's E- Portfolio - Final Blog Post

I approach the end of my first year of Journalism, and my Proofreading and Copy-Editing class. I have learned much about blogging, and have even somewhat kind of embraced Twitter. I'm probably not going to use it much, but I no longer hate it with such a vigorous passion that I once did. I'd agree with Kevin; however, that this class does need a name change.


Through my blogging, I have learned other things as well. Though I could have blogged before this class (Though I'd likely screw up formatting and tags), through the research for the blog posts I have done, I gained knowledge. The Vice Guide to Liberia, for instance, which I watched for one of my posts. In that video series, I learned much about something that I otherwise would have known little about, and gained +1 Wisdom. I also levelled up and evolved into Charizard.



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Picture taken from Bulbapedia, a Pokemon wiki.
Yes, there is a Wikipedia dedicated to Pokemon.

Devon Bowie's E- Portfolio - The Problem with Movie Journalism, or: George Lucas is a monster who must be stopped.

After the Star Wars prequel trilogy, it became very apparent that George Lucas is a monster, a soulless man who will no stop until everything good ang right in the world is utterly destroyed and all that is left is a CGI robot doing wacky slapstick hijinx on the mass grave of creativity, art, and common sense. George Lucas, much like his character, Emperor Palpatine, is beyond redemption and must be thrown down a deep shaft into a reactor core for the good of the galaxy. As proven here in an excellently critical and comedic review, The Phantom Menace is one of the worst things ever created by a human.

But on Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregation site, TPM receives a score of 62%, or in their terms, "Fresh". Fresh? FRESH? The Phantom Menace is a travesty, a travesty that will never go away. A mass murderer can kill a million people, but eventually the population will replace itself. It's terrible, but it can be undone with time. The Phantom Menace will never go away. It will stay in existence, possibly, for as long as the human race. The Phantom Menace will outlive everyone you know. And it is a vile, plotless, dull, absurd movie with characters flatter than Saskatchewan. If it is possible for the majority of reviewers to give the Phantom Menace a good review, there must be something terribly, monstrously wrong with Movie Reviewing.
And it gets worse. Attack of the Clones got 66% fresh, and Revenge of the Sith got 80% fresh. EIGHTY. EVERYTHING THAT WAS GOOD HAS DIED.

Picture taken from Star Wars Episode III.

Devon Bowie's E- Portfolio - The Return of New Journalism?

For a time, I was distressed about the way journalism was heading. It seemed that it was devolving into 140 character or less infobits, or worse, into Fox News style talking points. But I've gained a glimmer of hope from a certain website, vbs.tv.

In the 1960s and 70s, a new form of Journalism emerged. In the stead of nut graphs or inverted pyramids, news stories would be structured as literary stories. Writers such as Thompson and Capote opted to write stories that would not only let readers know, but also help readers understand. To me, VBS takes this approach as well. In it's Vice Guide to Liberia (Warning:Graphic), VBS covers something which would be overlooked by most newspapers. It covers not a single event, but rather the horrible situation in Liberia, its past, and possible future. Personally, I found it not only more interesting than any traditional news-article, but also more informative. It gives back-story, it has human interest, and I finished watching the series not just feeling more informed, but feeling wiser than before I went into it. Television news has not once done that for me, nor has traditional print news.

Picture Screencapped from VBS.tv

Devon Bowie's E- Portfolio - Marijuwhat?

In any news report, online or in print, it is improper to refer to things with slang. You wouldn't hear "Mofo gets capped in the dome in north-end apartment". No, you would hear "Man shot in north-end apartment". The former would destroy credibility almost utterly. Slang is a no-no in most journalistic publications.

Why, then, does every newspaper refer to cannabis as 'marijuana'?

It seems obvious to most. Marijuana certainly sounds more official than "weed" or "chronic", after all. But it really isn't. "Marijuana" is a Mexican slang word adopted by the US government in the 1930s to demonize cannabis by associating it with Mexicans. Thus, it's also racist. Really, the use of this dated term should end, and the proper word, cannabis, should be used.

Picture found on my hard drive.

Devon Bowie's E- Portfolio - Editing Detective

In the futuristic world of 2010, there is a world-spanning cyber-space in which information is exchanged, and some people live their entire lives there, forgetting the outside world, the feeling of the sun or their face or the wind in their hair. This cyber-zone is called THE INTERNET.
In this futuristic dystopia, one man seeks out and hunts down errors in the internet, a man called the Blade Runner Editing Detective. These are his futuristic cyber-tales.


On About.com, an informative web-zone with many articles, one stands out as being riddled with errors. What error is this, one might ask? Octopi. In an article about mollusks, the mollusk in question is improperly pluralized. Although octopus is indeed a foreign word, it is not a Latin word. 'Octopi' is incorrect because it applies Latin pluralization conventions to a Greek word. Properly, it ought to be either octopodes, which applies Greek naming conventions, or more simply, octopuses. Ironically enough, 'octopodes' is unrecognized by the spell-checker, while "octopi" is recognized. Despite this, it must be fought. Fought by the EDITING DETECTIVE.

The editing detective lives in a world with many enemies. One such enemy, far greater than his other enemy, grammatical error, is the vile factual error. In his quest to hunt down and terminate factual errors, the Editing detective goes to Fox News, a wretched hive of scum and villainy in which many a factual error is to be found. He found something worse. The worst argumentative fallacy. A hulking monstrosity known as Argumentum ad Hitlerum. In a Fox News opinion piece, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is compared to Hitler, and Obama (for this is Fox News) is called a "Holocaust enabler" if he does not take a tough stance on Iran's nuclear program. It is awful to use such hyperbole. In fact, in the futuristic cyber-world of the internet, bringing up Hitler in argumentation, if the argument is not explicitly about Hitler or Nazis, is viewed as an automatic argument-loser. It's ridiculous to compare Iran having a nuclear program to the Holocaust. Iran is no-where near as powerful as Germany was, and any nuclear attack on Israel by Iran would be tantamount to national suicide.

Picture made by me using Blade Runner promotional poster.