Journal Three

The first article I found interested me most not because of the content, but because of how much I gained from the comments. After having such a negative outlook on comments being enabled on online articles, this article proved me wrong in that respect. The article is titled "Chinua Achebe forces 50 Cent to rename movie", and it was written by Sean Michaels for The Guardian. The article itself is very interesting, as I had no idea that 50 Cent is, basically, producing an entire movie. I also remember reading "Things Fall Apart" by Achebe in high school, and agreeing that 50 Cent should have to alter the title of his movie to be different than the very influential book. The comments in this article actually provided more information for me than the article.

At first, I was in such agreement that 50 Cent should have to change the title; there's a special place in my heart for both literature and Achebe's book, and not so for film. However, from the comments I gained the information that there is no copyright on titles, which I had not known before and which was not mentioned in the article. For the most part, the commentary was knowledgeable and even included cited information. One commenter mentioned and cited a Guardian article written earlier in the week, discussing the lack of copyright and how authors are running out of titles that haven't already been used. Another commenter mentioned other places where the phrase "things fall apart" has appeared, informing me that maybe Achebe wasn't so original when he created the title.

Of course, there were the discouraging comments - comments dissing 50 Cent based on his looks, with slight racial leanings. It's unfortunate that the comments that are so intelligent are followed by ones of much lesser intellectual value.

After discussing the deterioration of top-tier news, and the influence of the Associated Press, I stumbled across a perfectly frustrating example of this on my own local news site. The article is titled "Seemingly drunk Swedish moose found stuck in a tree" and it's from the AP. The first thing that frustrated me about this post is that it was on the front page of the WBOC site. Really, Delmarva? Is this what counts as front page news? First, it has absolutely no effect on anyone - at least, anyone in Delmarva. If anything, it's a cute and kitschy story that should be featured elsewhere. Perhaps there was nothing more serious, more first page worthy. However, I find that hard to believe, with as many issues as Delaware alone has. I feel that this may be an example of the financial difficulties that have fallen on local news sources. It could be that WBOC simply does not have the money to pay reporters to go out and dig up news, to do research into more pressing issues. This could be why they chose to use such a silly "filler" story. I was just entirely frustrated by this short, stupid article, and the fact that it involves people halfway across the world. Quite honestly, it shouldn't have even been news outside of the small town in Sweden where it happened. This article only shows the lack of resources lower-tier papers now have.