Blogabrations: Journalism

This Washington Post op-ed on the Harry Potter phenomenon made me think: about how the next time I read a sermon about the “death of reading” I am going to personally kill reading; or about how the only thing less interesting than someone explaining to you why they love Harry Potter is someone explaining why they don’t like Harry Potter. But blogging sometimes brings out the worst in us – unlike reading, which brings out only the best – so instead I’ve decided to use this article as a case study for a blogabration called "Four Things I Love about Print Journalism":

1) pop cultural allusions that don’t really make sense, and make the journalist seem like an alien who’s trying hard to blend in on Earth. For instance, “[Special adult editions of Harry Potter are] the same books dressed up with more sophisticated dust jackets -- Cap'n Crunch in a Gucci bag.” Grown ups and their Gucci bags: it’s like kids and their Cap’n Crunch. You know? Watching football, eating pizza, living in a house. Hillary Clinton. Starbucks. Am I right? Earth. So fun and casual.
2) excellent and often clever grasp of the simile: “Start carrying on like Moaning Myrtle about the repetitive plots, the static characters, the pedestrian prose, the wit-free tone, the derivative themes, and you'll wish you had your invisibility cloak handy.” Moaning Myrtle? She’s from Harry Potter. And your article is ABOUT Harry Potter. And she’s FROM it! Delightful.
3) rhetorical questions: “Shouldn't we just enjoy the $4 billion party? Millions of adults and children are reading!”
Sounds like a fun party! But wait a minute… Rhetorical questions are a great way to keep your reader on the edge of his or her seat; they also offer an absolutely seamless way of guiding the reader along with your argument. Use as much as possible.
4) lack of self-interest, and an analytic rigor that takes nothing for granted: “Since Harry Potter first Apparated into our lives a decade ago, the number of stand-alone book sections in major metropolitan newspapers has decreased by half -- silencing critical voices that once helped a wide variety of authors around the country get noticed.” I hate it when critical voices get silenced. Otherwise, how are a wide variety of authors around the country going to get noticed?