Weekly Writing 7

Part 1

Creating characters in arguments is important. By creating character, you are inventing ethos in your argument. Thus, self-characterization is the key to make your arguments persuasive. But what kinds of character should we establish? This is very important. If you want to invent ethos and make your argument persuasive, you have to create "Good Character". What do you mean by "Good Character"? It means you have to make a character that has virtue and moral.

Applying this concept of "Good Character" into my own project, if I were to make a credible argument for the future of journalism issue, I will probably use respected authorities' for support of my claim. For example, let's say I wanted to argue that for saving of journalism, the government should not involve. In this case, i will use the Gates Founder's quotes. It will add credibility in my argument because it's well know authority, and it will back up my claim.

Besides establishing "Good Character", "Good Sense" and "Good Will" are necessary for inventing ethos. Arguments which have Good Will will consider the audiences' needs. Arguments with "Good Sense" will demonstrate intelligence, your knowledge and professionally and the sense of you know what you are taking about.

I will use these concepts of Good Will and Good Sense in my own project. Good Will can be established by addressing the information of what bad things will happen to people if government involved in Journalism. Good Sense can be achieved by talking about my own experience with Japanese Journalism; the fact that Japanese journalism has government involvement, and how it affected to me as a citizen.

If I could achieve all of these three "Good" in my argument, it will invent ethos, credibility, and authority, which are all makes persuasive.



Part 2

For this part of assignment, I chose the online community called Open Salone. In this community, the series of blog called "the future of Journalism" pasted by Kafman, is found the members most persuasive, or at least I've found. His blog posts reached hits and picked by Editor's Pick many times. What makes Kafman's blog so successful? What are the distinctive from other blogger? These answers can be found by rhetorical analysing!

I particularly liked his post titled "We must kill press freedom to save it". If you are interested here you can access to his blog: http://open.salon.com/blog/future_of_journalism/2009/08/25/we_must_kill_press_freedom_to_save_it.
In this post, he is criticizing a Los Angels Time's article which argues "The Newspaper should charge its the online contents in order to survive". He points out each parts from Los Angels Times article that is problematic, and argued that LA Time's claim is wrong because charging online contents will not increase its revenue enough. To support his claim, he used external proof, that is documents and statistic numbers of newspapers' revenue ratio. This rhetorical skill works for his audience because his audience are people who are passionate about journalism and already have some knowledge on it. So their needs were intelligence, and Kafman established the Good Sense. His argument used particular language style to engage its audience. His style was not something you see in newspaper or serious magazines, but more casual way and as you read it you feel like he is actually talking to you. I liked his blog series. I think I will keep subscribe it.