It's Pumpkin Spice Latte Season

Yeah, this is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of fall, outside of the McSweeney's article. So here is my Storify piece on the wonders of Pumpkin Spice Lattes

Hybridized Journalism?

One of my favorite examples of a traditional magazine website changing with the times is New York Magazine. Beginning in the 1960s as a lifestyle magazine, it quickly became home to some of the most popular writers of the time, including Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin and Gloria Steinem.

Initially, the magazine was intended to showcase writers, restaurants, shows, parties, etc. in and around New York City. However, the magazine has, over the years, become more geared to a larger audience, and while its home base is still the city that never sleeps, subject matter isn't only limited to the five boroughs.

In the past few years, the magazine's online presence has grown significantly. In 2006, the website changed from bein merely a companion to the print magazine to an up to the minute design. Probably most popular are the associated blogs; Vulture, The Cut, and Grub Street. But NY Mag also contracts out to popular bloggers to write pieces for the website.

Some Potential Sources

I think it might be a little harder to find specific sources regarding gentrification in the East End of Pittsburgh, as it's often a conversation people don't want to have unless they're complaining about it. The research for this will be interesting to say the least. As of right now, I've found a blog that discusses the process of gentrification in Lawrenceville, a similar neighboring area. This website details the economy of residents of East Liberty. Here is a piece on the Carnegie Library in East Liberty, an interesting feature of the neighborhood in that it is a very new and modern building surrounded by somewhat dilapidated buildings and failing businesses. One thing I think we should focus on is the newer businesses that opened in East Liberty in the past few years (before the bigger businesses like Target and Whole Foods cropped up) that are geared to a younger, more affluent crowd (here is a piece on the Waffle Shop, which is definitely something of a hipster bait). I also found in my research that after the Boarders in the area closed, it was taken over by a pop-up (meaning essentially squatters, not pop-up like the children's books) indie bookstore for several weeks. (This website also has a piece on temporary holiday stores in East Liberty and Southside that could be relevant) Finally, here is a piece on the recent Target opening.

If It's On the Internet, It Must Be True

If there is one thing that hours of surfing the Internet for news and non-fiction pieces has taught me, it's to not trust the Internet. Too often I've been fooled by quick Twitter or Google news headlines, reading only the breaking news and not following up on my information. One of the major problems with credibility is the rapidness with which news is shared. Before, even breaking news had time to be fact checked. Now anyone with a phone can alert the world to events, even if their view is slightly (or completely) skewed.

The most obvious perpetrator of this is Twitter. Just days ago, NBC's twitter feed was hacked, and the hackers tweeted that a flight crashed into the Ground Zero site. Thousands of people tweeted about the incident before the hack was found out and corrected. The abruptness of which people can see news makes the credibility of the source that much more important, and if a relatively well-respected news outlet like NBC can be hacked, than how can we really trust ANY breaking news pieces?

Of course, I think that the subject and target audience of the website is also vitally important. For instance, political bias will definitely influence credibility. Now, I'm not usually one to jump down Fox New's throat (because there are definitely liberal leaning news sources who's credibility are just as iffy), but this article about President Obama's birthday party this past August is just a little ridiculous. Any news outlet with a political bias (regardless of party) will be somewhat harder to trust. Personally, I prefer reading about American politics on foreign sources first, like the Independent or BBC so I know the facts, and then go back and read domestic reports.

Another example is sites that are primarily for gossip or entertainment news, like Perez Hilton or TMZ. Sites like these aren't exactly hard-hitting news outlets, but they have huge readerships, and the fact that they can hardly be considered credible is concerning. Just because your website is more of a "fluff" site doesn't mean that your work shouldn't be credible. I think sites like New York Magazine online do a better job of reporting entertainment news.

First Blog Post!

Hello everyone, my name is Liz and I am a senior Writing and Anthropology major at the University of Pittsburgh. This blog is dedicated to my Topics in Nonfiction: Magazine, or Publishing in the Information Age. I decided to take this class instead of the one I was previously enrolled in, Writing the Review, because I am a little, as they say, technology challenged. I've always wanted to start a blog, get out there on Twitter, learn how to put together multi-media pieces and a myriad of other things important for journalists in this day and age, but I've never really had the gumption or the technical know-how (my 12th grade blog discussing Jane Eyre written for an English class does NOT count as blogging experience). I think its important for journalists to know how to do all this, and I definitely want to hit the ground running when I graduate.

The second reason I signed up for this class, and not a similar one dedicated to newspaper writing, is because I've always had more of an interest in lifestyle writing. I know it's bad, but the first thing I do when I log on to the computer is skim the headlines, then head straight for my favorite fashion, cooking and generally non-newsy blogs. I think the recent advances in technology have certainly impacted the world of journalism, but I think it's really lifestyle writing that has taken leaps and bounds due to the Internet revolution (ugh, that's a cheesy phrase). Travel writing, food critiques, fashion writing, a world that was primarily dominated by a certain upper crust breed of journalists (from what I understand, the Vogue crowd is a little hard to break into) has suddenly become accessible to the everyman. Average girls with interesting style like Tavi Gevinson and the Frugal Fashionista are mentioned in the same breath as Anna Wintour and Nina Garcia. It's getting harder and harder to distinguish between journalist and blogger, and what I hope to do someday is make a job for myself that synthesizes both worlds. I think that this class will at least provide the fundamentals for me to accomplish that goal.

My most recent, and new favorite, non-fiction read was "A Homemade Life" by Molly Wizenberg, the founder of the foodie blog Orangette. It's an autobiography-cookbook hybrid. The autobiography aspect is a little dull, Wizenberg hasn't exactly had a fascinating life, but the cooking parts are amazing. Wizenberg somehow managed to write a cookbook with no pictures, and I still wanted to make every single recipe she listed. Her descriptions of dishes come from someone who relishes in food, from picking out the ingredients to the final few bites, are something I want to emulate in my writing.

Another writer, well form of writing, I would like to emulate is comedy writing. I've read excerpts from both Tina Fey's Bossy Pants and Hilary Winston's My Boyfriend Wrote a Book About Me, and loved them. I sometimes feel (and this is a HUGE generalization) that female writers write very serious nonfiction about bad things that happen to them (I once had a friend remark the only thing girls write about is losing their virginity). I want to find the humor in life while writing. Life is funny, it's not always so serious, and for me at least, the stories that stick with me are the ones that make me laugh.

So there you have it, I think I've covered everything important. And with that, my first (real) blog post is complete!