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!