Here's an article that appeared in the New York Times today about professors who are using blogs, social networking sites and the like in an attempt to "humanize" themselves for their students. Some also see this as a response to websites like Ratemyprofessor.com. The article's interesting, but doesn't really discuss what these sorts of issues mean for graduate student instructors.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/20/fashion/20professor.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

It seems that, once again, rhetoric has asserted itself in the Democratic primary.

Of course, it hasn't happened yet, but now news outlets are focusing on Obama's speech tomorrow night as a "make or break moment" for him. It might be a good way to start a conversation in class about rhetorical situations - what Obama's goals are in this speech, what is the context, etc., and then follow it up the next class with an analysis of how well he responds to the rhetorical situation.

I caught Bill Moyers the other night and the program was all about analyzing the sorts of arguments are being made by campaign ads. It could be a nice was to talk about visual rhetoric, rhetoric and multimedia (sound and images) and different types of arguments. Link below:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/02292008/profile.html

Watching the Democratic debate last week made me think this primary has been a potential goldmine for rhetoric instructors.

Throughout the debate, Clinton argued that "actions speak louder than words," while Obama insisted that "words matter."

Beyond this, Clinton's big attack was over plagiarism:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/21/videos.21feb.debate/

Here's a link to an article that looks at language and the Democratic primary a bit more:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/25/foreman.raw.politics/index.html

I recently finished reading _All the President's Men_ for my comps. It's a fun book in a lot of ways, but I also think it could come in handy for a writing class. As Woodward and Bernstein investigate the Watergate break-in, they get numerous sources to confirm or deny stories and facts, or even provide new information. Still, some sources refuse to go on record or only provide information on background. What I found really fascinating was the newsroom scenes after talking to sources.

The Daily Show has always satirized media coverage. Still, recently -- and especially in reference to election and campaign coverage -- I've noticed in an increase in the number of times the word "narrative" has appeared on the program. More and more, the show seems to be focusing on journalistic rhetoric and its misuse.

Here's a fairly typical clip that focuses on language and tone.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=148479&title=daily-show-down

Has anyone tried using these sorts of clips to illustrate a point in a rhetoric class?

As I understand it, one of the great triumphs of the software industry was to let users create their own communities - where they often found and corrected bugs and other technical issues before the company did. As a result, the user had a hand in defining the product and its use.

I find that a similar thing has developed with my class blog. I assigned a number of blog posts about the class reading. These posts were due before class and were meant to provide material for class discussion as well as compel students to actually do the reading.

The NY Times ran this essay by a student at Yale on the relevance of postmodern theory.

http://essay.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/the-college-pastiche/

An interesting read.

I only caught about a half hour or so, but the Bill Moyers special "Buying the War" seems like it would be of great use in a rhetoric class. It's essentially an analysis of media coverage during the run up to the war in Iraq. What this means is that focus throughout (or at least what I saw) is on evidence, argumentation, credibility, tone and the like. While much of it is a critique of current journalistic practices, there's a whole lot going on that could be brought into the classroom.

Over the course of this semester, a few students have sent me YouTube links - or mentioned them to me - that they feel are relevant to the class topic (in this case, globalization) and class discussions. It certainly seems like a teaching moment. So far, I've been responding individually, but wonder if anyone out there has had similar experiences and if they've been able to take these clips that the students are finding and use them instructively in the classroom.