Pride and Prejudice…and ignorance

Posted on June 11, 2012 by Ed Battistella
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Since it’s now finals time, obviously I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube (thanks to my newly developed super power, procrastination). Normally, this wouldn’t warrant a blog post to Literary Ashland, but some of the videos I’ve been watching are The Lizzie Bennet Diaries—a vlog-based retelling of Pride and Prejudice. I find it rather enjoyable, but you’re probably still wondering why I’m blogging about it here.

Well, as I was watching, I came across this comment on episode seven:

“I’m sorry to have spent three minutes listening to some girl talk about her uninteresting problems. Why would I want to listen to her talk about a wedding she went to? How do you think her family feels about her complaining about them to the entire world? Do people really enjoy this? If you do, keep on enjoying. Don’t let my comment upset you. I’m leaving now.”

Obviously this comment didn’t upset me for the reason this person expected or intended, but I did have a moment when I stared at the comment before demanding of no one who could hear me “HOW ON EARTH DO PEOPLE NOT KNOW THAT THIS IS BASED ON PRIDE AND PREJUDICE?!”

Now, if this was a vlog-based retelling of, say, Homer, I might understand. Slightly more obscure for the average viewer. But when you people don’t even know Pride and Prejudice, despite the numerous remakes and zombified adaptations, I lose a little bit of faith in society. This comment is the argument in a nutshell of why it’s a good idea to teach the classics—so people don’t look like idiots.

As someone who’s always loved books, this comment reminded me that most people don’t. And with the at least the American education system the way it is, it’s doubtful they ever will. But relating back to these videos, I think projects like The Lizzie Bennet Diaries might work in getting students interested in reading again, whether because teachers use these videos as teaching tools or because they let their students create similar projects, thus motivating them to read the book and reenact the parts they think are important or amusing.

While as of this moment this project serves as a reminder that booklovers are in the minority, I think it could spark new interest in reading (though apparently not just yet).

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An Interview with Mandy Valencia

Posted on June 11, 2012 by Ed Battistella
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Mandy Valencia uses social media, videos, and photos to report on stories specific to the Southern Oregon area.  She covers news in the Ashland and Medford area.  She covers local musicians in her Tidings Cafe feature. She also shoots and edits the ‘Mandy on the Street” and “Mandy on the Vine” video series for the Daily Tidings website.  She also has a website highlighting her other photography and video work.

JM: You are currently working for The Medford Mail Tribune as a web/news content producer.  How does “Mandy on the Street” fit in with your job there or does it?

MV: Since joining the web team in January of last year (2011) I’ve backed off of doing “Mandy on the Street” a bit. Mostly because I’m very busy with my other responsibilities. But also because Janet Eastman joined the web team in fall of 2011 (after writing for the L.A. Times for 25 years and teaching Journalism at U of O) and has jumped right into shooting and editing videos for the web. Since I shot most of the Daily Tidings videos before her arrival, it really helps to tag-team that type of coverage. We’ve been relying on her heavily for web content.

I’ve also been putting energy into a “Mandy on the Vine” series for the Mail Tribune site, similar to “Mandy on the Street” but all about Southern Oregon wine.

JM: Can you talk about how “Mandy on the Street” got started and how the idea developed?

MV: The Tidings has a history of shooting “Man on the Street” videos for the web under the former web editor Mike Green. The results were often comical and the best of Ashland seemed to come out, often. But Mike Green really wanted someone behind the camera who could riff with people a bit and get them to open up. Being the out-spoken person that I am, Mike recruited me and “Mandy on the Street” was born.

JM: What has been the public response from “Mandy on the Street”?

MV: People seem to really love it. The videos get lots of hits on our site and views on YouTube. One of our editors, Myles Murphy, made a theme song for me that I always put in the videos. It’s actually really catchy and people see me and sing it to me sometimes. Once a biker zipped by me while I was walking home from 7-11 late one night and sung it out to me!

JM: Have you experienced any obstacles with Ashland Tidings or the Mail Tribune?

MV: The Editors at the Tidings and the Trib have always been really supportive of me. They’ve let me try new things and experiment. So my biggest obstacle is usually myself. Approaching a bunch of people on the street with a video camera can be exhausting and sometimes it’s tough to get motivated. But then I think about how awesome the video will be if I do it right and I charge forth.

JM: Has “Mandy on the Street” boosted your following on other social networks or vice versa?

MV: I think so, it’s hard to tell. Just being in a small town and working for the newspaper, you make a lot of connections and that has a lot to do with the size of my network. But I know one fan of “Mandy on the Street” is Hector Flores, the editor of Caminos, the Spanish-language magazine here in the valley. He contacted me on Facebook and told me he really enjoyed my videos and we’ve formed a nice friendship since then. Through him I’ve met a lot more really great people. So yeah I guess in some ways it has grown my network.

JM: You have over 1,000 friends on Facebook, and 68 subscribers to your “Mandy on the Street” YouTube channel (as of 5/24/12).  What about Twitter, a personal blog or website?

MV: Yep, I’m on Twitter. I’m @mandyv911. I’m also a huge fan of Instagram, I do some pinning on Pinterest. I have a www.mandyvalenciavideo.com” target=”_blank”>website I’ve been neglecting and I also spend time on Vimeo and Flickr.

JM: How do you see these social networks fitting in with your plans for the future?

MV: Spending time on social networks really helps me keep my pulse on what’s going on. Twitter is great for breaking news and so is Facebook at a local level. My friends update their statuses about all kinds of stuff that tells me what’s happening. We have plans at the Trib to start adding our twitter handles at the end of our articles soon. So my hope is that social networking will help with just better delivery of the news to the people who want to know about it.

JM: Here are links to the Ashland Daily Tidings YouTube Channel where Mandy’s webisodes for the Tidings Café and Mandy on the Street can be found.

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Kristy Evans Reviews the Barry Lopez Workshop

Posted on June 10, 2012 by Ed Battistella
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A guest post by Kristy Evans, from Professor Charlotte Hadella’s ENG 298 class

The anticipation for Barry Lopez’s free student workshop on Friday, April 20th was tangible in the air. Students from the university as well as from various Ashland high schools had been reading and studying the author’s many works for weeks now. The curiosity and excitement rang through the crowd to see what this man, who is so articulate and expressive in his writing, looks like and whether or not he could come across in person with the same intensity and speaking style as he did on paper.

As many of the students and professors in the room could immediately divulge: yes, he could. Not only was his talking voice as captivating as his writing voice, but his many stories and experiences excited just as much intrigue in person. With rapt attention, the audience waited with baited breath to hear about Lopez’s experience on an Arctic cruise some years ago seeing an unusually large group of polar bears on the ice, gathered to feast on beluga whale carcasses. Or to hear about how he traveled to around at least seventy countries with wildlife encounters in Africa, Australia, and even Antarctica.

The most interesting aspect behind Lopez’s exceptional storytelling skills was his explanation for why exactly he does it. Describing his own exhilaration of experiencing profound events in the wilderness, Lopez explained that he feels responsible to pass along this experience, not for the sake of being famous or remembered, but for the enjoyment of seeing people come alive or “awaken” upon reading or hearing his stories.

Lopez ended the workshop with some high-quality advice to future writers: we each “have a voice,” so we should use it to our best capabilities, we should always write notes and be organized no matter where we go, and finally, we should be persistent with our work no matter what. All these things, he explained, added up to his immense success, as well as his concentration not on trying to get the biggest audience but on becoming the best he could be. One thing is for certain, every single person who came into the workshop expecting something worthwhile did not leave disappointed.

Kristy Evans is a sophomore studying English at Southern Oregon University in the hopes of becoming a writer or editor

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Re: The Digital Shift

Posted on June 10, 2012 by Ed Battistella
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Although I did not attend the “From Print to Pixels” event, I am fascinated by the influence of technology and emerging media on culture and long-held customs. A recent theme in my studies involves contemplating the possibility of reconciling global issues with the advent of technology, so I appreciate Jennifer relating her experience and skepticism about emerging technologies in the book publishing world.

Everything is changing, but right now we live in a world that is adapted to producing and consuming information the old-fashioned way. Even though many people are concerned and distrustful about emerging media platforms, we still find these new technologies beginning to pervade our culture and commerce. I think because the digital shift is all-pervasive and simultaneously uncertain, we find it difficult to consign ourselves entirely to its pretenses. Obviously, remembering to bring one e-reader with you is easier than remembering to bring four or five books, but what’s the catch? There’s always a catch when it comes to technology.

It seems like people keep finding out the hard way that technology creates more problems than it solves. You might be able to buy all the classics as e-books, even some text books are moving to e-books, but some smart people don’t need to buy an e-reader to know that it probably won’t solve all your book problems, and it might in fact give you new book problems. This is the uncertainty of emerging technologies.

Someday, we might look back on e-readers and e-books as just another antiquated technology relegated to the museum archives.  And, by that time, who knows what we will think of books. But until then, we have a fascinating voyage ahead of us, filled with amazing new inventions and innovative technological solutions. The Espresso Book Machine v. E-readers is one example, and another example is Facebook marketing and the new models of publication requiring authors to maintain a platform and personal investment in their work. All this delineates the landscape of the digital shift. The digital shift transforms industry, reshapes the economy, and creates a new reference point for future generations.

Of course, this begs the question that Jennifer pointed up in her post: Is this digital shift a good thing or a bad thing, and how could we really know?

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