On the Media recently interviewed Sasha Frere Jones (who writes for the New Yorker) in a piece called Talking Tween. Brooke Gladstone mentioned that Sasha’s writing style–and even approach–for the New Yorker is extremely different than the way he writes on Twitter.
Sasha explained that if he writes the same way for all these different venues, “I’m not going to get anywhere with my writing.”
This is a great lesson for teachers planning on using new media technology in the classroom, who give new media writing assignments to their students. You may be justified in demanding basic capitalization conventions (as I do for most new media assignments), but you’re not benefiting your students if you’re not allowing the medium to change both the students and their writing.
Sasha explains his attentiveness to genre: “The only way I’m able to figure out what they [new media technologies] do is by using them. The Web uses links intensely, which you can’t do in print. You’ve got images. Twitter has this built in limit, which affects the voice in an interesting way. Why not take it for a spin?”
The key is to use new media genres for what they do best. To use a preschool metaphor, don’t try to force a square block (a traditional assignment) into a circular hole.
There is nothing inherently magical or perfect about the college essay form. Because while I grade college essays, unlike new media genres, I wouldn’t read them in my spare time. In his book The Rhetoric of Cool, Jeff Rice also points out that there is nothing special–or intrinsically more persuasive–about having a thesis-driven argument. Spend just a few minutes reading new media writing, and this will become obvious.
New media technology offers new potential for what writing can do. New media writing is no longer limited to words on a page–video, pictures, audio, and interactivity are now a part of the writing that happens in all workplaces and academic disciplines.
In his interview, Sasha Frere Jones explained, “If I’m not letting the technology take me somewhere, then why am I using it?”
A fair question, that all of us should ask ourselves. Don’t make your students write new media in the same way they wrote old media. But don’t let new media just affect your students. Let new media technology change both you and your writing.
