A New Way with an Old Meaning

After reading Joseph Harris’s second chapter in his book Rewriting, I learned about his characteristic of what he feels writers generally do inadvertently while reporting about a topic to the public. Through out the reading, I gathered his sense of a definition of being forward in one’s own writing. To be forwarding, means when an author takes words, images, or ideas from a source and is then using them in a new context or meaning. It is like a means of summarizing with out plagiarizing. You use some of the originator’s ideas and key concepts, but one may extend onto further ideas and maybe take a new direction of the story’s plot. All of these characteristics deal with the technique of being forward. One great example of being forward was seen in my daily blog readings of the blog spot: Deadspin. Through this sports based blog, a new story of Jeremy Lin popped up as the main story. As I read this story, I started to notice how forward the author of this blog was being. The evidence behind it, is that as the actual saying of, “Chink in the Armor” was posted as live feed, commentary and news reporting began immediately about the immense disgrace. Once this feeding frenzy began, the sense of being forward began, as at least in my understanding it did. However now, since the aspect of forwarding means to change the meaning or idea behind primary sourcing ideals, the concept of the reporter’s thoughts on the Lin headline will be different form the actual live feed. From this technique, the idea of simply reporting about Lin has switched to an apology to Lin personally and an apology as well to the entire Asian-American community. The idea of a miss slip that turned into an apology is how I feel being forward in writing works in today’s society.