Week 2: Co-Authorship & Responsibilities of a Blogger

My current undergraduate field of study is Professional Writing which falls under Interdisciplinary Studies in the College of Arts and Letters at Old Dominion University. I've spent many years studying undergrad; so much so that I used to make a joke saying I wanted to become a professional student (I'm certain this is still my primary goal). But at 33, the time has come for me to complete my bachelor’s degree. Anyhow, during my undergraduate career, I’ve previously majored in English as well as Psychology. Now, I can see how an interdisciplinary degree is the perfect fit for me.

This week's lesson in my Digital Writing course is on digital rhetoric with an emphasis on multimedia an equal component to the sphere of digital writing as the writing itself. This means elements of web design such as layout, color, text appearance, graphics, and pictures are as integral to the writing itself.

As a previous English major, I am conflicted. As a previous Psych major, I am intrigued, and quite possibly agree. What is the responsibility of a blogger in terms of digital writing? If we have well-written content but a poorly designed website does that mean the writing is also bad? I get it, it's about presentation. But it reminds me of the situation with J.D. Salinger when the publisher designed a book cover for his collection of short stories titled after one in the collection called "To Esme, with Love and Squalor." Despite whatever personal feelings anyone may have towards J.D. Salinger, anyone who has read the story knows *spoiler alert* that the story features a young soldier about to ship out and he meets a young girl with whom they develop a friendship. The girl, Esme, writes letters to the soldier which help him to maintain a grip on reality while he suffers from what appears to be PTSD. Soon, the letters stop arriving and the soldier appears to suffer from a nervous breakdown.

When the publishers got ahold of Salinger's collection of stories an artist went to work designing the cover without having read the stories, so the result was a painting of an adult blonde woman with a sexually provocative appearance. Salinger was livid because Esme was portrayed in a way that didn't accurately reflect the story at all. From that point forward, Salinger insisted all his book covers be completely plain, that’s why to this day any title by Salinger has a minimal design, generally solid or block colors, and black or white font.

It could be interpreted that Salinger might have been better off if could have designed his own book cover from the start. But Salinger is a writer, not a visual artist. Or at least that was not his profession, and it seems in the publishing world, writers have little say in the appearance of their novels, though that seems to be changing. With blogging, the writer has full control over the appearance of all their content, whether they are knowledgeable in web or graphic design, HTML, hyperlinks, etc. So, a blogger could design a website (or haphazardly slap one together due to inexperience), but that web design becomes a reflection of the text itself. It becomes the focal point, the book cover so to speak which we judge the written contents before reading because despite the adage, “never judge a book by its cover,” my psychology studies have shown me that we have ingrained heuristics we’ve established to shortcut our cognitive decision making—so we do in fact judge books by their covers, however subconsciously. Of course, we also peruse the back cover synopsis, the reviews printed across the front, and sometimes the introductions and forwards, or we pull up Google or Goodreads to get a quick overview of the reviews before we purchase or rent the title. We're humans, we're multi-faceted like that. So we judge our books by their cover, synopsis, Goodreads reviews, and word of mouth.

But a sexualized Esme on the cover can completely alter a reader’s expectation, and completely alarm a writer who intended the story to portray a different story.

So, reader, what Esme does my blog portray? What Esme is your blog going to portray? 

Image source: Southern Cross Review

        I'll leave you with a more accurate illustration that better depicts the story--click the image to read the story for yourself.

Best,

Kay

References:

Rheingold, H (2012). Net Smart: How to Thrive Online. Cambridge: The MIT Press.