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The Riders on the Bus Go Blog Blog Blog
February 8, 2007
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Time Magazine is running an article entitled, "Bloggers on the
Bus."

The article states, "The 2008 U.S. presidential race marks the
arrival of the star blogger as the hot new campaign commodity,
however controversial. Almost every major candidate, from
Hillary Clinton to John McCain and Mitt Romney, has hired well-
known Web voices to help the candidates tap into the vast fund-
raising, organization and communication potential of the Internet.
That group is potentially huge: a Pew study of blogs during
August 2006 found 4.8 million people blogging, commenting or
otherwise sharing political content online."

Bloggers who sign with political candidates don't have easy jobs
however. For their readers distrust "bloggers for hire." Readers
want truth not propaganda.
Read the Article!


Discussion-Starters for Younger Children

  • Ask your students if it's important to tell the truth?
    Why/why not?
  • Tell students to pretend that their job is to convince
    somebody else to tell the truth. What would they
    say?

  • Why would somebody choose not to tell the truth?
  • In groups of two or three ask students to develop
    skits explaining what the appropriate consequence
    should be for not telling the truth.

  • Ask your students what it means to trust somebody. (This
    might be a good time to discuss safety and not necessarily
    trusting strangers.)
  • Ask your students what they should do if they
    think that somebody is lying to them?

  • Ask your students if something has to be true if it is
    written. Why/why not?
  • Write the following phrase on the blackboard,
    "Superman just flew past our classroom window."
    Ask if this really just happened. Clearly not
    everything written has to be true.

Discussion-Starters for Older Children

  • Vocabulary terms to discuss: Blogging; Prominent;
    Authenticity; and, Credibility.

  • Do your students think it's appropriate for political
    campaigns to pay people to write about them in favorable
    ways? Why/why not?
  • This question might serve as an interesting prompt
    for a class debate.

  • What does the word "truth" mean? Is it possible for
    different people to perceive the same event in different
    ways and for the different perceptions to all be true?
    Explain!!
  • Consider asking students to respond to this
    question in writing.

  • In Time's Quote of the Day, alongside the article, the
    magazine quotes New York Times publisher Arthur
    Sulzberger as saying, "I really don't know whether we'll
    be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I
    don't care either." What does this statement mean? How is
    it connected to the theme of the article? Will newspapers,
    written on paper, cease to exist?
  • Consider asking students to develop a pro- con
    chart considering the importance of paper
    newspapers in this day of the Internet.
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