Nerd Acumen

Project will focus on treatment, rather than discovery.

That’s just really cool. For good and for awesome, as Strong Bad might say.

"I prefer to talk about the meaning in a story rather than the theme of a story. People talk about the theme of a story as if the theme were like the string that a sack of chicken feed is tied with…

Flannery O’Connor was simply masterful in her ability to convey the importance of writing without an agenda. One might say she was a champion of fiction sans subtext, stories void of duplicitous “big ideas”.

From her, and from my writing instructor in college, Aimee Bender, I learned to write fiction that speaks for itself, that takes you there, to that place of discovery, that place of human revelation. When a writer boxes themselves in, or tries to align with some metaphor or hidden conceit, that tends to dismiss their own potential.

I stumbled upon the enclosed link today and just had to share. Follow the link and read the quote from O’Connor. It’s amazing.

infoneer-pulse:

A blogger is entitled to the same free speech protections as a traditional journalist and cannot be liable for defamation unless she acted negligently, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday.

Crystal Cox lost a defamation trial in 2011 over a blog post she wrote accusing a bankruptcy trustee and Obsidian Finance Group of tax fraud. A lower court judge had found that Obsidian did not have to prove that Cox acted negligently because Cox failed to submit evidence of her status as a journalist.

But in the ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said Cox deserved a new trial, regardless of the fact that she is not a traditional reporter.

» via Reuters

It’s 2014. The distinction between the 4th Estate and the general populace disappeared a long time ago. This is very good news!