SACRAMENTO, Calif.- Everyone reads their news online or watches it on television. The increase in online readership is skyrocketing. As a college student, I rarely, if ever, watch the news on television anymore. It seems all they focus on is death, terrorism and chaos. Rarely do they ever have a happy story or a story that brings pride among the community.
Anne Applebaum is a foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Post and Slate. I have read a few of her articles, some titled: "Chile and Haiti: A look at earthquakes and politics", "A terrorism alert to ignore", "'It's too soon to tell' how the Iraq war went", and "Anger over papal visit shows religious freedom is alive and well in Britain". Her column appears every Tuesday.
In the column titled, "Chile and Haiti: A look at earthquakes and politics", she talks about both earthquakes and how it was more devastating for Haiti to experience this type of natural disaster because of the aftershocks of rebuilding their cities. Applebaum says Chile has a better democratic government so it will be easier to rebuild, where Haiti has nothing working for it to rebuild it. She says, "She has nothing to do with luck."
Her other column titled, "A terrorism alert to ignore", was a funny ironic piece. She speaks about a terrorism alert that alerted people in Europe to be careful to ride public transportation because terrorists might attack. Has it not occurred to their government that a terrorist attack can happen anywhere and at anytime? So why now would they send this alert?
Applebaum has achieved many accomplishments in her journalism career such as writing two books, "Between East and West: Across the Borderlands of Europe" and "Gulag: A history", which she won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 2004. She she has also won the Charles Douglas-Home Memorial Trust award for her journalism skills in post Soviet Union.
She has her own website which is linked to previous articles she has written, her columns, as well as introductions and critiques of her books.
Applebaum was born in Washington, D.C. and graduated from Yale. She then went to the London School of Economics and St. Antony's College in Oxford. It seems as though foreign affairs runs through her veins.
I tried to contact her, however she never returned my email. Her columns are easy to read and if you don't watch the news, her columns are a great way to know what's going on around the world. She'll even write a column on things that do not make the first page of the paper.
I decided to profile Anne Applebaum because of the simple reason that I do not like to watch the news, especially what's going on in other countries. Like I said before, it seems as if the media simply focuses on tragedy, but Applebaum focuses on not only tragedies but focuses more on a humanistic level of all of her stories.
This column would have been stronger if the writer had been able to pull more detail about the columnist. For example, how old is she?
ReplyDeleteWhat also would have made this much stronger would be to include some examples of her work. The author of this column says:
"Applebaum focuses on not only tragedies but focuses more on a humanistic level of all of her stories."
OK, I'm interested, after reading that. But why not show how she does that by citing examples?
A good start and obviously the writer of this column is impressed with Ms. Applebaum. This column just needs fleshing out.