Online Essays

Kind v. Snarky Tweets

Who doesn’t enjoy snarky retorts that put deserving folks in their places? They are a mainstay of situation comedies, especially when the stories can’t carry the humor. Snark = snide remark. Twitter has little space for narrative. It’s all about simple, direct expression. Including clever criticism. Lewis Carroll’s fictional “snarks” in his nonsensical poem “The [...]

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Transmission Isn’t Communication

Sending messages is not the same as communication. Communication requires shared understanding. We live in a storm of mediated messages. Most supposed communication is just noise. Like ads that few people pay attention to. Bruce Springsteen once sung about “57 Channels (And Nothin’ On).” Little did he know how many channels there would be in [...]

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Gutenberg and the Digital Revolution

The rise of the World Wide Web launched an unlikely hero into the media spotlight: Johannes Gutenberg, the 15th-century inventor of movable printing type and technological forefather of Martin Luther’s vernacular Bible. Reporters, Internet columnists and even some scholars began parading Gutenberg before the public as a kind of poster child for the digital revolution. [...]

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How to Write a Great Resume

I recently wrote a book primarily for college students, college graduates, and underemployed people on the topic of writing resumes and cover letters: Resume 101: A Student and RecentGrad Guide to Crafting Resumes and Cover Letters that Land Jobs. The book’s accompanying website includes excerpts and an opportunity for people to ask questions about writing [...]

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The Audacity of Prophetic Truth

(Note: This essay is my foreword to a terrific book on media criticism: Robert H. Woods, Jr., and Paul D. Patton, Prophetically Incorrect: A Christian Introduction to Media Criticism (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2010).   The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55) had a knack for irritating the state church. He claimed an unusual gift: namely, perceiving [...]

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Human Communication as a Gift

When I began studying communication in college I discovered various theories about the origins of human beings’ communicative capacity. I was intrigued — and still am. We don’t know precisely how human language “evolved,” but we can discuss one interesting thought: Communication is a gift. You and I did not create our communicative abilities. We [...]

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