Showing posts with label Schadenfreude. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Schadenfreude. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Armchair Travel

A trip might be nice...
Travel in a time of virus…
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Perry: It palls after a while.
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Grendel: What?
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Perry: Being at home. Looking at the view. Watching migratory birds starting to depart on journeys. Leaving behind us flightless humans. Feet start itching so I read a travel book. Took trips to Ethiopia, Nepal, Tibet and India last week.
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Grendel: Armchair travel?
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Perry: The chair arms hold your book up, and as you read you vicariously experience the pleasure and the pain of travel.
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Grendel: Ah. Schadenfreude. Pleasure in reading about the pain of others.
__________

Voice-over
Evidence of accompanying Pico Iyer through his Tropical Classical. Not just about travel but meeting exceptional people like the Dalai Lama, hearing Iyer's views on what books by Indian, British, Japanese, and American writers really meant, and smiling at his deconstructions of languages, dramas, genres and punctuation.
...

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

The Daily Template: Bad News, Good News

The Daily Template Page 1 and 3
In Journalism class…
Dustin: LIGHTNING STRIKE KILLS PET FINCH! Why can’t we have a good news story on Page 1?
Editing Instructor: Economics and psychology.
Dustin: Economics?
Editing Instructor: Shocking news items attract readers. Adrenalin sells more papers.
Dustin: And psychology?
Editing Instructor: Schadenfreude. Readers like stories reporting bad news happening to other people.
Dustin: Like gossip.
Editing Instructor: News is gossip, writ large.

­_____________
Voice-over
Good news can make it to the front page. Usually a report of a conflict overcome.

Perhaps the bad news > good news model is not just economic and psychological. It may even follow the storytelling arc. Clash to closure.

Which page in a newspaper do you turn to first? Page 1 or Page 3? Like when someone tells you, “I’ve got some good news and some bad news. Which do you want to hear first?