MB-ECAB2
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Rise and Fall of the Personal Essay in Media
Student Name
Columbia Southern University
Course Name
Instructor Name
Date
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Rise and Fall of the Personal Essay in Media
Almanza, M., Pfizer, A., & Mousislli, H. (2016). The dread rise. Journal of Journalism Studies,
7(89), 134-152. https://doi.org/10.2597/234-4722.2016.05
This source is an article for the con side of the research topic. Almanza, Pfizer, and
Mousislli examine blogs and internet sites that allowed amateur writers to publish or self-
publish whatever stories they chose. The authors provide examples of stories as tinder for
their strong polemic on the personal essay. They also include a graph that details the start
of what they term the “Dread Rise,” or the rise in popularity of the personal essay; the
graph starts in 2008 and ends in late 2016. The graph will be used as a visualization of
the rise and fall of personal essays. Almanza et al. also argue that the more confessional
personal essays devalue the entire literary community by allowing writers to publish
work based on shock value instead of literary merit. They provide a few excerpts from
confessional essays that are truly absurd to thoroughly prove their point. These excerpts
will be used to argue the con part of the research paper’s argument.
Gordon, F., & Arden, D. (2014). The personal era of writing fiction, nonfiction, and everything
else. Indie Presses.
Gordon and Arden discuss how the confessional, or personal, essay has affected
nonfiction, fiction, and other genres of writing. They present two fiction and nonfiction
examples each and discuss the changes in form and diction. Examples of poetry and
feature articles are also provided and examined. Gordon and Arden believe that the rise in
personal and confessional essays affected the formal nature of writing in all genres. They
note that, societally, formality has changed writing and everything else, but there is a
large difference in the writing of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and feature writing after the
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resurgence of the personal essay. There was also a rise in the personal and sometimes
irrelevant information included in an attempt to get readers to engage with a particular
publication exclusively. The readerships for the publications publishing personal essays
went up, but all of them saw a huge drop off in November 2016, causing a major shift in
the editorial processes of many publishers online or otherwise. Many online publishers
closed. The examples of the different kind of writing will be used to show the differences
in the writing styles.
Ma, Y., Turoi, M., Cho, J., & Idowu, A. (2015). A study of media and journalism.
Journal- Journal, 7(2), 13–25. https://doi.org/10.559/wjp.v5.i3.2313
This is another neutral source that simply lists certain aspects of journalism that have
changed over time. The authors documented the usage of certain words and types of
writing—essays, interviews, cover stories, and others. In their study, Ma, Turoi, Cho,
and Idowu noticed a spike in personal and confessional essays in journalism around
2008 and a decline eight years later at the end of 2016. They speak on the reasons for
this particular phenomenon and include a number of interviews from journalists at two
national news organizations and three newspapers in Chicago, New York, and Los
Angeles. The study managed to present a balanced set of data that shows both the
increase in the websites using the personal essay boom for profit and authentic websites
that were created to combat the rise of personal essay news. This resource will be used
to provide a different perspective on the negative part of the argument.
National Personal Essay Society & Writers of Antarctica. (2013). Let us confess.
http://npes.org/files/public- docs/being-frank-the-importance-of-the-personal-essay.pdf
The National Personal Essay Society (NPES) and Writers of Antarctica (WOA) discuss
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the internet sites and blogging platforms that ushered in the new age of personal essays.
Both organizations provide data on the effects of the personal and confessional essay
boom and attribute the rise in writers and journalists to this boom. Twitter is also
mentioned as a gate way to many young writers (the authors define young as 18-30)
exploring the craft of prose and where it intersects with news; many of them found their
writing skill through writing terribly inaccurate, yet stylistically interesting personal
essays. The NPES and WOA praise these writers and credit them with the return of
fiction and nonfiction that explores the depth of the human condition. They also list a few
of the writers that have gained respect through the personal and confessional essay. The
organizations note that this respect came partially due to the writers’ abilities to transition
from purely confessional and sometimes self-serving essays to more literary or
journalistic writing. This is a source with a very positive view of the argument.
Personal essay. (2016). The Funk & Rollion Old World Encyclopedia. Retrieved February 9,
2020, from https://www.funk.rollion.com/archives/February2020
This article describes the use of personal essays in media. It details the different uses of
the personal or narrative essays and their reception since the last 1800s and early
1900s. Personal essays have never been considered reputable accounts. This resource
shows that this has changed throughout time as more and more newspapers, online and in
print, focus on them. The encyclopedia entry also provides dates for important milestones
in the personal essay’s history and notes important writers that cracked the personal, or
confessional, essay industry. It also notes that the fall of the personal essay was partly
due to shifting societal needs. This source is extremely important to the foundation of the
research paper; it provides dates and objective analysis on the personal essay from its rise
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in popularity to its fall. The source will be the neutral source in that provides background
information, dates, and names of important personal essay writers.
Potter, H., Anders, D., Smith, C., Hash, M., Toppingham, P., Jacobson, Z., & Kim, S. (2013).
Disconnections in journalism and the personal narrative. PLoS ONE, 5(27).
https://doi.org/10.17871/journal.pone.10770
This resource was a collaboration between 37 authors that cataloged the internet’s
response to news stories from the major news outlets. The authors compared this
information to the responses garnered by the literary sites accepting the occasional new
worthy submission. Many of the websites specializing in showcasing creative writing
genres received an influx of stories that were personal essays but contained news
elements and angles not often taken by the national news outlets. Because of the influx of
this kind of prose, the sites started to publish them; from there they gained traction and
ballooned to the viewership of these sites. Potter et al. mention that at the height of this
boom, the actual news content dwindled, and the confessional nature of them became
alternative for the sake of readers and hits. This resource will be used to highlight the
negative impact the confession essay wave had on news in general.
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