Part 4: Guided Practice
Lesson 19
Read the excerpt below from the introduction to the book Print Is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age. Use
the Study Buddy and Close Reading to guide your reading.
Genre: Essay
2
From the title, it looks
like the author believes
print is dead. I wonder
why he begins this article
by saying it isn't dead.
What argument is he
really trying to make?
3
Close Reading
The author makes a claim
in paragraph 4. Underline
the author's reasoning.
Then number the relevant
evidence that supports it.
from Print Is Dead by Jeff Gomez
Print can't possibly be dead; it's everywhere.
After all, books and newspapers exist in abundance and people!
read them avidly each day. Mounds of printed material sit in
stacks upon stacks in stores, offices, and homes across the
country and the world. You rarely see someone taking a form of
mass transportation-bus, commuter train, etc.-who isn't
clutching some sort of reading material. ... The same goes for
the hundreds of thousands who travel each day by plane, flying
for either business or pleasure. Most airports have a bookstore or
newsstand, if not both. And then there are the millions of
newspapers that are delivered every morning to doorsteps all
over the world, folded into thirds like a wallet of information just
waiting to be opened
Whole rooms of houses and apartments are lined with books,
and some homes even have their own libraries stacked floor-to-
ceiling with row after row of hardbacks and paperbacks.
Furniture and office supply stores feature a dizzying array of
bookshelves, while corner kiosks in large cities are like ice cream
trucks for printed material, selling glossy magazines and black-
and-white newspapers. So with all of this ink-on-paper floating
around ... print can't be dead, can it?
While print is not yet dead, it is undoubtedly sickening.
Newspaper readership has been in decline for years, magazines
are also in trouble, and trade publishing (the selling of novels and
non-fiction books to adults primarily for entertainment) has not
seen any substantial growth for years. More and more people are
turning away from traditional methods of reading, turning
instead to their computers and the Internet for information and
entertainment. Whether this comes in the form of getting news
online, reading a blog, or contributing to a wiki, the general
population is shifting away from print consumption, heading
instead to increasingly digital lives.
In this article, the author
presents two sets of
information that seem to
contradict each other.
Consider how these facts
work together to support
the author's position.
192
119: Evaluating an Argument
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