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You are a student writing a critical assessment of movie critic Harry Knowles for an academic journal.
Harry Knowles is the founder and chief writer for Ain’t It Cool News, a popular Web site for movie reviews and Hollywood gossip. In the past several years, Knowles has become a controversial figure. He has been called the “most feared man in Hollywood,” and recently, one respected magazine named him one of the fifty most influential members of the media. However, Knowles’s growing fame and influence have some of his peers concerned. A number of critics have argued that Knowles is a sloppy and irresponsible journalist who practices favoritism, spreads false information, and lacks the skills and ethics basic to his profession.
You have been asked to write a review of Knowles and his work for College Review, an academic journal that publishes work by undergraduates. At issue is Knowles’s credibility as a movie critic. Is Ain’t It Cool News merely “a gossip site … the National Enquirer of the [Internet],” as one critic writes? Or is Knowles’s writing a refreshing change from the reviews of “journalists who try to present their analyses as a scientific issue,” as noted director Guillermo Del Toro recently told the Austin American-Statesman?
After reading your files, you’ll be ready to begin the preparatory work necessary to write an effective academic review. This work will include:
We recommend that you consult The Penguin Handbook as you work on this assignment. We also suggest that you use some of the Writing and Researching Worksheets, which are designed to offer you specific guidance at all stages of the writing process.
College Review is not an actual publication; the materials included in File 1 are entirely fictional, including all of the sources cited in the sample review.
Harry Knowles, however, is alive and well, as is Ain’t It Cool News. We hope that you find researching and writing about Knowles an interesting and instructive experience.
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