Great Literary Figures Impressions of Newspaper Reporting

Did you know that Emily Dickinson read newspapers from all over the world everyday? She sometimes responded to the topics she read about in her poems. She was looking for higher meaning in the news, which I think many of us can related to.
Dr. Mark Canada delivered a presentation at the Mary Livermore Library today that blew me away. He was presenting on his new publication titled: Literature and Journalism in Antebellum America: Thoreau, Stowe, and Their Contemporaries Respond to the Rise of the Commercial Press, To be released on April 12, 2011.
Nathaniel Hawthorne was also a "news junkie." Poe, Thoreau, Melville, all writers I enjoy, had strong love/hate feelings about the daily papers and the sensationalism of news. Dr. Canada told us a lot about this and I plan to read his book to find out more. There was no television at this time, so these great literary figures did not have the opportunity to be completely outside of society by not watching television, (like myself)-- but I question if they would watch television. Probably not! I'm giving myself a huge compliment here, but I tend to believe that Henry David Thoreau would not be watching "reality TV." I suspect he would be a rabid NPR listener!
James Fennimore Cooper sued newspapers over controversies. Herman Melville had a critique of newspapers within his great novel Moby Dick. Mark Twain and Edgar Allen Poe used news (such as hoaxes) to create fiction and science fiction.
What is the importance of news and news reporting then and today? How does this affect our literature and our society? Is there a zeitgeist related to new methods of social networking and will this bring in a new age of literature? I'm sure it will, but I would like to see the "science fiction" of it to know what it means to us.
Dr. Canada did address "What's Next" for journalism, I feel that the story is writing itself as we hold on to every gesture of Newt Gingrich as if it were really worth the time.

Disaster Planning in Literature

In Dr. Barbee's Organizational Behavior class we have discussed some of the ways that societies attempt to prevent, prepare for and contend with disasters. Ernest Hemingway had been witness to many traumatic scenes in his time as a war reporter in the First and Second World War and in the Spanish Civil War.
Hemingway's writing and adventure have always appealed to me, but this story in particular has made me wonder what Hemingway's idea of emergency preparedness was. This being a work of fiction, he is likely using the character to allude to many notions, I am thinking Hemingway feels that adventure leads to many unpredictable events, some tragic. His character seems to not have used good judgment on this particular incident, but does that show that he did not plan well on the whole?
The protagonist is dying due to a thorn scratch that he got on his knee that in the course of several weeks of hunting in Africa turned gangrenous and (spoiler alert!!) killed him.
In his last day he is reminiscing and speaking with his life partner about various aspects of "why did this happen to me?" They are at once speaking literally and figuratively, which appeals to me because I am somewhat philosophical and also interested in emergency preparedness.
Summarily- if the main character and his life partner/travel and hunting companion were truly prepared for an African adventure they would know to keep a wound such as this clean. He admitted that his thorn prick did not seem worth bothering much over when it happened, but it is the straw that broke the camel’s back. If they were taking all proper precautions they would have attended to this injury at the first. But as we see in the story he and his partner are serious alcoholics that make a lot of risky decisions and stumble around harming themselves and others. In planning for organizations and in personal decision making, you want the people who are in charge of travel plans, strategic plans and especially emergency plans to be someone who pays due attention to detail, such as treating a small wound and protecting it from infection.
This measure of planning and prevention is entirely necessary in all decision making and definitely needs to be a part of organizational emergency preparedness. Organizations that do not make long-term, strategic decisions are headed for inevitable decline. Hopefully decision makers will look at the all possibilities and look at the big picture when making decisions. Otherwise they could experience a fate such as the man in Hemingway's story dying early from a thorn puncture.

http://books.google.com/books?id=QjgiXnMHHtIC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA23#v=onepage&q&f=false