I felt funny talking to my computer in class.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
Three Podcasts
Jordan, Jesse GO!
www.maximumfun.org/listen
Jordan Morris and Jesse Thorn will bring anyone out of a bad mood. The podcast is said to be about adulthood and coping with growing up. By that I mean what it means to become your adult self and shed all the compulsions and ridiculousness of the younger you without turning into a jerk. Be careful, it might suck you in and might start spouting JJGO-isms to everyone and they will not know what to think of you. There is a whole culture to this and the best thing to do is to find a JJGO! friend. Mine is Leanne.
You Look Nice Today: A Journal of Emotional Hygiene
youlooknicetoday.com
You Look Nice Today goes along the same lines as Jordan, Jesse GO! In fact, they’re all friends. However, YLNT is a collaboration of three guys who met on Twitter and started a podcast. They host the show from three different towns as each member stays in their house to do the show. The show is cultural commentary and also hilarious. Merlin is an “internet celebrity” with a few sites such as youlooknicetoday.com, 5ives.com and 43folders.com.
The Moth Podcast
www.themoth.org/podcast
This is a new one I described to after hearing about it on This American Life. The Moth is an eight or 10 or 15-minute sound clip of a person telling a life story, usually in New York City. The stories are usually very funny and informative as well as inspiring and touching. People talk about the time they survived a mugging, traveling to the Amazon because of a curse, spending time in Savannah, GA. Really anything. It can be a tearjerker but it is very entertaining and maybe even a little pretentious.
www.maximumfun.org/listen
Jordan Morris and Jesse Thorn will bring anyone out of a bad mood. The podcast is said to be about adulthood and coping with growing up. By that I mean what it means to become your adult self and shed all the compulsions and ridiculousness of the younger you without turning into a jerk. Be careful, it might suck you in and might start spouting JJGO-isms to everyone and they will not know what to think of you. There is a whole culture to this and the best thing to do is to find a JJGO! friend. Mine is Leanne.
You Look Nice Today: A Journal of Emotional Hygiene
youlooknicetoday.com
You Look Nice Today goes along the same lines as Jordan, Jesse GO! In fact, they’re all friends. However, YLNT is a collaboration of three guys who met on Twitter and started a podcast. They host the show from three different towns as each member stays in their house to do the show. The show is cultural commentary and also hilarious. Merlin is an “internet celebrity” with a few sites such as youlooknicetoday.com, 5ives.com and 43folders.com.
The Moth Podcast
www.themoth.org/podcast
This is a new one I described to after hearing about it on This American Life. The Moth is an eight or 10 or 15-minute sound clip of a person telling a life story, usually in New York City. The stories are usually very funny and informative as well as inspiring and touching. People talk about the time they survived a mugging, traveling to the Amazon because of a curse, spending time in Savannah, GA. Really anything. It can be a tearjerker but it is very entertaining and maybe even a little pretentious.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Are bloggers journalists?
As we have learned in this Online Media class: “the best blogs compile and comment on news and information and breaking news blogs offer updates that allow readers to see how the story has changed.” In the sense of online news, this is relevant. Online news for a paper’s Web site is updated on a regular basis. Considering this fact, bloggers are similar to journalists. Journalists also compile the news for stories and comment on the news such as with editorials and what-have-you. Therefore in these ways, journalists and bloggers are similar. However, in most other ways they are not.
In the first place, and this hits close to home, bloggers do not necessarily have to go to school. According to the B.A. requirements for an undergraduate major in Journalism and Mass Communication, one must have 39-40 semester hours of credit in the Cronkite School, 12 credits in broadcast, print, digital or public relations specializations, three credits in any upper division unrestricted JMC/MCO course, and not to mention 80-81 credits in general studies requirements. That’s a crap load of school as we all know.
After a student completes these requirements and even before, he or she can go on to graduate school or a career in journalism as a legitimate server of the public. Bloggers may serve the public, but they lack the credentials to be taken too seriously. They lack the strategic and ethical training that the rest of us have had to go through. Not to mention, if a journalist has a red mark on his or her record, they will have trouble finding a job. Journalists who have cut corners, plagiarized, fabricated or illegally obtained information will most likely be black listed.
Conversely, any yahoo can create a blog and slamming any topic they want with all kinds of bad attitude and snide remarks.
Chad Graham is in the no man’s land of blogging and journalism. He’s a business report and a blogger for Biz Buzz at The Arizona Republic. He said newspapers are willing to be more risky than ever before to get online audiences. “I’ve been in the media for 10 years and up until now you were not allowed to give your opinion,” he said. “Journalism is becoming more opinionated and I think that’s what readers want.”
However, I don’t think journalists have much to worry about in terms of being substituted with a Chatty-Cathy.
“I consider bloggers more commentators on the whole,” Graham said. “I don’t think they can ever replace the people who go out and gather the news.”
It was reported on Feb. 25 in PRWeek US by Dan Gillmor that Joshua Micah Marshall won the 2007 George Polk Award as founder of the Talking Points Memo blog. As many may know, the Polk Award is an American journalism award. Be that as it may, some bloggers can be considered journalists while others are most certainly not.
Bloggers have been arrested, such as with the five American bloggers that were arrested in Beijing while reportedly covering a pro-Tibet demonstration in Aug. according to TECHWEB. It also reported in April 2007 Malaysian authorities were planning to make bloggers first register with the government before blogging. Bloggers are obviously causing a stir, and so do journalists. Reporters Without Borders are protecting these guys, but these are the bloggers with the same intentions as journalists in my mind. These aren’t the bloggers that make insane and insensitive claims that affect people’s lives just as much as journalists could have.
Rachel North is a story and an example of bloggers getting out of hand. She was a part of London’s 7/7 in the underground tunnels. She began blogging about her experience with the attacks and her survival according to BBC News. She was then attacked a called a liar by other bloggers who believed she was part of a conspiracy, that the explosions were not the work of terrorists but of the government.
In many ways, bloggers can be regarded as hope for the future of journalism as it turns to online audiences and younger crowds. However, the very essence of journalism such as integrity, credibility and legitimacy hang in the balance in the meantime. So no, bloggers aren’t journalists.
In the first place, and this hits close to home, bloggers do not necessarily have to go to school. According to the B.A. requirements for an undergraduate major in Journalism and Mass Communication, one must have 39-40 semester hours of credit in the Cronkite School, 12 credits in broadcast, print, digital or public relations specializations, three credits in any upper division unrestricted JMC/MCO course, and not to mention 80-81 credits in general studies requirements. That’s a crap load of school as we all know.
After a student completes these requirements and even before, he or she can go on to graduate school or a career in journalism as a legitimate server of the public. Bloggers may serve the public, but they lack the credentials to be taken too seriously. They lack the strategic and ethical training that the rest of us have had to go through. Not to mention, if a journalist has a red mark on his or her record, they will have trouble finding a job. Journalists who have cut corners, plagiarized, fabricated or illegally obtained information will most likely be black listed.
Conversely, any yahoo can create a blog and slamming any topic they want with all kinds of bad attitude and snide remarks.
Chad Graham is in the no man’s land of blogging and journalism. He’s a business report and a blogger for Biz Buzz at The Arizona Republic. He said newspapers are willing to be more risky than ever before to get online audiences. “I’ve been in the media for 10 years and up until now you were not allowed to give your opinion,” he said. “Journalism is becoming more opinionated and I think that’s what readers want.”
However, I don’t think journalists have much to worry about in terms of being substituted with a Chatty-Cathy.
“I consider bloggers more commentators on the whole,” Graham said. “I don’t think they can ever replace the people who go out and gather the news.”
It was reported on Feb. 25 in PRWeek US by Dan Gillmor that Joshua Micah Marshall won the 2007 George Polk Award as founder of the Talking Points Memo blog. As many may know, the Polk Award is an American journalism award. Be that as it may, some bloggers can be considered journalists while others are most certainly not.
Bloggers have been arrested, such as with the five American bloggers that were arrested in Beijing while reportedly covering a pro-Tibet demonstration in Aug. according to TECHWEB. It also reported in April 2007 Malaysian authorities were planning to make bloggers first register with the government before blogging. Bloggers are obviously causing a stir, and so do journalists. Reporters Without Borders are protecting these guys, but these are the bloggers with the same intentions as journalists in my mind. These aren’t the bloggers that make insane and insensitive claims that affect people’s lives just as much as journalists could have.
Rachel North is a story and an example of bloggers getting out of hand. She was a part of London’s 7/7 in the underground tunnels. She began blogging about her experience with the attacks and her survival according to BBC News. She was then attacked a called a liar by other bloggers who believed she was part of a conspiracy, that the explosions were not the work of terrorists but of the government.
In many ways, bloggers can be regarded as hope for the future of journalism as it turns to online audiences and younger crowds. However, the very essence of journalism such as integrity, credibility and legitimacy hang in the balance in the meantime. So no, bloggers aren’t journalists.
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