Of all the words that make me want to go and jump off a cliff, or anything at least 20 metres off the ground really, “blogging” and “group work” are some of them. So when all of these words were combined in one sentence within the first five minutes of the first fourth term journalism lecture, I knew things weren’t going to be pretty.
Of course the main focus of the blogging course was (apparently) the writing, and more specifically, writing within the genre of blogging. Because we covered genre in our third term journalism course, this term I actually had an awareness of what genre is. It wasn’t too hard to write for the blog because I knew how a blog worked, even if I hadn’t seen it as a “genre” before. Of course when it came to the groupwork we had to make sure we were all on the same page. Our writing had to be fitting for a blog and then also inkeeping with our blog character.
Story ideas were fairly wasy to come by. I have survived first year and the theme was “surviving first year”… you do the math. For this reason I needed to do very little research. Mostly I gathered information directly from a source, for example another first year, or from just listening in on friends’ conversations. It was difficult to find other relevant sources. After searching on the internet I found that there is very little available that actually speaks to first years. This was the one plus of the theme. At least our blogs can provide something for other upcoming first years.
Ultimately, a lot of ideas, information and input for stories came from the members of our group. There were few conflicts, because we are all first years who understood the genre of blogs and who ours was aimed at. Most of the time when we met was spent obsessing over how to get the infamous html template to work!
Despite the frustrations, blogging did help me to grow in terms of my writing. In the beginning I had a near-terminal case of writers block, knowing that my work would be up there for anyone to read. It brought home the realisation that one day my writing is going to be out there and open to criticism, but that that is actually how we improve and hone our skill. At times, however, I felt as though what our lecturers had assigned us to do and the blog genre were in conflict. Writing a profile on a first year who has overcome difficulties is kind of hard to incorporate into your blog plan of being a fun, humourous blog. The assignments confined our writing more than the actual blog genre I think. The theme of “surviving first year” was also limiting in many ways. I think first years have a lot more to say about the world than that. There is a lot more to us than simply the fact that we are first years. It would have been interesting to see what people as young as us have to say about other things, such as life experiences and social issues.
One thing I hadn’t considered previously were the ethical issues surrounding blogs. A blog is such a public thing, where anyone can read posts and anyone can comment. How much can one actually say on a blog? What can one legitimately complain about and who can one criticise, and what should just be kept a personal opinion, if anything? There is no control over what can be posted on a blog, but at the same time there is a subconscious awareness that some things would just be inappropriate, or hurtful to others. For example in our comic where we ripped off the lecturers, we had to be careful that we didn’t overstep any boundaries that would publicly humiliate anyone. Bloggers definitely have a responsibility, to tell the truth but at the same time to be conscious of other people’s feelings.
The best part of the whole experience by far has been reading other students’ blogs. Getting insight into the psyche of my fellow first years has been fascinating! We’re not all the brave, carefree, confident people we make ourselves out to be, are we? But, having said that, the course has still not fully convinced me on the whole concept of blogging. I’m not so sold on the idea of pouring your heart out onto a public internet site. Apart from the privacy issue, it almost cheapens writing. You just type whatever comes into your head, often times total garbage, and post it hoping someone will read it. I think if you really have something to say blogging can be good, but otherwise you’re just adding to the clutter that is cyberspace. Is blogging journalism? I think it can be, when used correctly. I think any form of intelligent writing or observation is journalism, but at the same time, I do not believe that having a blog makes you a journalist.
Ultimately, I am glad I didn’t jump off that cliff/very-high-thing at the beginning of term. This course has had its positives and negatives, ups and downs, but that’s life. After all, there is life beyond blogging, and I will take what I have learned during this course and use it elsewhere – er, I mean, continue to blog away.
No comments:
Post a Comment