Final Reflective Blog

Before taking this blogging course I knew more about journalism than I did citizen journalism or blogging. I’ve written for my school’s newspaper since high school, so I was familiar with AP style and how stories were reported and framed in journalism. My knowledge of blogging was very limited. I very rarely read blogs, but I knew they existed and that ordinary people were the main writers. What I didn’t know was that they are written using some of the same elements of journalistic stories. I was always under the impression that a blog was almost like a diary entry of the person’s opinion of certain issues. I didn’t know that a major component of blogging was quoting sources and linking to different stories on the web that describe the issue the writer is referring to. I think the main misconception I had about blogging was that it isn’t a serious form of journalism. I really thought it was just random people who had something to say that created a blog to strictly voice their opinions. I didn’t think that they became citizen journalists in the fact that they quote sources and refer to different articles to support their opinions. I also never really thought about audio and video blogs in association with blogging. When I came into this course I really only expected to be writing blogs and never realized that there were two other forms of blogging that have become popular among citizen journalists.

The biggest thing I learned about blogging and citizen journalism is that they are framed much like journalism, but with a more relaxed tone. There is room for bloggers to voice their opinions in their posts, but they get sources to back up their opinion while also quoting sources that don’t. They are sure to balance their stories with the sources they quote much like journalists do to create credibility for their readers. By balancing their stories and making sure they are quoting reputable sources, they create credibility not only among their readers but among the mass media as well. I remember in the Newswar documentary, that bloggers were the driving force behind the Trent Lott ordeal. They were the first to cover the story that Lott had said he supported Strom Thurman’s prejudiced presidential campaign during Thurman’s birthday celebration. Only after bloggers who had shaped a credible reputation brought the story to light did the national media pick up on the story that eventually led to Lott’s resignation. In We the Media, Dan Gillmor suggests that the approach of credible bloggers to reach the masses is more effective than magazine advertisements. He said that companies and politicians should now remember to tell the truth because there are well informed, expert citizen journalists taking to the Internet to make sure the truth is reported. And there are many bloggers who have established their credibility like the ones who picked up the Trent Lott story and those that found Dan Rather’s documents showing President Bush’s military records to be fake. I think this showed to the masses that there are bloggers who are doing a better job at finding the facts then the national media is doing. In my opinion this gave bloggers a little more credibility over that of the national media and showed that citizen journalists were on the side of those just like them.

Another thing I learned from the reading is the ridiculous things people become experts in and credible for. In this particular instance I’m referring to the Convergence Culture reading about Survivor bloggers. There are people who in some ways undermine the idea of citizen journalism to report and become experts in predicting the winner of a reality television show like Survivor. I realize that Survivor is one of the most popular reality shows on television, but the idea of stalking people they believe are contestants and places they think the show is filming, undermines the credibility of citizen journalism. In a way the Survivor bloggers create a mockery of the idea that ordinary citizens can report the facts about specific topics by choosing ridiculous topics like the winner of Survivor. However, at the same time I understand that one of the benefits of this is people coming together to share information no matter how ridiculous the topic. This can also be seen in the chapter about the Harry Potter wars; although I think young kids learning to become better writers is a more just reason for their foray into blogging then those just trying to be the first to figure out the winner of a reality show. In the Harry Potter instance, young kids are coming together to publish fake school newspapers about something they read in a book, which not only helps them become better writers but engages them in reading. The idea of kids being interested in books when they have video games and television to occupy their time is something that should be celebrated not shut down by corporations like Warner Brothers. Blogging gives these citizens the chance to engage themselves further in media and that is a huge benefit from the evolution of the Internet and the creation of blogging.

From all of the hands-on work in creating many different types of blogs I learned a lot about blogging and citizen journalism. The most difficult aspect of creating the blogs for me was the different technology we used. I’m not the most technology savvy, but I learned how to use things like audio recorders and video cameras, which I had never done before. I also learned how to use the programs associated with each to edit and create both audio and video casts, something I never thought I would be able to do by just knowing the basics. I also learned how to use a Mac to create my first audio cast, which I think was my biggest technology struggle during the class. However, the more I used the different forms of technology the better I understood them and the more comfortable I felt listening to the sound of my own voice or being on camera. Learning to use the different forms of technology to produce audio and video casts is going to be very useful when I find a job in the communications field. Many of the jobs I have already applied for want someone with blogging knowledge. Not only do I have the knowledge of written blogs, but I also know how to create audio and video blogs after taking this course, which will help in the application process for companies who want a person with an understanding of the new forms of media used today.

Finding things to cover around the Albright campus was sometimes difficult because in order for me to do my best work I had to have an interest in the story I was producing. I tried to cover events or stories that not only I had an interest in, but that I thought other students would also have an interest in. Sometimes that was hard because with the way certain breaks fell there weren’t many events being held on campus. It was also difficult to find sources that were willing to be recorded or videotaped. This could have been because they were shy but it also could have been that they feared the repercussions of having their opinion about college events or issues on the web where fellow students, faculty, and administration could possible view them. I know that there will always be people unwilling to make themselves a source, but for the purpose of this class it made it frustrating to not have their cooperation or sometimes understanding. I think if more people understood the purpose of this class was to develop students as citizen journalists and not to get them in trouble or criticize the college in any way, people would have been more willing to become sources.

The class critiques of our work were really beneficial. I know that I learned a lot from the feedback that the other students gave me and also from the feedback that I received from the grader of each project. I think that everyone in the class always had constructive criticism for the blogs that we critiqued and never attacked the work we put into our projects. I think the feedback we received on all of our projects helped to make the next one that much better and really helped when putting together the two multimedia blogs. Without knowing what others wanted out of an audio cast or a video cast, it would have been hard to create better second projects and comprehensive multimedia blogs. In the real world there are always going to be people critiquing your work and its best to take in their feedback and learn from it to improve upon your future projects. And there will always be someone there with negative criticism, but so long as we use that constructively, our future projects will become better and better.

I really liked the freedom associated with blogging because it gave me a chance to tell my opinion. I’m so used to only having to report the facts that it was refreshing to be able to incorporate my opinion into the blogs. I don’t think that as someone covering an event or an issue that we don’t have some kind of opinion, even if that opinion is that we don’t care. It was nice to be able to show that opinion that is so rarely done apart from commentaries and editorials in journalism. I also liked that we were able to pick any topic that we wanted. I think that if we were assigned topics that would in a lot of ways go against one of the fundamentals of blogging, which is freedom. Bloggers are not assigned stories or events to cover. They cover issues or events that interest them. So I liked that this class stayed true to form because in the real world of blogging there are no restrictions on topics one can cover.

At the beginning of this course I didn’t think that blogging was a form of journalism. However, after creating written, audio, and video blogs, I realized that blogging is a form of journalism. These everyday citizens find sources and other stories that have been written about the topic and use that in a relaxed journalistic narrative that tells their story. These bloggers take the time to find sources that back up the information they find or the opinions they have while also finding sources that disagree. They make sure to have their facts straight and their stories balanced in the same way that journalists do. The only real noticeable differences are they don’t have a title from a national media outlet and they incorporate their opinion into their writing. I think that blogging has become an important form of communication. These citizen journalists build credibility and are seen as experts on the topics they discuss within their blogs. Some of the expert bloggers have become influential in their discoveries, like those in the Trent Lott case, and have given bloggers everywhere credibility among the masses. These citizen journalists have taken on the role of gatekeepers to the national media, corporations, and politicians by researching their claims for verification. If they find something to be untrue, they will tell the masses through their blogs and those bloggers that are considered experts will be believed. Citizen journalist bloggers have become an influential part of media today and as they break more stories or find more things to be false, their influence and credibility will only continue to grow.