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Week Two : Blogs and Blogging
This week's readings are significant for me because for my final project, I'll be creating a blog for my employer to use internally (and many of these articles and posts will serve as a great starting point for my research and needs assessment).
I found the readings this week especially useful in describing the history of blogs, and clarifying some of the features and considerations that are common when starting a blog. I especially liked the chart and the article from the Online Journalism Review - I thought they spelled out some blog basics in a really straightforward, user-friendly way.
I also liked learning a bit more about blogs themselves - especially the history and importance of the permalink - something that I see and often use, but had never really thought about its importance or why it was there.
One point that stood out among all of the readings is from Rebecca Blood's post about the history of weblogs: "Our strength - that each of us speaks in an individual voice of an individual vision - is, in the high-stakes world of carefully orchestrated messages designed to distract and maniuplate, a liability. We are, very simply, outnumbered." This quote, and other parts of the post, made it clear how reactionary and perhaps off-base the established media is when its members express concern about the influence of bloggers. As more "official" blogs also begin to pop up, from these established media outlets, it may become even more glaring how limited the influence of individual bloggers is - it may just seem more influential or insiduous because it is a relatively new threat. I, personally, read blogs AND the news, and I don't think I'm alone in that. I also can't see respected print and visual media being completely replaced by a community of amateurs, who can access their audience solely online.
However, as we are all aware, blogging is spreading (some would say like a virus), and some libraries are getting in on the action. This week's case study libraries were interesting, and the blogs ranged from what I would consider a news feed, or newsletter, to an active blog, with comments and multiple posts daily. I think it's clear that some of the libraries have a blog because it is the new, hot trend, but they aren't using it's full capabilities (and it looks instead like a news feed, or an events page).
I liked the wide range of content on the Georgia State University, and I think it fits the user community well - though it looks pretty old-school - not a very impressive interface (but incorporating the library's flikr page is genius!). I also liked the Ann Arbor District Library blog. Both of these blogs feed from several subject-specific blogs, making for a wider range of content, and they both use what I think of as blog features - comments, feedback, RSS, and frequent updates - to what is hopefully great success. It's difficult to look at a library's blog and guage its success, without knowing how many readers there are, and how much it has been promoted within the user community, and the amount of support for the technology in-house. I also wonder whether some of these libraries started blogs because it's the "it" thing to do for the moment. But I guess I'm not really in a place to criticize, as I'll soon be adding another library blog to the blogosphere - and I do think it is an effective means of communication, and one that should be taken advantage of in libraries where it is APPROPRIATE - again, the argument to avoid adopting new technology for technology's sake.
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I find it interesting that several people on this blog refer to “official media” compared to alternative or citizen journalism. I did not need my Bachelor of Journalism to apply to write for a newspaper or a web publication; however the training I received was important in teaching me the necessary skills to be a better journalist. However, to be a librarian we all need a degree from an ALA accredited university. The difference between official or media outlets and alternatives is that the “official” media outlets like CTV, the Globe and mail, CBC and the National Post have experience, resources, and have established records regarding the consistent quality and overall fairness of their editorial departments. Blogs are still relatively new – they are at the most only a year or so into their second decade of existence. Other media forms have taken nearly as long in the past.
I would tend to agree Greg, while I would also add that any worries about people being censored or drowned out by large corporations shouldn't be too strong, since, in every sense of it, "normal" people in Western society have gotten an increasing amount of freedom of speech--without any deviation or regression, really--for the past decades and even centuries.
I do like the notion that jaclyn brings up that many of us do now have a voice online, and, at least in my (perhaps naively optimistic) view, this situation is not dissimilar to a military one: a larger army can almost always win a battle of attrition with a more wealthy and well-trained army because there is something to be said of strength in numbers. Though I certainly don't worry as much about corporatism as many others at FIMS might, I do appreciate a good anarchy or uprising, which is perhaps why I do appreciate the blog phenomenon so much. :)
"Everything I say is a lie...
... in fact, I'm lying to you right now..."
I expect that the division between the blogosphere and traditional media will become much less solid as time goes on. When I think of the blogs that I most regularly read, they tend to be from already established media sources. The New Yorker, The Economist and The Atlantic are all about as traditional as traditional media gets, and yet all now have regular blogs online.
Some of the blogs I read that aren't hosted on traditional media sites are still the personal blogs of journalists who have worked for most of their career in traditional media. The possibility of a journalist beginning their career in a blog wasn't available a few years ago, however, so there are some new and exciting possibilities.
Just like any other media, finding a reliable news source is difficult to quantify. Questioning the opinion shaping framework behind various large media industries (ahem fox..if you can call that news) is slightly more difficult when it is being filtered through a faceless yet pertinent brand name.
I like the idea that a news blog can be directly attributed to an individual's past history and experiences. There is a strikingly less frightening atmosphere to some accredited news blogs who demonstrate why they are framing a particular incident from an individualistic perspective.
And I agree, it's exciting for journalist's launching their careers, the possibilities are endless :)