A Class Well Spent

Journalism II focused heavily on learning tools for reporting in an electronic medium. Quick bursts, like Twitter which could be used for immediate breaking news, along with its retweet function which helped spread it faster and unaltered, to longer blogs (in this case, Blogger) which could be accessed from around the world for free, unlike print or televised news.

We used Mindmeister to brainstorm. Because I work fast, from thought to finish, I didn't have many opportunities to use that service to plan things out, but for my podcast, I took the opportunity to lay it out i my own way.

Youtube videos and custom google maps dovetailed, when we made a map of our university using video clips we took. The ability to add context this way has depths I didn't get to fully explore, but I did appreciate the possibilities. The first idea that sprung to mind was historical reports, adding sound and location to stories.

In the last week of class, I went and hurt my back. But this led to more opportunities, as I learned how to remotely participate in a setting through skype, and even got to demonstrate how to create your own online television channel.

We focused on learning the ethics and important tenets of basic newswriting, to give us a good base to start from.

I wasn't wholly sure what to do with my wikispaces page, until I realized I could use it to organize the type of work I'd been doing for class. An online portfolio. I'd been using tags on my blog, but having the entries up with summaries was invaluable to helping me realize what I was doing.

For this class, I tried out different types of journalism, to see if any were a 'fit'. For my podcast, made with audacity, I did a retrospective on a crime that had occurred in Brandon years ago, the Erin Chorney case.

From there I moved onto regular articles:

 Electronic reporting! I spoke about forums, which didn't go as I planned from when I started writing it. Originally my intention was to portray forums as archaic methods of electronic communication, but in writing I realized they still very much had their place, even if some of their original purpose had been supplanted by the much more immediate commenting systems many pages have now.

I tested out criticism, on the Brandon Sun's reporting of a terrorist attack, using a photo I had fortunately taken that day.

I tried commentary on double standards in media and regime changes, regarding the Dixie Chicks and Ted Nugent and the responses to their criticism of the president of the united states.

And finally, I tried product reporting on My Little Pony merchandise, and found the method of reporting that suited me best. I was more passionate about toy reporting than I had been about crime, death, and the faults of others. Apparently the time of reporting for me was definitely entertainment journalism.

And that was how I learned to journalism.