BAIJ1605 New Information Technologies

Reminder on Proposals

2006-11-09T22:14:00.000-08:00

Remember that your group project proposals are due this coming Monday. Each group must submit one proposal, and each proposal should include:

Names of the participants

Project title

Description of the project (the issue or thing you will examine, and why it is relevant)

Description of the product (the format you will use, such as a written paper, group weblog, etc. and why you chose that format)

Statement of each participant's individual contribution (what each person will be responsible for in the project)

List of material consulted so far, and a statement about what resources you think you might consider as your work progresses

The proposal may be turned in on paper or posted to a weblog, but be sure to let me know where it is if you choose the latter. If you have questions about anything related to the project, please ask me.

The Daily Life of an Online Newspaper

2006-11-02T00:49:00.000-08:00

The American Journalism Review has an article by Carl Sessions Stepp, Center Stage, describing the daily routine of online newspaper operations. In a previous piece he looks at the world of TV News Online. (From CyberJournalist.net)

Easy Publishing Tools for Online Journalists

2006-10-30T00:56:00.000-08:00

Easy Publishing Tools for Online Journalists is a useful overview of some technologies for would-be OlJs.

Remaining Assignments

2006-10-29T22:24:00.000-08:00

There are four remaining submissions for the term listed in the course outline: Assignment #3; Quiz #2 (proposal); In-Class Presentation, and the Final Project. This sounds like a lot, but it should be manageable. Here's how it will work:

Assignment #3: This assignment will be a continuation of the previous two weblog assignments. You will be required to write at least two course-relevant entries (approximately 300 words total) per week on your existing weblog for the remaining weeks of the term. Some entries will require you to respond to a specific question I provide to you. In addition, there will be some specific technical assignments. Review date for the assignment will be 24 November;

Project Proposal (Quiz #2): Instead of a quiz, you will write a brief proposal for the final project (see below) and submit it to me via email. The due date for the proposal will be 1 pm Monday 13 November. The proposal should be no more than three paragraphs long and should describe what you would like to do for the final project, what product you would like to produce, and what topic you will address. The proposal should identify each student participating in the group and what each student's contribution to the project will be.

Final Project: The Final Project will be a group assignment with each student contributing an individual portion of the assignment. The product of the assignment, due Friday 8 December, may be a paper (3 to 4 pages double-spaced, plus references, per student) or it may be posted online as a linked series of weblogs, a group weblog (a few individuals posting to one weblog), or some other format you propose. Whatever format you choose, each individual student's contribution must be clearly identifiable.

Any topic of relevance to this course is acceptable. Some possibilities include:
--New Information Technologies in Kazakhstan/Central Asia
--Online Journalism
--Public Relations and Weblogs
--NITs and Citizen Journalism
--Useful Tools

Presentation: Each group will do an in-class presentation of their project during the last two weeks of class. Presentation dates will be determined in-class on Friday, 17 November.

We will discuss these further in class.

Bloglines Blogroll

2006-10-27T00:48:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to my Bloglines list of feeds.

PR and Weblogs: Ethical Issues

2006-10-24T04:05:00.000-07:00

Journalists aren't the only media professionals who have discovered that weblogs can be a useful tool. PR professionals have as well. In some cases, though, they are used deceptively, as in this case in which a PR firm representing Wal Mart created a supposedly independent weblog to promote the company, and even hired a Washington Post photographer to contribute to the site while posing as just an average person. It's an interesting case in ethics (or better put, lack of ethics).

Update, 30 October: In a follow-up to the Wal Mart PR weblog blunder, Mediashift asks what impact the scandal may have on weblogs and the PR industry.

OhMyNews! and Korean Nuclear Coverage

2006-10-24T03:16:00.000-07:00

In Poynter Online's e-Media Tidbits, Amy Gahran links to an OhMyNews! page focused on the issue of nuclear weapons in North Korea. She calls the page, which combines professional and amateur analysis, "a classic example of how traditional and citizen journalism can complement each other to round out a major story."

Also see Amy's post from the same day on collaboration between professional journalists and webloggers.

Wikiproject Central Asia

2006-10-23T06:43:00.000-07:00

At Registan, Nathan Hamm reports that a group of people involved with Wikipedia are beginning a project to improve the site's coverage of Central Asia. According to its webpage, Wikiproject Central Asia "aims to expand, cleanup and wikify, better organize, and neutralize the point of view on articles related to Central Asia." There is an ambitious list of projected articles for the site. Take a look, and consider contributing something if you are so moved.

Tips for Good Blogging

2006-10-23T03:17:00.000-07:00

From South Africa, Vincent Maher offers 11 Tips for Managing a Good Blog Entry. His focus is on weblogs as tools for community building. Although some people think this sets them apart from traditional news media, I tend to think that is an important part of what all news media ought to be doing. From Amy Gahran at Poynter Online.

See more tips in Seven Ways to Optimize Your Blog

Bloglines Subscription

2006-10-22T23:23:00.000-07:00

Also for this week, please sign up to the web based RSS/site feed reader Bloglines and subscribe to some news feeds there. Also make sure that the site feed for your weblog is enabled. We will discuss how to do this in class.

Here's are some handy resources: tutorial from Better Days on setting up and using Bloglines (warning: lots of graphics make for a slow download); How to Set Up Bloglines as your Web Aggregator.

Required Reading for October 23 to 27; Quiz Style Guideline

2006-10-22T22:46:00.000-07:00

Required readings for the week of October 23 to 27 are:

Dube, Jonathan (2005) "RSS for Journalists," Poynter Online, February 16. Available at: http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=32&aid=78383

Gillmor, Dan (2006) "What Ethics Should Bloggers Have?" in Reporters Without Borders (eds.) Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents. Available at: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=15003

Note that these two readings are presented in a formal style which you should use for your works cited list at the end of your quiz essay due later this week. The list at the end of your essay should include similar information for any work you used in your essay. Within the text of the essay, you should briefly identify each work as you use it as in this example:

As Dan Gillmor suggests, bloggers may not be professional journalists and may not need formal journalistic codes, but if they follow some of the ethical guidelines of journalism then they may gain the trust of their readers.

Using this style should allow your writing to flow while giving enough identifying information to ensure your readers can locate your sources, regardless of whether hyperlinks are working or not. We can discuss this more in class.

neweurasia on Kazakhstan Blogging and Media Law

2006-10-13T02:32:00.000-07:00

Over at neweurasia Kazakhstan, Leila is wondering about what Kazakhstan's media law and a government promise to consider new policy on regulating the internet might mean for bloggers. She asks:

"What about blogs? A relatively new phenomenon in Kazakhstan ... There are about 16,000 Livejournals registered in Kazakhstan, 6,000 of them based in Almaty (the number of people actually maintaining diaries is not confirmed).* Only some blogs discuss politics and offer analysis of news and events. Could these diaries become subject to information and media laws? In my opinion, yes, and if so, this is not a good development for Kazakhstan."

The internet's greatest potential is also perhaps the most important cause of confusion about its legal status: it gives so many people the opportunity to act as their own publishers and to share their ideas widely with little oversight. This can create confusion in particular in a region without strong traditions of press freedom. Kazakstan's bloggers (and other internet users) would be well-advised to pay attention to concerns like those Leila raises. I recommend her post. (And note that her comments include some discussion of how realistic might be her estimate of the number of bloggers in the country.)

Feedback on Assignment Two

2006-10-12T23:26:00.000-07:00

I have reviewed the weblogs for Assignment Two and will provide each of you with feedback and grades today in class. However, there are a few pieces of feedback I will also provide here to everyone.
In general I liked the range of topics in student's entries. Most of you included issues relevant to the field. Most of you also did a good job of meeting the technical requirements of the assignment. I especially liked some of the conversations that emerged among people in the course. There are a few areas that need attention, however. Please take these requirements into account for all future work for the course.

Acknowledging Sources: You must acknowledge all your sources clearly, and clearly indicate when you are quoting from another source.

Cutting and Pasting: Use the cut and paste feature sparingly. There are too many cases of entries made up entirely, or almost, of quoted text. From this point on, each of your entries must include a minimum of 75 percent of your own words and all quoted text must be clearly offset from your own words.

Writing for Other Courses: Treat material written for other courses as you would material written by other people. You may quote from it or refer to it, but you cannot simply post material written for another course on your weblog without acknowledging it as such.

Post Consistently: Too many people rushed to post entries just before the final due date of the assignment. Assignment two was designed so that you would post at least a couple of entries each week. I only reduced grades a bit for posting deluges this time, but that will change in the future. When I ask you to post a couple of entries per week, that's what I want to see.

We will talk more about these things in class. Please ask me if you have any questions.

Top Three Things a Journalism Student Should Know

2006-10-12T03:46:00.000-07:00

At :journalistopia journalist-blogger Danny Sanchez is writing (and asking for professional advice) on the question:

"What are the top three things a freshman journalism student should do or know to be a competitive job candidate three years from now?"

Sanchez will be giving a talk on the subject at a Florida j-school, and he is asking for suggestions from readers. One response I liked:

"Treat everything you produce as a piece of professional public work, whether it’s text or photos or a video you post on YouTube. Your Web presence is an important part of your portfolio. You will be Googled."

There are more worthwhile suggestions in his comments section. Check them out.

Thanks to Mindy McAdams for the link.

Quiz #1

2006-10-08T22:43:00.000-07:00

Due Date: Friday 27 October, 1 pm

As we have discussed in class, your first quiz for the term will be a formal essay which you should post as an entry on your weblog no later than 1 pm on Friday 27 October. The essay should be approximately 500 words in length. In your essay you must make use of material from the required course readings (all of which are listed on this site). You should also use other material linked through the course weblog, and you may use other sources as you wish. All ideas and words you borrow from any sources must be clearly cited in the text of your essay (and supplemented with an online link if possible).

Your assignment is to write an essay exploring some way that new information technologies are changing (or might possibly change) journalism. This assignment is intentionally broad to allow you to choose a specific issue that interests you.

Be sure that your final essay is fully developed, with a clear opening position, supporting evidence, and a conclusion. Feel free to discuss your ideas for essay topics with me.

Required Reading, 9 to 13 October

2006-10-06T00:10:00.000-07:00

Reading for this week is:

"The Use of the Internet by America's Newspapers" (PDF), a report by the Bivings Group (read this one for major ideas) and "The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism" by Steve Outing. Read this report more closely, and follow at least a couple of links in each section of the paper to see examples.

Link Update

2006-10-04T00:33:00.000-07:00

Please remember to update the link to Anel's site in your weblog. The old URL was:

http://sofico.blogspot.com/

Her new address is:

http://sofico17.blogspot.com/

You can copy and paste the new address in your template, or simply add the "17" to the existing URL (in the proper location) in your template.

New Links: Registan.net and Global Voices Online

2006-10-01T22:17:00.000-07:00

Nathan Hamm, who runs Registan.net, visited our course weblog the other day. He wrote that he has found our sites and has loaded all of them into an online aggregator for potential use in his writing at Registan and at Global Voices Online. (We will be talking more about aggregators in coming classes.)

We have discussed Global Voices before in class, though this is the first time I have looked at Registan.net. The site seems like another very good resource on Central Asia. Nathan has an impressive list of links there in the sidebar. I'm adding both resources now to the sidebar on this site.

More on Acknowledging Sources

2006-09-30T22:06:00.000-07:00

Remember that there are two major reasons for acknowledging sources used in your writing: to give credit to the people on whose ideas you draw (an ethical foundation), and to make your own writing more convincing by demonstrating the strength of your research (a persuasive foundation). You should always give your reader enough information so that she can identify and locate as easily as possibly your research material.

There are different formats for acknowledging sources. Some are very standardized, such as those used in formal academic papers. Some are less formal, such as those used in journalism or online. But the ethical and persuasive reasons for recognizing your sources still apply no matter the style of writing you choose.

Publishing online allows writers a relatively easy way to acknowledge sources using hypertext links. Readers can simply click on a link to identify and access your source material immediately. But even though a hyperlink can usually do this, it is still good practice to give enough information in the text of your writing to identify sources without requiring your reader to actually click a link.

Why? Because sometimes links go bad; sometimes people are reading a printed version of what's online and cannot follow a link, and sometimes people simply don't have the time or patience to follow your links. In any of these cases, your writing will be greatly improved if you remember always to briefly identify in text the sources for your material.

You may use a formal academic style to do this if you choose, but for most of our online writing I suggest using a less formal journalistic approach and, wherever possible, using a direct link as well. Something like this:

In "You Can Quote Me on That," an article published on the No Train, No Gain journalism coaching website, attributing sources is described as "the difference between research and plagiarism."

You'll notice that I link only to the article itself here and do not link, in addition, to the main website of the group publishing the article. That's because too many links can get confusing, and seeing as the link to the article begins with No Train, No Gain's main URL I decided that was enough information. Usually it is preferable to provide the name of an author of a source, but because the author is not clearly stated in this case, I attributed the material to the publishing organization instead.

How detailed you get in acknowledging a source must depend upon how much is needed to reasonably identify and locate the source, and on how you are using the source in your writing. The more central the source is to your material, the more detail you may want to provide.

Usually a citation like the model above would be sufficient for our purposes, but use your judgment and please ask me if you have any questions. And when in doubt, make sure to attribute as fully as possible. For more discussion of attribution, see the No Pain, No Gain article linked above and explore their main site for other resources. (Notice how I sneak in a link to this main site at another point in the article.)

Backpack Journalism Online

2006-09-29T03:50:00.000-07:00

A post at Mindy McAdams's site called my attention to Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone, a website where the intrepid backpack journalist Sites chronicles his year-long mission "(t)o cover every armed conflict in the world" using a backpack full of high-tech gear to produce multi-media narrative reporting and upload it to his Yahoo!®-sponsored website.

There may very well be some valuable information and compelling stories at the site, but I am skeptical of the project for a few reasons:

It smacks of the ego-charged, adrenaline-fed variety of reporting in which the macho foreign correspondent charges into harm's way, risking life and studly limb to get the story under fire. The prominent placement of the ruggedly good-looking Sikes's photo on the website further promotes this image;

The project promises in-depth reporting and involvement in finding solutions to the problems Sikes covers, but covering 20 international armed conflict zones in one year (which apparently he did) cannot give any reporter the context needed to fully understand an international story. This sounds like journo-tourism rather than deep reporting, much less problem solving;

I'm all for celebrating the communicative potentials of new media technologies, but this project seems like one big advertisement for techno-gadgets. Wanna be a macho reporter just like Kevin? Then check out the list of gear he carried on assignment and get started shopping. I'm a bit surprised the list doesn't include links to buy each item from Yahoo! I'd much rather there were a focus on the application of technologies, rather than just the technologies themselves. A bitchin' gear kit does not a good reporter make.

Perhaps I've been harsh on Kevin and the Hotzone crew, but I think it's important to point out the issues I've raised. I'd be willing to listen to other perspectives, but as I said, I'm skeptical...

Assignment #2, Last Task

2006-09-28T23:29:00.000-07:00

Due Date: Friday 6 October, 1 pm

For the third part of assignment two, be sure you have done everything outlined in the entries on task one and task two. Review to be sure you have used the correct links and that all your comments at other sites are directly linked from an entry at your site; that your formatting for sidebar links matches other elements of the sidebar, and so on.

Be sure to acknowledge sources properly and that every entry contains at least some of your own words, clearly distinguished from words and ideas borrowed elsewhere. This applies to your previous entries (which should be modified to ensure they are properly sourced) as well as to your new entries.

Review all the material posted on the course weblog since we began working on assignment two. Double- and triple-check to be sure you have set up your weblog so it works well, and ask me if you have any questions.

There are no new technical requirements for the third part of assignment two. Instead I want you to focus on developing content at your site. Be sure you have written at least a couple of entries per week over the three weeks we have been working on this assignment--about 350 words per week--and that a substantial portion of your entries deal with issues related to new information technologies, journalism, and so on. Use your weblog as your "thinking pad" for issues related to your field as well as other ideas as you see fit.

If you are having trouble coming up with ideas for topics, review the course readings and topical entries at this weblog. We can also discuss ideas in class.

More Networking Effects

2006-09-28T21:19:00.000-07:00

The good folks at neweurasia.net have mentioned our classroom network of weblogs in a round-up on blogging in the region. In the post, Ben at neweurasia writes,

"Blogging has made it into the classroom at one of Kazakhstan’s most prestigious universities. Frederick Emrich and his students at KIMEP all use blogs to discover new information technologies and share their experiences using them."

Be sure to check out the entry as it mentions other blogging initiatives in the region as well. I've found that neweurasia and its country-specific sites are great resources not only for news and views from or about the area, but also for discovering local voices online.

Ben's entry was also cross-posted at Global Voices Online, so there's yet another network that extends the potential reach of your course weblogs.

If you were wondering, I didn't do anything to inform either Ben or Mindy McAdams about our course weblogs. They found them on their own. I'm not sure exactly how Mindy came across our sites, but Ben emailed me after posting his entry and said he found us through Technorati, probably the most prominent blog tracking site.

Comment Tips

2006-09-26T23:52:00.000-07:00

Don't forget, if you mention an entry at another person's site or if you make a comment on another person's site, be sure to create a link at your site to the specific entry (not just to that person's main weblog) and make sure the link at their site goes back to your specific entry as well. We will discuss this again in class to be sure it is clear.

Entry Tips: Acknowledging Sources

2006-09-26T22:16:00.000-07:00

Note that the guidelines in this entry are required for all your weblog postings.

Although weblog postings are often informal and sometimes make liberal use of material found in other places, legally and ethically all your posts must clearly distinguish between your own ideas and words, and those of others. In general there are three categories that concern us here: Your own original ideas (which do not need to be attributed); ideas you have found other places and put into your own words (which must be clearly attributed in text and also, preferably, with a link), and direct quotes (which must be clearly attributed in text and with quotation marks and also, preferably, with a link).

At this point I assume everyone knows how to distinguish among these three categories when they write on paper (that is, you don't need a major refresher on when you should identify other people's ideas and words in your writing in general). These basic guidelines are meant instead to help you ensure you are properly acknowledging your sources in the somewhat informal and fast-paced atmosphere of weblog writing.

Every entry you publish must include some of your own words (and preferably more of your words than words you have borrowed from somewhere else). This is good practice in general; anytime you use a quote you have to use your own words to put that quote into context.

For ideas borrowed other places and for quotes, give your reader enough information so she can identify and (hopefully) track down your source. If you use an online link to the source, that with just a few words in the text should suffice for acknowledgment in most cases. For offline sources, you will need to provide a bit more detail.

Always put quotation marks around direct quotes, whether single words, phrases, or longer text. For longer quotes (of more than a couple of lines of text) you should also use the blog editors quote tool to set the quoted text apart from your own words.

We can discuss this further in class, but be sure in all your weblog writing to follow these guidelines. On the last assignment I allowed a bit of leeway because you were just learning the blogging tools, but for Assignment Two and all future assignments you must follow these rules.

And Speaking of Networking...

2006-09-26T03:57:00.000-07:00

Our class and associated websites have been mentioned by Mindy McAdams at her Teaching Online Journalism weblog.

Mindy makes specific reference to Anvar's weblog. And for her part, Soy has already posted an entry about Mindy's comments here.

Perhaps this is a lesson in how our classroom network, now in the online environment, can quickly connect us with other people and their networks...