It was great to meet all of you who came to class on Friday!
If you have not yet e-mailed your blog address to me. Please do so. As of Saturday mid-day I have received 28 blog addresses from students in both classes. I have aggregated all of them on a public Google Reader page here. (You will learn how to use Google Reader and other aggregators in the next class – without such tools it will be impossible for us to keep up with what everybody is putting on their blog.)
Several people have not yet sent me the link to their blogs. If you have not yet done so, you must do it ASAP in order to get credit for Friday’s in-class assignment.
Just to reconfirm about your assignments:
BLOGGING ASSIGNMENT 1: Remember, according to Week 1 on the Class schedule, your first blog post is due by Tuesday noon. This is so that your classmates who have to do a presentation about Week 1 can have a chance to read what you have to say and prepare. As a reminder, the assignment is: Write a blog post reacting to the two assigned articles, to the Week 1 pre-lecture blog post, and to the lecture itself: How do you think the Internet is changing journalism in Hong Kong, China or wherever you call home? What do you think that means for your future career as a journalist? Your blog post must contain some hyperlinks to other web sites or blogs.
BLOGGING ASSIGNMENT 2: Your second blog post is due by the beginning of the Week 2 class. In this post you will spend a few paragraphs describing a topic here in Hong Kong that you think might be good for your final project. Link to some information about it and say something about why you find it interesting. As I mentioned in the lecture, during the secnod half of this course you will work on a project covering some aspect of Hong Kong that you think has changed in some way since the handover 10 years ago. Try to think of something that you think maybe the media won’t be focusing on so much, so that your final work will be a truly unique and valuable work of journalism. At this stage I’m not asking you to commit to the topic you describe here. This is only a very early brainstorm to get a sense of what you are interested in.
BLOGGING LANGUAGE AND TONE: Somebody asked me how formal the language of your blog posts needs to be. My answer is: You can be somewhat more conversational than a newspaper article. But your work for this class is not like having a chat with your friends. Remember that you are writing in a public space, as a future journalist – or at very least a future professional. Your work on your blog should be something that projects the image of the kind of professional you are hoping to become. Being professional doesn’t mean never being conversational, and it doesn’t mean never making jokes. It does mean, however that you need to think about the impact that your words will have on how people perceive you as well as others. When talking about other human beings, always strive to be fair and accurate. Treat them as you would like them to treat you, with respect.
YOUR IDENTITY ON YOUR BLOG: Many of our MJ students have jobs elsewhere. We want to be able to do the journalism that we need to do in this class without causing any problems with people’s employers. Your blog is publicly visible though you can set it so that it will not be indexed by search engines if you do not want to be found when people do Google searches. (Go to the “Options” tab, then click on the “Privacy” sub-tab.) Also, you can choose not to display your full name on your blog, showing only a first name or nickname if you believe that is necessary. As long as I and your classmates know who you are, that’s fine. (Go to the “Users” tab, then click on “Your Profile,” then go to the drop-down menu under “Display name publicly as” and choose something other than your full name.)
Got any questions, comments, or concerns? Please hit the comments section of this post and let me know.
