New.Journalism.Review

There was an ugly scrap this week on the Sky News blog  – Boulton and Co. It involved a silly little competition to name the plane that Gordon Brown flew to the States in. See Plane Stupid – Adam Boulton Blog

In the post, the Sky News blogger described Brown’s plane as a ‘pimpmobile’ – surely not a description that would be used on-air?  And some even suggested that the post was breaking UK political broadcasting impartiality rules.

This raises interesting issues about how UK broadcast journalists handle blog content. I’m sure one day Rupert Murdoch will get his evil way on impartiality and find a presenting slot for Bill O’Reilly on Sky. But until that day comes, it seems that Sky blogs should be IMPARTIAL and that means Boulton and co shouldn’t be taking sides.   

The fuss resulted in an explanation - [What's a Blog For?]. The actual justification for (the not very funny) post seems to be that it was a comment on ‘poor media management’ delivered in an ‘accessible’ way. Well, that’s important comment. 

Here are a few reflective thoughts about assessing student blog posts. Students were asked to contribute to a class blog as part of the online journalism unit that I teach. Eleven theoretical questions were posted on the blog and students were asked to choose five questions and post opinion articles (no more than 800 words each). This was completed over the course of a semester.

Planning the assessment:

The blog assignment had to achieve a number of objectives:

• Devleop practical skills in using a CMS – WordPress. 
• Develop practical blog writing skills and a consistent style.
• Demonstrate understanding of online journalism and convergence theoretical issues (previously this had been addressed by setting a good old-fashioned essay)

I begun by looking at marking criteria – such as  The Rubric For Assessing Reflective Writing from San Diego State University.

A few ideas that were considered and rejected:

• Using the blog service in Moodle (the VLE). The university uses a VLE called MyCourse (based on Moodle). It works brilliantly, but I felt its blogging tools were a little basic for our level three students. We wanted something more ‘industry’.
• Using Blogger and Typepad: Blogger is free, allows multiple authors (which I required) and could be made private – but design templates too restrictive.Typepad is viewed as being quite ‘industry’  – Sky News, Daily Mail and The Times use it – but there were costs involved.

…………………..it was decided to use WordPress.It proved to be reliable, robust and flexible. Students accessed it from home and through the university firewall.

Blogging about theoretical issues
Students were asked to contribute to a class blog. In other classes, I had done tests where I asked students to set up and design their own individual blogs.They then blogged on topics of their own choosing. This hadn’t worked.

Setting up a class blog allowed me to view all contributions in one place. Students were asked to blog on quite narrow, theoretical, topics. This "forced" them to research, reflect upon, and to form carefully considered analytical pieces. The blog had to address theory to comply with the unit’s learning outcomes.

We also wanted to see students comment on other blog postings and make links to reliable sources of information. This could include websites, audio and video.

They were encouraged
to take time to compose their entries as they would do when writing an
opinion article for a magazine or newspaper. Speed was not a priority for this particular assignment.

Blogs can be used to address plenty of learning outcomes.

• Critical reflection: I heard Jonathan Hewett talk last summer at an AJE conference about using blogs to encourage critical reflection on a postgrad journalism course at City University, London.
  Jonathan’s ideas were inspirational and I’m keen to develop some of his
  techniques further.
• Paul Bradshaw of Birmingham City University has used blogs to encourage journalistic transparency.
  This could be employed to ‘track’ how journalism students approach investigations – What sources do they
  choose to contact? What sources to they overlook or choose to ignore? Can they defend
  their selections? How methodical is the investigative process?
• The Bivings Report gives 16 ways the media can use blogs. Lots of food for thought here. Blogs are a conversation and we need students to interact more with the local community.
• How the BBC News uses Blogs: Report by Alfred Hermida

What worked / what didn’t.

From looking at the general standard of the assignments.

1) Learning the CMS technology: Good.Most students developed a good understanding of the technology, categories, tags, uploading images and video etc. That said, we had a couple of students who repeatedly forgot their passwords (ahhhhhhh!).
2) Addressing theoretical issues: OK/Good.All students  had to think through a number of theoretical issues, although quality of research could be improved.
3) Developing good blog writing style: Poor.Complete confusion over audience and appropriate style. This was mostly the tutors fault!

Some reflective thoughts:

• Students not used to blogging. Always a surprise. In a group of 20 only three admitted to running their own blogs and only around five read blogs regularly. Terms like "RSS", "Wiki" and  "SEO" need explanation!
• Writing a blog post is different to writing on a Facebook page: This is something I need to reinforce next year. ‘Text speak’ is not acceptable. 
• Seven questions down to five:  It became clear that it was  taking the students too long to research and  write well composed analytical posts. Fewer questions improved the quality of response very quickly.
• Blog was private (password protected): This was the hardest decision:
  • Pro: Allows students to make mistakes and experiment with different styles.The blog was a learning tool after all. 
  • Pro: It allowed the tutor to speak more freely to the students and open conversation to occur between students. (there was very little conversation in reality though – see later).
  • Con: Students confused about audience – some appeared to write in a way that they thought would please the tutor. We couldn’t examine page impressions or hit counts for postings.
  • Con: No conversation with the ‘outside world’.
• Students confused about appropriate blog style: We looked at many blog post styles, but there are very few editorial standards. Students were looking at theoretical issues, so some adopted an academic style of writing which probably wasn’t appropriate for a blog. This needs far more clarity.

• Providing informal feedback was a nightmare: It took ages to post comments on posts as they appeared (and nearly killed the tutor).
• Students reluctant to comment: They wanted to read my comments relating to their posts, but appeared unwilling to provide peer feedback. This was worrying for level 3 students. There was little in the way of ‘conversation’.
• Students concerned that assessed work could be read by their peers prior to submission: It’s rare for students to be able to read each other’s assignments before hand-in. And it was clear this unnerved a few of them. It was clear to see that some students worked consistently throughout the semester and created fantastic posts, whilst weaker ones left it to last minute. The site was very busy the 12 hours before deadline!

Do it again?

Yes, but with changes. Blogs have many uses in teaching and it is essential that journalism students are encouraged to create their own blogs. 

The exercise worked well in terms of learning the technology and getting students to reflect upon research. It’s a mostly a student-centered approach, despite the fact they were unwilling to provide peer feedback.

You have to be extremely precise in what you are asking for and this is something to work on!

The Chinese government appears to be encouraging foreign students in the UK to blog in protest against alleged Western media bias.

The move follows days of negative reports in the media about the Olympic torch ceremony and the Tibet riots. 

The headline in the pro-government China Daily newspaper [yesterday, 26th March 2008] reads: Students rap media ‘hegemony’. The strapline reads: "Western coverage of Tibet riots prompts online rebuttals, appeals."

The article encourages students to visit the website anti-cnn.com and report media bias
from leading global media organisations including CNN, the BBC and the
Washington Post.

The report states: "They have set up a website, www.anti-cnn.com, to collect evidence of
what they believe is one-sided and untrue Western reporting, and posted
an open letter asking all Chinese to rise up against "the Western
Goebbels’ Nazi media", a reference to the Nazi-era propaganda minister
Joseph Goebbels."

It continues: "Some Western media, in the name of freedom of the press, have long
relentlessly denigrated developing countries to achieve their hidden
objectives. They have gone to the extreme in mixing right with wrong,
black with white, and fabricating rumors," the website said.

Appearing to be registered with an employee of a leading Beijing university, the site has a chaotic design and surprisingly few contributors despite free front page promotion in one of China’s highest circulation  government propaganda newspapers. The site does contain some interesting examples of alleged distorted media reporting on websites such as Times Online.

China is keen to present a controlled image in this Olympic year and it seems that the Chinese TV censor was working over-time on Monday. As I sat on holiday in Beijing watching BBC World and CNN, TV screens would go blank during reports about protests at the Olympic torch ceremony. CNN also had the images distorted during a live link from a reporter in Beijing.

Access to news sites was variable. The Guardian reported that the BBC site on Tuesday appeared to have been unblocked.  On some occasions just the headline about a story about Tibet would be viewable on BBC.com/news, but you would be unable to access the full version. Accessing The Guardian presented similar challenges.

What’s interesting is not that China censors TV and Internet, but it’s the fact the government is encouraging foreign students to use the same tools it censors to to launch a counter-attack.   

There is evidence to suggest many people in Beijing do believe in a ‘united China’ and support the government in its stated aim of improving living standards for the people in Tibet. But with total media censorship, you can never quite be sure if  people are just speaking what they read. 

Also how will the large news sites react to Chinese censorship as they look to expand audience reach in the Far East. Will the commercial goals of these news sites take priority over an ethical stance?

Finally, it’s very early days for the reporting of the Olympic games. The IOC has placed controls over what journalists can report in their blogs and we’ll have to wait and see whether the media will stick to to the rules. 

Paul Hayes, MD Times Newspapers, told Internet World (annual IT trade show held at Earls Court, occasionally Olympia) said that "relatively few [Blogs] will be read beyond the narrowest of audiences. Most will disappear unnoticed and, frankly, unmissed by the world".

This is the kind of self-satisfied comment you can expect from those that work in established media. But let’s not forget Murdoch has made more than his share of Net blunders. Only two people in the world can even remember the little known Murdoch-backed auction site called FiredUp.com. The wannabe eBay rival snuffed it in  April 2001, after just six months online. That was after heavy TV advertising featuring the likes of Bruce Willis.

There was the failure that was "Current Bun", an ISP which closed in 2000. Let’s not forget Line One (another ISP) or Revolver.com (a weird recruitment site, that was a spin-off from the Sunday Times).

All these websites: "disappeared unnoticed and, frankly, unmissed by the world".

Page3.com is the only surviving website from this era. Hmmm…. we wonder why?