Online Journalism 1 - Weblogs and Journalism

'Challenge journalism'

It's a clunky sounding label, I know. It refers to a strand of modern journalism in which writers set themselves a challenge of some sort, then document their progress in meeting that challenge.

There are connections here with the kind of new journalism and immersive journalism you're looking at with Rod. Writers doing 'challenge' pieces put themselves at the centre of their stories. They often try to place themselves in different worlds, with a view to revealing something new or important to the rest of us.

The most high profile example of this kind of thing is Morgan Spurlock's 'Supersize Me', in which he ate only McDonalds food for thirty days to see what effects it would have on his health. But newspapers and book shops are now full of this kind of thing - people who try to spend a year living according to the precepts of the Bible, or a year without shopping or a year without having sex or a month without looking in a mirror.

The idea is to do (or not do) something that we all do and take for granted with a view to revealing something about modern life. These stories often take modern consumerism as their focus.

As with new journalism, some critics have suggested that challenge journalism is a bit narcissistic and self-involved, that it's often a rather artificial and cheap way to get a story, that the journalist is often running a rigged experiment in which the conclusions are programmed in advance...

We can talk a bit about this today. What I want to you to think about is whether this kind of thing is well suited to blogs. Blogs are time-based. They're diaries, essentially. So they could work well as a tool for challenge journalism.

Some journalists who wrote challenge books used blogs to document their progress (and generate publicity) - for example, Neil Boorman, who wrote 'Bonfire of the Brands', a book about trying to live a brand-name free life, but kept a blog while he was doing it.

Others started off with a blog which then became successful and led to a book. For example the award-winning American blog, the Julie/Julia Project, in which the writer sets out to cook all the recipes in a famous American cook book.

Another interesting example is The World in One City, a blog based project in which the authors set out to see if they could find people from every nation in the world living in London.

That blog is almost like a quest - it has a definite aim/end. And indeed, it's over now - on the way, the bloggers got a lot of media coverage which gives you an idea of what they were up to. Others adopt a tighter subject focus but a more open ended structure - for example, eggsbaconchipsandbeans, a blog reviewing greasy spoon cafes.

Have a look at some of these - they might give you ideas for your assessment blog.

Personal journalism and workplace blogs

Today we're going to look at 'personal journalism'. This does sound like a slightly odd term. I'm using it to refer to the kind of personal writing you often find on blogs, in which people document their ordinary (or not so ordinary) lives. These kinds of blogs often feel very close to diaries - but because they're made public via the net, some of them can end up feeling close to 'journalism' or having a kind of journalistic effect.

That's only some of them. Most remain purely personal, designed mainly for friends and family. But some seem to become 'journalistic' in their effects, as more people read them and as the media pays attention to them.

One of the best examples of this kind of thing is workplace blogging. Lots of ordinary people keep blogs about their day jobs. These blogs are usually anonymous, to protect the bloggers from their employers. People use their blogs to moan about their jobs, share funny stories and let off steam. Most don't see what they do as journalism. But can they have a journalistic effect? Can we read them as journalism?

James Richards, an academic from Heriot-Watt University, is researching workplace blogs. He's written a good definition of what this sort of blog is and also has collected a good list of reasons why workplace bloggers do what they do.

Visit one of these links - you'll see he's put together a huge list of links to different workplace bloggers. I'd like you to look at a couple of workbloggers. Try to find one you like.

Read through what they say. Think about whether they're telling you anything new and whether you could class this as 'journalism'. Write a quick review and link to the blog you're covering. We'll talk about the things you find in class

Today's session

We've got a lot to fit in today. Last week I asked you to think about an idea for your assessment blog. Today, I'm going to try to talk to each of you individually about your idea and how best to develop it. I think that if you want to make the assessment less pressured, it would be a good idea to set up and start your blogs next week. That gives you more time to reach the target number of posts (20).

I'm going to quickly demo Wordpress to you as well. This is another free blogging service. Some of you are already using it. It offers a bit more functionality than Blogger, especially in terms of the media you can add to a blog. So it's worth looking at it and trying it out. But if you're happy with Blogger, that's also fine.

Next, we'll have a quick chat about how you managed with last week's homework - using Google Reader and Google News for a week to see if they changed the way you consumed journalism/news online.

Next, we're going to look at personal journalism and workplace blogs. We're also going to look at 'challenge journalism' and diary format features and think a bit about how they might work on a blog. The idea is to help you develop an idea for your assessment blog if you don't already have one.