Introduction to Online Journalism

Some blogs to look at in class

Here's a few sites I'd like you to look at. I'm not going to say anything about them. The idea is that you look at each one and tell me what it's about, what kind of use it's making of the web, what kind of blog it is and whether you think it qualifies as 'journalism'.

I am Fashion

Go Fug Yourself

Hecklerspray

Punk Football

Who Ate All The Pies

Hippy Shopper

World Changing

Back To Iraq

Where is Raed?

Baghdad Burning

H5N1

Greenslade

VickyWatch

Andrew Sullivan

Collision Detection

Outside

OK - that's more than enough to be going on with. I'm not expecting you to look at all of these - just look around at a few - then start writing a review of one you find interesting. We may not get chance to finish this in class. If not, finish it off for next week.

One thing you could look at after class. BBC Radio 4 recently did a short series called Meet The Bloggers, which looked at blogs and the bloggers behind them. Follow the link and you can listen to the shows (they're only fifteen minutes long) or the unedited original interviews.

Today's session

I'm going to change things around a bit today, compared to the way the unit ran for Group B. We're going to start with something practical, before we get on to thinking about what online journalism is, exactly. So today you're going to set up a blog using the Blogger service and then look at the different ways people use blogs.

Blogger was one of the first free blogging services available online. It was bought a few years ago by Google and was recently upgraded and re-designed to make it easier to use. There are lots of other blogging services out there - some you pay for, some you don't. Some are targeted more at people who want to keep online diaries and network with friends. Others are aimed at people who see themselves as publishing professionals. We use Blogger for this unit because it's free and it's pretty easy to use.

In the lesson, I'll go through the basics of setting up a blog. To get started, go to the Blogger home page.

Welcome to the unit, Group A

Hi. Welcome to the blog I'll be running in tandem with the Introduction to Online Journalism unit. I'll use this blog to circulate useful information and lecture notes. I'll also post timetable changes and basic admin info here. I'll put links to sites I want to discuss in class here as well.

You can leave comments here too - if you need to get in touch or you want to ask a question about something we've discussed in class or something I've put on the blog.

This time round, I'll also be making lecture notes from the class available on Blackboard. Remember - you can access that via the college student portal.

So, with Blackboard and this blog, there will be two ways to access info relating to the unit. Let me know which you find easiest to use/access.