publish first, edit later

The Name

Is not particularly original, I know.

I thought about 'The Time It's Personal' - because I'm going to be posting about the social/cultural changes caused by the rapid spread and take-up of personal media tools. But I don't know... a dodgy old film strapline didn't seem quite right for something that might eventually blunder its way toward academic respectability.

Maybe I'll save it for a book. You need something ironically shouty for books, I guess.

I went with PFEL, mainly because it's been identified as one of the guiding principles of modern, 'always on' media, and one of its key differentiating points compared to the products of the old style printing press.

Basically, the idea is that whereas old style newspapers spend a long time editing before they publish something, bloggers tend to get their ideas/stories out there first and then rely on a kind of collective edit being done by the blogosphere. Readers decide what's important, their choices are aggregated in various forms and used by/relied on by others.

Of course, that works best for the bigger A List blogs, which are read by increasingly large numbers. But most blogs are read by a handful of people, if that. In theory, if something good appears on one of these, it can find its way to a large readership, in a way that just wasn't possible before.

But generally, I imagine the reality for most is different - probably closer to 'Publish First, Edit Never'.

The other reason I chose it is because it seems like the exact opposite of the way things generally work in academia, where you do your research, which is then reviewed and edited extensively before it's finally published. Nothing wrong with that. It's a guarantee of sorts.

But this blog will, I hope, work in a different way. The idea is to test out ideas, to discuss them with whoever drops by here, whether they're academics or not...

Again, there's nothing radical or deeply original about all this. It seems to me there's an awful lot of people working at universities and colleges doing similar things already. I wrote about a few of them last year in The Guardian. But given that I'm new to academia, this seems like the right way to do my research for now. Perhaps in a while, when I see how things work, I might change.

But for the moment, publish first, no matter how off beam or daft the ideas might be, then edit later, with the help of wiser, more informed heads than mine.

Welcome

Hello and welcome to my new research blog. Anyone unfortunate enough to have spent any time in my company over the summer knows that I've been talking about doing this for a while. I even went on about it to the people on my table at Research conference held by the College last week. Now I've done that, I can't stall any more. I have to get on and do it. Especially now term has started properly. In theory, I'm supposed to be using this blog to teach an induction session for some of my Year 1 Journalism students tomorrow. That's if our new Macs turn up in time. Which is a whole other story.

But anyway, it's time to get on with it. I'm planning to use this blog to track new developments and ideas in online journalism. Not a particularly radical idea. There are hundreds of blogs out there doing something similar. But it seems the obvious way to mix theory and practice in my particular field (Journalism). And I think (hope) posting here on a regular basis will help me think through some of the things that trouble me slightly about the big claims made for blogs, citizen journalism and all the rest of it.

I'm also going to use the blog as a kind of teaching tool. Again the aim is to mix theory and practice, to research how useful blogs are for teaching, by experimenting with them in the classroom. I used a blog as part of the course in Online Journalism I taught earlier in the year - and it didn't work in quite the way I expected, though the students said they did find it useful. So I'm hoping to do more of the same over the next year and learn some more in the process.

I'm also going to use the blog for the usual personal stuff - as a place to keep track of interesting stories and ideas, as a place to post random thoughts and theories. So it's going to be pretty chaotic at first. But bear with me. It will get better. And more organised.

If it doesn't, I'll stop. Promise.